Pink Sugar

I thought you would like to see my Pink Sugar soap - you might have already seen the You Tube video that showed the browning of this from the time I made it to about 4 days into the process.  Here you'll see the soap with almost it's full browning ... this, as you may know, is due to the natural vanillin in the fragrance which turns the soap a very dark brown.  For this soap, to keep the pink, I didn't put fragrance in this portion - so I have a pink part with no fragrance, a dark brown with fragrance and the third part is the browny cream which does have fragrance but also has titanium dioxide to help whiten up the soap.

I can't tell you how GOOD this soap smells, I just adore it ... sweet yes (and I'm not overly fond of too sweet fragrances) but it's such a complex blend of fragrances.  It's described as having base notes of candy floss, caramel, toffee, and vanilla mingling with middle notes of fig, strawberry jam and violet musk. The fragrance is rounded off with top notes of lemon drops and sweet brown sugar... it is just simply divine!!!

The soap will be fully cured as of early February 2012 and will be available online at http://www.iamhandmade.com.

If you haven't seen the browning video, here's the You Tube link http://youtu.be/ZZ9Y9njpOS8.

And here's the final soap:

Cherry Blossom

I thought I'd show you my new Cherry Blossom soap ... I made this last week and you might have already seen it on one of my recent videos.  It's made with Sweet Almond, Avocado & Golden Olive oils with tons of Cocoa Butter and, of course, wild silk (can't be without it, as you know!).

Cherry Blossom's have huge significance for me ... they were my Mother's favourite trees and, when she passed, we planted one in the garden in her memory.  We used to have a huge one in the garden of our old house and, when I was a kid, I used to play "wedding" in the shower of petals from it!

Anyway, here are the pictures of Cherry Blossom... I really hope you like it.  The soap will be fully cured and available on www.iamhandmade.com from 13 February.

Winters Day

As some of you will know, I've been showing off my new Christmas soaps on Facebook.  The last post showed you our Very Merry Berry which has been a huge hit with almost half the batch now on pre-order lists!

Today I'm featuring Winters Day - this is a polar white and ice blue soap, made with our own blend of Sweet Almond, Golden Olive and Avocado Oils with lashings of creamy Cocoa Butter.  It's coloured with titanium dioxide for the white and a small amount of pearl blue mica.  It's all dusted with an icy glisten of cosmetic glitter.

The fragrance is described as a crisp Winter blend of mild Menthol, Pine, Spruce, Eucalyptus, Lavender & Cedarwood ... it's a really lovely fragrance, clean and clear.  With the menthol and eucalyptus, I thought it might smell somewhat like a flu fighter but nope, it's smoothe and fresh and just so lovely. 

So, for your viewing pleasure, here is our Winters Day soap - it will be fully cured by mid November and on the site then.

Really hope you like this soap - drop me a line if you have any comments or queries and don't forget to check out our new website at http://www.iamhandmade.com/.

Very Merry Berry

Here's a look at my new Christmas soap (added to Fig & Brown Sugar and Winter Orange Spice) .. she's called Very Merry Berry and she's made with Sweet Almond Oil, Golden Olive Oil, Avocado Oil and lashings of Cocoa Butter.  She's coloured with vibrant berry colours - purple and reddish pink, alongside polar white and she has a generous dusting of icy glistening glitter on top.

Her fragrance is a juicy blend of Raspberry, Cranberry and Orange and oh my goodness, does she smell good!! Sooo delicious!

She's off to cure for the next 6 weeks and will be ready by mid November... if you'd like to pre-order, you can drop me an email at info@iamhandmade.com and I'll put one by for you; be quick though, because there are pre-orders already in for her (and that's without any pictures!). 

So, I invite you to ogle her, Very Merry Berry:

Hope you like them!

Celine @ http://www.iamhandmade.com/

Final images - Raspberry Mimosa and Jasmine & Green Tea

Well, you've seen the cutting videos for both the Raspberry Mimosa and the Jasmine & Green Tea but they still needed stills photography so that I can upload them to the website when they're fully cured.  Thankfully, Titch was home from her gallivanting around the Irish countryside and took these images yesterday evening.  There's something about the evening sunshine that gives such a lovely warm light ... sadly, I do wonder how long we're going to have the pleasure of that because I can feel Autumn coming in right now, the air is far cooler and the leaves are turning shades of red and gold.  As much as I love the Autumn/Winter seasons, I do so miss the sunshine. 

Anyway, whilst we still have the sun, we took advantage of the light and Titch took the following images ... and I hope you'll agree with me that she did, yet another, amazing job. 

So here are the images, hope you like them.

Raspberry Mimosa (fragrance reminder - a cocktail of juicy raspberry, crisp green apple and citrusy/sherbery May Chang essential oil) - available from 11 October:

Jasmine & Green Tea (fragrance reminder - heady, exotic Jasmine florals blended with calmy, citrusy Green Tea) - available from 10 October:

Really hope you enjoy the images - thanks to Titch at http://www.facebook.com/takenbytitch for her fabulous work; if you want to Like her Facebook page, you'll see more of her fantastic images. 

If you'd like to pre-order either of these soaps, please don't hesitate to drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com and I'll keep one by for you. 

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!

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!