Amber Honey Oat

This is the final soap from my soaping marathon last week (the last week of my holidays) and is actually the one I made first. 

Amber Honey Oat uses Sweet Almond, Golden Olive, Avocado & Castor Oils alongside Palm (sustainable source), Coconut and lots of pure Virgin Cream Organic Cocoa Butter.  I blended in lots of Manuka Honey into my oils along with lots of finely ground organic Irish oats.  My lye water was actually made with milk - goatsmilk, as it is so excellent for the skin.  With all these goodies, this soap is going to be a dream on the skin!

After much debate, I decided to use a fragrance with this and chose an Amber and Vanilla blend .. I felt it would work really well with the other natural fragrances in this soap plus it's a very warm, slightly spicy and comforting fragrance.  It reminds me of my holidays in Turkey last year too as I used a lot of this fragrance there ... the smell just makes me smile and gives me a lot of good memories. 

I did get some partial gelling on some of the soaps but I don't think it really matters, it's a beauty anyway.

So, here is ... Amber Honey Oat.. hope you like her!

She will be ready in early September, if you would like to possess her!

Fig & Brown Sugar

As promised, I've managed to take photos of my four new batches... the sun hasn't been behaving itself at all lately but I think I managed to find a few minutes to go and take some photos. 

This first one is Fig & Brown Sugar and, as I described it in my last blog post, it is ...

"Sweet Almond and Golden Olive Oil with tons of Cocoa Butter, pure silk, Coconut Milk and lots of Manuka Honey are all blended to make my first seasonal soap; the soap is coloured with lots of glistening mica and, if you move it carefully in the light, you can see it shine! Fragranced with a blend of fresh ripe figs, coconut milk, vanilla orchid, jasmine, and drizzled with caramel, maple sugar & musk, it's a not too sweet, very grown up sexy fragrance and is a perfect alternative to the traditional Christmas scents (yes, I did say Christmas!)"

And here are the pictures... enjoy!!

This one will be fully cured on 16 September!

I owe you some pictures...

Yesterday was the last day of my holidays - I can't believe I had a whole month off and it's gone so fast.  In my day job, it's next to impossible to take any time off during the year but it's much quieter in Summer and so we tend to save all our leave and take it in one good. 

The good side of this is that you get a whole month off together; the down side is that you wait 11 months to take it which can be the cause of mega burn out and spending half the first week of your month off asleep.  Which is pretty much what I did.  Of course, we were in West Cork for the first two weeks and, as regular readers will know, this is my idea of the closest thing to heaven on earth. 

For the next two weeks, we were home and I soaped - a lot! Since coming home, I've made seven batches of soaps; I only make small batches at a time and, due to huge time and space limitations, I get to soap once or maybe only twice a week (if I'm lucky).  But, as other members of the house are away, I have free access to the kitchen any time of the day or night! Sadly, that'll come to an end this weekend as my Dad will re-install himself into his room aka our kitchen/diningroom.  It'll be great to see him back home but still, I'd love to more access to the kitchen more often.  Oh well, a girl can't have everything I guess. 

So, you'll have seen pictures of three of the batches ....

Wild Blueberry

Peony Sorbet

Rum Runner

But I have made four other batches that I haven't been able to photograph as yet - mostly because it's either been raining out of the heavens (hey, it is Ireland in Summer you know!) or, when the sun shone, hubs and I would out enjoying the weather. 

So I know I owe you pics of the next four batches and I know I'm really really bad for not having taken them yet... I know, I'm a disgrace.  But I'll give you a sneaky description of them if you fancy?

Amber Honey Oat - using Sweet Almond, Golden Olive and Avocado Oils, silk and pure Virgin Cream Organic Cocoa Butter blended with finely ground organic Irish oats, goatsmilk and Australian Manuka Honey, this soap is going to a be treat for the most sensitive of skins! Fragranced with a warm and spicy Amber Vanilla scent, it's an absolute delight.  I did get some partial gelling on this soap but, no matter, it's a beauty anyway.

Water Lily - this incorporates Sweet Almond and Golden Olive oils with pure silk and tons of Cocoa Butter and is fragranced with one of my current favourite fragrances .. Water Lily, a divine blend of aquatic and floral scents which is clean and fresh and lingers beautifully (and also scents the room too, bonus!) 

Fig & Brown Sugar - Sweet Almond and Golden Olive Oil with tons of Cocoa Butter, pure silk, Coconut Milk and lots of Manuka Honey are all blended to make my first seasonal soap; the soap is coloured with lots of glistening mica and, if you move it carefully in the light, you can see it shine! Fragranced with a blend of fresh ripe figs, coconut milk, vanilla orchid, jasmine, and drizzled with caramel, maple sugar & musk, it's a not too sweet, very grown up sexy fragrance and is a perfect alternative to the traditional Christmas scents (yes, I did say Christmas!)

