Another New Video - Cutting Raspberry Mimosa

Ok, perhaps I'm enjoying this video making lark now.  I still won't show my face though... I'm shy!!!

I made a new soap on Sunday morning - I woke early and decided to make soap (what else?!).  I had a blend in mind of juicy raspberry and crisp green apple but, when we all sniffed it, we thought it was a little too sweet.  So I had thought that morning to add May Chang essential oil - this is a wonderfully sherberty lemony essential oil (possibly one of my top three) and it's worked really well.  It's cut through that sweetness and given a lovely citrusy note that has worked so well with the crisp apple and sweet juicy raspberry.  I am loving this fragrance!

I've used my usual blends of skin loving oils (sweet almond, golden olive and avocado) along with lots of cocoa butter and, of course, pure wild silk (I LOVE that .. talk about luxury!).  This was a beauty to make and a beauty to look at.  I love love love the colours too - reminds me of the best ice cream sundaes and smells like the nicest cocktail ever!

Hope you like the video - my hubby was the director and cameraman and walking comedian ... you'll see what I mean!!!

BTW I've noticed that the You Tube video doesn't show up on the subscription emails so I'm including the link here so you can just click into it - http://youtu.be/66gRnKiVUuc

This soap will be stocked in our online store at http://www.soaperstar.com/ from 11 October onwards - as ever, if you'd like to pre-order, just drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com and we'll talk!

New Video - Cutting of Jasmine & Green Tea

My second venture into the world of soap video making ... this is me, cutting my latest soap, Jasmine & Green Tea. 

Check out this baby!  She is a beauty - a blend of jasmine & green tea fragrance oils, the jasmine adding a heady exotic floral note and the citrusy green tea a wonderfully refreshing note.  All made with our usual blend of sweet almond, golden olive and avocado oils with lots of cooca butter and, of course, pure wild silk.  Sheer luxury!!!

This will be fully cured by 10 October - drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com if you're interested in pre-ordinerg some. 

Laundry Day - Cut Pictures

Well, you've seen the picture and small video of the making of this, the cutting video and now, here are the cut pictures.  This is the most photographed soap I've ever made... a total movie star!

Laundry Day - a clean, fresh, comforting fragrance that reminds me of freshly washed laundry blowing in a summer's breeze or the fragrance when you snuggle up into a freshly changed bed.  I love it, it's soft and clean and just wonderful.

Hope you like the pics!

If you're interested in pre-ordering one of these, just drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com - they'll be fully cured by 5 October. 

All images copyright @ Soaperstar and Taken By Titch, 2011. 

Cute Little Programme

On trawling through Facebook this morning, I saw that Emily from Shieh Design Studio flagged up a very cute little programme called Wordle.  You put in a your blog or website address and it comes up with the words most frequently used, in a cool graphic format.

So, of course, I had to try the blog out... only natural of course... and here's my image (no prizes for guessing the most used word!)

Cutting a new soap & my first Talkie!

My last post showed how I made my new Laundry Day soap which was mostly photos but a tiny little video too.  Everyone who saw it said "but why didn't you talk on it?".  Apparently, everyone wants to hear my accent!! Now I don't think I have much of an Irish accent but you can be the judge of that because we made another video today showing me cutting the soap. 

Oh I never mentioned about the fragrance on the video and that was really silly because it's a lovely scent - it reminds me of freshly washed laundry blowing in the breeze on a summer's day or when you just change all your bedclothes and snuggle in and feel so soft, safe and comfy.  It's sooooooooooo lovely, I adore it.  I'm definitely using this again too. 

So here is me, in my first talkie! Not sure what you'll think of it, I'm dying to hear!

Huge thanks, yet again, to Titch for being the videographer (check out her Facebook page at www.facebook.com/takenbytitch). 

Laundry Day - The Making of a New Soap

I haven't made a soap in a week (oh Lord, what a calamity!) and decided that I'd make one today; I've not made a blue soap before (bar the Wild Blueberry one which turned a hint of green because the fragrance oil turned the batter yellow!).  I wanted a nice calm, clean, cool blue and choose a cool cotton fragrance .... it smells like freshly washed laundry blowing on the clothesline on a summers day, really lovely. 

