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Ciao Bella

Zest for Life

 

Lavender Song

 Velvet Kiss

Glitter Berries

Glitter Berries - imagine deep dark shining berries, swirled with warming spices.

The sheer luxury soap is made with our best selling formula of Sweet Almond & Golden Olive oils with lashings of Cocoa Butter. Along with this skin loving formula, we've added Goatsmilk, Buttermilk & Yogurt along with White Kaolin Clay, Colloidal Oatmeal and, of course, Tussah Silk.

Within the swirls of deep luxurious purple, warm pink and deep red, the soap is fragranced with a scent explosion of Cranberry, Lemon, Clove, Mistletoe, Pink Pepper, Cardamom, Frankincense, Patchouli, Lily, Raspberry, Green Apple & Black Grape on a warm Amber base. The soap is completed with a glistening carpet of frosty glitter.

Making Glitter Berries Handmade Pure Silk Soap:

http://youtu.be/pYco_Df3ZE4  

Cutting Glitter Berries Handmade Pure Silk Soap:

http://youtu.be/zSDue0bCb1o 

Here are the final cut pics of the soap, I love it! Thanks to Titch Holland for her amazing work, make sure to check out her Facebook Page:

 

 The soap will be fully cured on 15 October and is now available for pre-order on our website... hope you enjoy!!

More Cupcakes - Black Raspberry Vanilla

I've been making more cupcake soaps ... these will be called Couture Cupcake Soaps from now on. This one is Black Raspberry Vanilla, a stunningly fragranced blend of berries and creamy vanilla... it's one of our best sellers and has been a favourite since we started.

These are made with Sweet Almond & Golden Olive oils along with lashings of creamy Cocoa Butter, silk, goatsmilk, kaolin clay and aloe vera! Sheesh, that's a lot right?!

I coloured it with a blend of pink and purple which gave me a great berry colour and then added creamy white with glitter! Check them out.. these are just poured and piped.

As you can see, there's a slight lean on some of the soaps, too much topping? Or is there such a thing?

See the one on the top left hand corner? Definite lean going on there... not that anyone on my Facebook Page seems to mind! 

Hope you like these! They'll be available online from 21 May and I need to ask Titch to take some pics of these and the Raspberry Lime & Tangerine Tango ones I've already made!

Soapy Cupcakes

I have finally caved and make soap cupcakes ... they've been doing the rounds for a while and I've never tried making them before but I got the urge and decided to go for it.  I ordered some tips and an icing bag and off I went.

These are Raspberry Lime cupcakes made with cold process soap - I used my favourite formula of Sweet Almond & Golden Olive oils with tons of Cocoa Butter, Silk, Goatsmilk and Kaolin.  They're fragranced with a blend of juicy raspberry and zingy lime - a perfect Summer scent.

Here they are in the mould ... I'll demould in about 2 or 3 days I think and, if I talk nicely to her, maybe Titch will do her magic with the photos!

Hope you like em!

These will be fully cured in 6 weeks time and will be available on www.iamhandmade.com.

Check out this video

Michelle and Caron of Two Blooms Design Studio (with whom I recently did a swap from Canada to Ireland and back) wrote a post on their blog about the swap plus added images and, best of all, a video they made ... singing!!! It's SO good, I loved it, you have to check this out!!

http://twobloomsdesignstudio.blogspot.com/2012/02/two-blooms-meets-i-am-handmade.html

Make sure to watch the video, it's so cool!

International Soap Swap

The ever lovely Julia from Soap Artists blog is organizing an international soap swap. Spanish soapers will be swapping with other soapers from around the world.

If you'd like to be involved, all you have to do is:

1) Go on over to the Soap Artists blog and sign up with a comment

2) Wait until 3 March when the swap list will be published and you will know with whom you'll be swapping

3) Blog about the soap you receive, show photos.. a video maybe?

I'm all signed up and I hope we see some more international soapers on there too! 

Friendship Soap Party - Intrigue

You might have read on some soaping blogs about a Friendship Soap Party that's being held - 9 of us, from Ireland, Spain, the US and Canada, got together and decided to make soap for each other.  We found out a lot about each other by telling our stories .. most especially what we liked most about soaps, what our preferences were etc.