Vintage Patchouli - I was looking at vintage styled pictures of French country houses and I loved the muted, natural tones used and it seemed to just match my visual image for this lovely fragrance which is described as a sensual blend of patchouli, bergamot & white flowers on an intense base of woody incense; it's clean yet deep and dark, perfumed and mysterious, a fragrance that makes you think of long held secrets.  Again, I used a blend of Sweet Almond, Golden Olive and Avocado Oil along with my favourite Cocoa Butter and pure wild silk. 

I hope to be able to take pictures of each of these four new soaps over the next two days and be able to show you next week.  Hubs and I will be taking Titch, The Honorary Daughter, to a fabulous garden to visit on Monday (weather dependent as always of course) and I hope to bring the soaps with us to take pictures there.

Hope you enjoyed the sneaky preview of the soaps! Pics soon, I promise!

Cream Bee - New Soap

I had a very very good friend of mine stay for the last 5 days and I'd promised for ages that we'd soap together and so we did, this Monday just gone.  She was very nervous of the lye aspect which probably means she's been listening to my warnings that you HAVE to be careful using it (good thing!) so she watched more than did but was very happy to do that. 

I had cooked and pureed some carrots earlier in the week and my hubs had kindly bought a large carton of fresh Irish dairy cream because I've really wanted to use both in a soap for ages.  I decided to make a citrus based soap and chose a new allergen free fragrance oil that I'd purchased from Fresholi earlier in the month.  This is a fragrant and zesty blend of grapefruit, lemon, orange and yuzu (an oriental citrus fruit) and is very fresh and citrusy. 

I wanted to use pure Golden Olive Oil and, as ever, had to have some tussah silk in there (love what this brings to a soap).  Hubs also picked me up a nice big jar of Manuka honey and I wanted to incorporate this too. 

I was aware of the level of sugars in the carrots and cream and how easily these can over-caramelise and burn with the addition of the lye, so, after weighing them out (and adding approximately 100g of deionised water and my silk) I very slowly added a small amount of the caustic soda to the mix and blended, added a small amount and blended again and so on til all the caustic soda was fully mixed in and the carrots and cream hadn't changed much in colour.  I was happy it would produce a really excellent orange colour. 

I allowed these to cool and, meanwhile, I weighed out my hards butters/oils and melted them as I weighed out my liquid oils.  There was no need to mix any colour as I was using the carrots to colour the soap.  I blended the melted oils/butters to the liquid ones and allowed them to cool (remembering to add in my fragrance oil at this stage also as I find it the most useful time to do this) as I went about lining my mould.

All was fine, everything was nicely cooling (approximately 90 degrees F) and I decided to blend the lye with the fats.  I stick blended as I poured the lye in but, yet again, the soap acclerated like a damn Formula One driver! GAH, seriously do I have an accleration magnet stuck to me or something? My friend, Ger, couldn't believe that the mix went from liquid to a near solid within about 10 seconds!

So, off I went and plugged in the crockpot and everything got thrown in even as it was setting in my mixing bucket! I added a little more cream to account for evaporation in hot process soaping and then decided to go hell for leather and add the Manuka honey.  Now, should I have realised that adding this would change my nicely orange soap a deep amber colour? Yes I should have but I was in what fellow blogger Cocobong recently called in her blog as the "What If" mode of thinking ... what if I add this or that? My question was.. "What if I add some Manuka honey at this stage?"  Well I did, two nice big teaspoons of it too! My mix turned a very dark brown colour and, with the lighter bits that hadn't melted yet, floating in the mix.. well, it sure looked like I'd made a mistake in choosing the honey?! Or had I?

Well, we cooked it and tested it (she wouldn't test for zap, I'd scared her about lye too much but hubs kindly helped me out - I always check it myself but like a second opinion if I can) and, once the zap disappeared, we mixed thoroughly and poured it all into the mould.  As I was still in the What If mode, I thought "What if I sprinkled with some mica now?" ... and so I did.. I am not one to miss out on a big of glitter am I? Regular readers will know that I am a magpie at heart!

The name "Cream Bee" came from some wordplay Ger, hubs and I were doing in order to try and get the right name for the soap .. it's a play on words and comes from "Queen Bee".  I kinda like it but if you have any other suggestions, go for it and comment away!

So, I present to you... Cream Bee:

Top of the soap showing the delicious glitter (fav pic!)

More glitter - I love the shine on the top of the soaps

Deep orange amber coloured soap

This picture shows the lovely textured tops

Pure and wholesome Cream Bee soap

I really love this soap and want to say a huge thanks to my lovely friend Ger Holland who was a great help and was really interested (or at least pretended to be which I love her for!) in the whole soaping process.

This soap should be ready by Friday 26 March - if you're interested in purchasing, drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com and we'll talk!