As some of you will know, Titch (my honorary daughter) has developed a strong interest in photography and decided to take pictures of the soap making process .. she even threw in a short video too.  Actually, I've never really taken a video on the camera before but it worked really well! But I'm running ahead of myself. 

So, I thought it'd be great to do a whole blog post on the making of a soap for those readers who don't know how a soap is actually made.  Beware, this is going to be MEGA pic heavy!!!

So, here we go.... we're at the point where I've melted all the butters and oils and I've prepared the water & lye and dissolved the silk so we're ready to go and MAKE SOAP!

Here are the butters & oils all melted and I've just added the fragrance oil in and I'm stick blending it a little just to make sure it's fully incorporated

The jug contains the lye water which has the silk dissolved in it and I'm carefully pouring it into the melted oils/butters, stirring with the stick blender as I go

The stick blender is just mixing the lye into the oils ... you can see vague whiter whisps in the mix, this is the start of the lye reacting with the oils - the stick blender is whirring away at this stage

Still stick blending and you can see the mix becoming more and more creamy as the mix comes to the point of emulsification

Still mixing - the oil is being mixed in more and more as I stick blend

Almost there!

Hardly any oil left now

A nice shiny pretty creamy trace! Yay, this is what I want to see, nicely liquidy still and shiny and lovely - I stop stick blending now

Here, I'm dividing the soap batter into 3 jugs - one for each colour; the spatula gets out every tiny little scrap, waste not want not!

Pre this picture, I had mixed three colours - one dark blue, one pale blue and one white; I poured the soap batter (as you saw in the previous picture) equally into three jugs, one for each colour.  This is the white titanium dioxide mix with the creamy soap batter

The titanium dioxide mix pre mixing

Here, I'm adding my ultramarine blue to which I added a little glycerine so I could mix any lumps out of it and adding it into the soap batter 

The ultramarine blue poured into the soap batter

Mixing the ultramarine blue into the soap - hmmmm, this isn't working... perhaps I should stick blend this?

Oh yeah baby, now that is a pretty stick blended blue!

Here I'm mixing my pastel blue ... again, it might need a little stick blending to encourage it!

Ah yes, stick blended pastel blue... you can see the glisten of the mica on the lip of the spatula

A nice creamy pale blue

Here's my white all mixed up, again this was stick blended to make sure there were no lumps

Very pretty ultramarine blue soap ready to use

Pretty pastel blue, ready to use

And some lovely white ... all three jugs, ready to go

Here's my lined mould, ready and waiting

So I pour the ultramarine blue on the base - I adore this colour

That's 95% of the UM blue in the base, slightly flattened out to make a straighter layer (but not very well, oh well!)

Now I begin to put the rest of the soap out - because of a mix of the stick blending and the fragrance oil, the batter is a little thick but no worries, I love the dollops of what looks like fresh cream - creamy and delicious looking

Some pastel blue and white dollops of soap

Now more white ... the soap is building up

About this time, we started making a little video - very very short but it's our first one...

A very quiet video showing me working on the soap and banging the air bubble out of it

More blue and white - see how shiny the soap is? I love that look!

I've only got a bit left ... I need to think about working on the tops I think

I kept back a little of the UM blue to put on the top ...more dollops again!

I love this picture... UM blue, pastel blue and white ... all layered up

More soap dollops

Here's me putting some of the pastel blue soap on the top of the soap using the spatula (I move to the spatula when I've only a little of the soap left)

Final colours added to the top

Last little bit of pastel blue being added

Now to begin the tops!

How cool does that look?

Look... lots of swirls baby!

More and more top work

The next few pics are of the top as I work on it... I never know when to stop!

So, that's it .. the soap then went into the fridge and it's still there now.  It's going to be called Laundry Day and it smells just divine.  We might do a demoulding and cutting video now that we know how to do them! Hope you enjoyed the picture and understand more of the process now and thank God nothing went wrong with it!!!

Huge huge thanks to Titch Holland who took all these pictures and the video - check out her Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/takenbytitch - she's gaining more experience at the moment but is very interested in working on taking product photos, especially for those who make handmade products so make sure to like her page and keep an eye on her work!

Thanks for reading and make sure to come back and see the cutting pics!