Busy Weekend & New Soaps

Well, I sit here at gone past 11.00 pm on a Sunday night and wonder where on earth the weekend went? Honestly, wasn't it only 5 minutes ago I was enjoying Friday night? Of course, having to spend 5 hours in the hospital on Saturday probably didn't help but what can you do? My Dad (who lives with us) was complaining of chest pains and, of course, you can't mess around with that.  So off we go, straight to A&E where he's taken in immediately (fair dues, they responded PDQ) and hubs and I sat until we had flat bottoms on the hard chairs and couldn't take any more hospital coffee.  As it turned out, my Dad has pleurisy and so is being kept in for a few days to get IV antibiotics - not great but I'm happy, it could have been a LOT worse.

So, with all this mad rushing and stress etc, I needed a day to get relaxed and back into the weekend vibe and what better way for an inverterate soaper to do to relax other than .. yep, soap! And I did, twice (go me!). 

The first is Green Tea which is fragranced with a Green Tea fragrance oil (no surprises there I guess); this fragrance is just lovely, the second I smelt it I knew I'd have to make something really lovely with it; it's a calming green tea fragrance with a lovely citrusy background - a rather perfume-y fragrance which I hope will be a big hit.  It has Sweet Almond Oil & Golden Olive Oil plus added pure silk (as ever, I do LOVE LOVE LOVE silk in soaps) plus some titanium dioxide (you'll see why when it's cut!). 

Sorry the picture isn't the best, Winter light is so dull at times ... this is the first time using this size mould and I got the capacity slightly under so next time I need to up my oil level by about 100 or 200grms I think.  I adore the swirls!

The second is called Lemon Cream and is a blend of Lemon fragrance oil and May Chang Essential oil - I decided to blend both a fragrance and essential oil because cold process soaps can tend to eat delicate citrus oils in the cure and you can end up with a soap that smells just very faintly of citrus.  Plus May Chang is a really beautiful lemon fragrance with almost a fizz to it, delightful.  The other reason I choose the FO/EO blend is that, legally, I'm restricted use to 1% for all citrus EOs so, by blending with a citrus FO, I can extend the lemonyness of this soap (yes, it's a word!). 

This is made with Sweet Almond Oil (a really beautiful oil in soaps, it creates a very conditioning bar with lots of very creamy bubbles - my favourite) and I've added silk, of course, to this soap.  I've put on a sprinkling of blue poppyseeds to give a very slight exfoliation effect but also because lemon poppyseed is such a great combo (and I'll be making a scrub to match which will include the poppyseeds also). 

If you are interested in purchasing either of these soaps, they'll be finished curing and ready for sale by 20 February.  Check out the website at http://www.soaperstar.com/ for details then. 

I'll post up pics of the cut soaps in a couple of days when they're ready to cut - I really found soaping today was a real relaxtion for me and a perfect antidote to the madness of Saturday.  In the end, all is well in the Soaperstar household and it's the start of another week very soon!

Night night everyone xx