Lemon Provence - Pure Essential Soap

Here is the second of the new Pure Essential Soap collection - Lemon Provence.  This soap is made with Sweet Almond & Golden Olive Oils, Oat Milk, Manuka Honey, Kaolin Clay, Colloidal Oatmeal, Cocoa Butter & Pure Silk.  The colour comes from a little Tumeric which makes a lovely buttery yellow. 

I made my own Oatmilk for this ... I took 4 cups of distilled water and 1 cup of organic Irish oatflakes and they sat, soaking, all night.  The next day, I liquidised them together until they made a milk.  I was going to sieve the milk to remove the oats but they were so finely mixed in that I decided to use them in the soap.  It makes the soap very slightly exfoliating.  I also love the little flecks the oats leave in the soap.  The only thing I'd say about using full oatmilk for your soaps is that the lye doesn't mix in well with it - at my first mix, the lye clumped into very hard lumps so that had be carefully disposed of.  For this soap, I made a 50/50 lye solution with distilled water and then used the oatmilk for the additional liquid values.. that worked perfectly.

Manuka Honey is a well known skin loving ingredient with anti-bacterial properties, Kaolin Clay is perfect for all types of skin especially sensitive and dry skin types and colloidal oatmeal just adds to the goodness the organic oats brings to the party.

The soap is fragranced with our own essential oil blend of lemony May Chang & soothing French
Lavender with a drop of deep Cedarwood to create a citrusy, relaxing divine scent.

 It will be available for Pre-Order on http://www.iamhandmade.com/ourshop/prod_2027231-Lemon-Provence-PreOrder-Cure-Date-18-June.html. Many thanks to Titch Holland from www.facebook.com/takenbytitch for her video work.

Enough talk ... here are the photos! Hope you enjoy them!

 

 

Lavender Song

Purple has always, always, always been my favourite colour - it's so rich and expressive somehow, and I've always had a love affair with it.  However, lavender, as a fragrance, hasn't been top of my list ... for some reason, I've always associated it with old lady Yardley soaps my Great Aunt used to get for Christmas.  But, since I've started soaping, I've ventured into the world of essential oils and lavender, being one of the most popular, was one of my first purchases.  To this day, I'm not a huge fan of it on it's own but I do like what it can bring to a blend.  I'm also a fan of blending fragrance oils with essential oils... somehow, it can bring the best to the blend and breathe a new dimension into the fragrance.  So, for this soap, I've used a fragrance oil blend of White Lavender, Sicilian Lemon, Basil, Neroli, Vanilla & Amber along with lots of French Lavender Essential Oil.  

I had recently bought some new soap colours from Gracefruit - liquid cold process ones ... as anyone who reads this regularly will know, I'm a huge fan of micas in general and usually use them.  I've not really worked with a lot of liquid colours and wasn't 100% how well they'd colour, how much to use etc.  I mixed up my oils and lye (with silk in, of course!) and wanted a base colour which was to be darker than the rest.  I put in some violet and a little of the plum colour and it was a sort of grey.  Hmmmm... not what I wanted.  I decided the colour wasn't what I wanted, so added a little more.  Then I stick blended it all because I wanted to be the base layer that could hold the swirl on top.  Well I had a grey soap when I started blending, but oh my... the soap went BRIGHT purple on me when I stick blended it.  So, in future, I think I have to stick blend these colours into the soap to make sure I have the right colour depth.  I was afraid the purple would be too bright but I actually think it really matches the rest of the soap. 

I am loving the purple with the pale lavendery/lilac and white on top.. this is exactly the soap I wanted and, oh my Lord, does it smell sooooo good!!! The fragrance oil takes away the "old lady" element that I still associate with lavender but the lavender essential oil adds a floral/herbal scent to the fragrance oil blend... a perfect match. 

So, here is Lavender Song...

If you like Lavender Song, she'll be available from 26 September - if you'd like me to put one on pre-order, just drop me an email to info@soaperstar.com with your name and your PayPal email address.