So, my hubby (you know, the movie star) and Titch and I made a video of hubs picking out the names of who makes soap for who (yeah, I know, that should be whom but that makes me sound like an English school marm!).  Here's the video if you'd like to see ... as ever, hubs is nuts!

So, I got to make soap for Emily Shieh of Shieh Design Studio who set me a challenge:

1 - make a soap with one additional natural ingredient, over and above my usual silk
2 - use a combination of colours that I've not used together before
3 - use a new technique

Well, that's a challenge and a half, for sure!

So I decided to:

1 - out challenge Emily and use both goatsmilk AND aloe vera juice
2 - use purple and gold together .. colours I've used seperately but not at the same time
3 - try out a hanger swirl, no idea what I was doing but hey ho, I'll always meet a challenge
4 - I fragranced the soap with my own blend of Geranium, Lavender & Patchouli and decided to call it Intrigue

Here's the soap making video:




Titch from http://www.facebook.com/takenbytitch helped me out, as you can hear!

And here's the cutting video:



And here are the final photos ... Emily, this is for you!! xx

Still Photography courtesy of Ger Holland, www.facebook.com/takenbytitch

Hope you've enjoyed the Friendship Soap Party and hope you love Intrigue.  If you would like to order, these will be available online (8 bars only) from early March.  

I am in love.... new soap moulds

I've been using some boxes I got from a high street store as my moulds for the last 2 years or so and, whilst they have been absolutely fabulous, they are showing signs of wear and tear.  Not last, when the dovetail joints almost gave way and raw soap began leaking out!!! Eeekkk!! I think I banged that mould once too often.

So I decided to take the plunge and get some moulds made for me.  I wanted the same size as I really like my soap shape and size and I wanted to be able to put them in the fridge, if I needed.

I got in touch with a really excellent carpenter, Karl Kehoe, and gave him the dimensions I wanted and he said "No problem" which was great to hear! So, just one short week later, my new moulds arrived!

They are made with mahogany and are sturdy beyond sturdy, these babies are going to last a lifetime! They have hinged sides and ends so that it'll be really easy to take the soap loaf out.  I just cannot wait to christen them!

Karl has a group page on Facebook, if you're interested in him making some for you https://www.facebook.com/groups/153803728006753/ or you can drop him an email at karlkehoe@hotmail.co.uk.

So, enough of my talking... here are my new babies:

 

Cutting Asian Pear & Lily

This is a new fragrance I bought just after Christmas, with the Spring/Summer range in mind.  When I opened the bottle, I thought "oh WOW, that's YUMMMM" and, after making it into a soap, I'm still thinking the same thought.  This is just a lovely lovely fragrance, neither too fruity nor too floral but a hugely complimentary blend of both.

The fragrance is described as a fresh, fruity floral fragrance with orange and tangerine enhanced by mouthwatering fruits including apple, pear, pineapple and peach supported by a heart of freesia, rose, jasmine, osmanthus and plum all resting on a sensual base of white musk, precious woods and dry fruits.  It is just delicious.

I worked with the faux funnel swirl again, I think I may be addicted! I wanted to get the colours of Spring/Summer in there but wanted to not use green again as I feel I've used it a lot lately.  So I chose yellow, white and pink.  The pink faded a little and turned into a peachy pink but that's ok, it's still beautiful.. actually maybe more suitable to the fragrance than a too bright pink.

I also changed up my formulation a little to include more cocoa butter (as I love it in everything) and more olive oil and take out the avocado ... I just fancied a change to be honest.  Dying to see how it works out once fully cured but the suds test I do at the end of this video shows there's no problem with the lather, that's for sure.

So here is the cutting video of Asian Pear & Lily - I really hope you enjoy it!



The soap will be fully cured by the end of February 2012 and will be available on www.iamhandmade.com.  Still photographs will be available on Facebook shortly and I'll post some here too.  Enjoy!!!

Le Mint

Another new soap! This is made with my own blend of Peppermint, May Chang and Eucalyptus essential oils and it's just beautiful - fresh and lemony and delicious.

I coloured it with two greens and white and I think it really shows off the faux funnel technique really well.  This is my own blend of soap oils including Sweet Almond, Avocado & Golden Olive with lashings of Cocoa Butter and, of course, wild silk (soap is just sooooooooooo much better with real silk in it).

I hope you like it!

This will be available online from http://www.iamhandmade.com by late February.