Spiced Chocolate Nectar Pure Beer Soap

This is the second of my Pure Beer soaps, Spiced Chocolate Nectar.

The soap is made made with Sweet Almond & Golden Olive Oils, Irish Chocolate Stout, Rhassoul Mud, Colloidal Oatmeal, Cocoa Butter & Pure Silk.

Rhassoul Mud comes from Morocco and has been used for centureies as a natural beauty treatment.  It's rich in trace minerals, is highly absorbent, attracting oil, dirt & pollutants and helping to clarify the skin.  It is very gentle and excellent for sensitive skin with its anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial qualities.  Studies have shown that it helps to reduce sebum production, improves the texture and tone of the skin, reduces dryness, helps improve elasticity and is gently exfoliating.

Within it's dark chocolate and cream colour swirls, it's fragranced with the natural scent of the creamy Irish Chocolate Stout blended with an infusion of rich Warm Spices and Dark Patchouli, drizzled with luscious sweet Chocolate. I cannot tell you how good this smells... it's neither just warm spices or patchouli or chocolate but a combination of all three, working together to draw you in and capture you forever... utterly divine!!!

It's available for pre-order on http://www.iamhandmade.com/ourshop/prod_1993072-Spiced-Chocolate-Nectar-PreOrder-Cure-Date-30-June.html and, as the link says, will be fully cured by 30 June (so any pre-orders received, will be sent out after then).  Huge thanks to Titch, yet again, for her fab photography .. make sure to check out and like her Facebook page.

Enjoy!

Blue Belle

Another new cold process soap... I cannot get to do enough soaping!

This is fragranced with the scent of Bluebell and Wildflower woods, dappled in the sunlight, after the rain.  It's a beautiful floral with a lovely green background.  I looked up images of bluebell woods and tried to recreate them in this soap.

I used my usual blend of Sweet Almond & Golden Olive oils along with lashings of creamy Cocoa Butter and also added Goatsmilk, Kaolin Clay and Pure Silk... a sheer treat for your skin.

This is available for pre-order on http://www.iamhandmade.com/ourshop/prod_1981933-Blue-Belle-PreOrder-Cure-Date-21-May.html.  The soap will be posted ASAP after the cure date (21 May).  Enjoy!!

 

Cut Soaps - New Photos

I am SO very lucky to have my very own soapographer in house! Soapographer? That's a soap photographer, see?! Titch took over taking photos of my soaps last Summer and I'm so glad she did, one less job for me and what a joy to find a talent so close to home (well, at home in fact!).

So I've noticed that I've posted a lot of videos of cut soaps but not the final images so here is a catch up of soaps I've made recently.  Not all are on the site yet as they're still curing but I'll note where they are on site as we go along.  Ready??? Let's go.....

Lime Basil Mandarin

(available from 27 February)

Asian Pear & Lily

(available from 5 March)

 Paradise Found

(available from 12 March)

Intrigue

(available from 19 March)

Buttered Maple Pecan

(available from 26 March)

Perfect Storm

(available from 26 March)

Seduction

(available from 26 March)

That's all for now... but, of course, I'm planning more... hope you enjoy everything! Make sure to check them out online at www.iamhandmade.com and check out the curing dates above.

All images courtesy of Titch Holland, www.facebook.com/takenbytitch - thanks so much hon!!! 

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.

Snow Angel

I just wanted to show you the last of my Christmas themed soaps - well, actually they're more Autumn/Winter because I didn't want to do any Christmas specific soaps (the ones you might be left with once 25 December is history, you know what I mean?). 

So here is Snow Angel ... she was a real pain to make to be honest.  This fragrance acted up big time on me and riced and heated up so I managed to stick blend it into submission.  I had plopped some into my pre mixed titanium dioxide so that ended up in it and I stick blended the life out of it (or into it, maybe?) and poured it quickly into my waiting mould.

For the first time, I put a soap into the freezer - I just knew the fridge wasn't going to be cold enough to cool it sufficiently to stop it gelling.  I left it in the freezer for the full day, popped it into the fridge overnight and then left it out, demoulded for 24 hours before cutting. 

She actually worked out really well and I love her! She's got a love dusting of icy glistening glitter and she smells just wonderful.  The fragrance is  is a warm Winters blend of Mistletoe, Pink Pepper, Cardamom, Frankincense, Clove, Patchouli & Amber - it's beautiful, simple and yet complex at the same time.

So, here is my Snow Angel .. enjoy!

Hope you enjoy the images - this will be online from mid November at http://www.iamhandmade.com/.