Featured Tutorial on the Soap Bar Blog

For all those who want to learn new techniques, I wrote a tutorial on How to Use the Hanger Swirl and it's been featured on the Soap Bar blog, there's even a video! Make sure to check it out.  And I so want links to see your photos of your finished soaps!

Thanks so much Jo for featuring the tutorial and for giving me an opportunity to show others a new technique!

Ultra Violet - New Soap & New Style

I've had this Ultra Violet fragrance for a while and it was sort of in the back of my mind that I wanted to do a really funky, mega purple soap.  I thought it'd look really good against a really white soap, it'd help to accentuate the swirls and colours.  Of course, Ultra Violet couldn't be any other colour than purple really could it? Well, yes violet but that's purple!

Ultra Violet is made using our new Triple Milk formula of Buttermilk, Goatsmilk & Coconut Milk (regular readers will know how much I love to use milks in my soaps and why use one when you can use three?!) along with Aloe Vera, White Clay, Colloidal Oatmeal & my absolute favourite Wild Silk.

The fragrance is described as a rich and enticing, exotic floral accord where cool notes of summer orange and tingling lemon made slightly cooler by and hint of fresh ozone and dewy summer fruits. The heart of this fragrance is vibrant and floral with warm notes of lily, ginger and nutmeg, alongside geranium blooms and sweet summer rose. The base continues in this rich and complex theme with warming notes of vetivert, musks, amber and patchouli.  It smells divine and is very unisex, both my hubs and Titch love it! My hubs even said "it smells purple" LOL.  It's just really really lovely and I'm so happy how well it worked out.

This soap was made with what I'm laughingly calling The Celine Swirl.. as I explained in another post, I just thought it was really funny to call it this but I'm quite sure that it actually has another name or something, I can't imagine I just invented it by myself?!

Check out our Making Of video to check out how we made this and The Celine Swirl in action:





And here is our Cutting video which shows you the reveal of how the soap swirl worked out:




Here are the still photos for the soap, I really adore it! Photos are courtesy of Titch Holland of Taken By Titch (make sure to check out her Facebook page):

I really hope you like the videos and photos of this fantastic soap ... it really is a stunner.  Check out the website for details of this soap and all our other products.

Enjoy!!

Japanese Plum Pure Silk Soap

Last time I made this soap, it went sort of nuts on me but, in hindsight, I think I soaped way too hot as it definitely gelled, and gelled hard for me. Regular readers will know that I'm a non-gelling sort of girl so I wasn't totally pleased. However, the soap ran off the shelves and was really popular. I vowed never to soap the fragrance again though ... until now!

As it was so popular and it's hugely popular in our Double Whipped Body Butters and Sugar Cream Body Polish, I decided that I'd brave it and remake it and see how it went. And how'd it go? Really really well! It behaved like a dream, no heating, no gelling, all perfectly behaved. What a silly I was to avoid it!

When I made Japanese Plum, I made it using our favourite blend of skin loving oils such as Sweet Almond & Golden Olive oils with lashings of Cocoa Butter .. to this we added our new Triple Milk formula of Buttermilk, Goatsmilk & Coconut Milk (remember, all those vitamins, proteins, natural fats, natural AHA's ... too too good!) along with Aloe Vera, White Clay, Colloidal Oatmeal & our favourite Wild Silk.

The fragrance is just to die for - it's described as a warm spicy Oriental accord with top notes of fresh lemon and tangerine, leading to a spiced heart of clove, cinnamon, ripe plum and tuberose resting on a base of rich incense, patchouli, soft moss, amber, caramelised sugar and vanilla. It really is a divine fragrance! Warm and delicious and utterly sexy!

Here is our Making Of video which demonstrates the Hanger Swirl technique again:




And here is our cutting video where you can see the reveal of how the technique looked in the soap:




And here are the still photos, courtesy of Titch Holland of Taken By Titch:

I really hope you enoyed the videos and photos and please do make sure you check out our website for details on this and all our other soaps.

Enjoy!!

Nominated - Blog Awards Ireland 2012!

I'm just back from my holidays (or vacation if you like) and just found out that this blog has been nominated for the Blog Awards Ireland Awards in the Best Craft Blog category!! Yay... I'm so chuffed, what brilliant news and thanks so much to those who nominated me.



The long list for this category can be viewed at http://www.blogawardsireland.com/best-craft-blog-long-list/ .. the short list will be published on 8 September so fingers crossed we reach that. Yay, what brilliant news!!!