Japanese Plum - Limited Edition

I bought my Japanese Plum fragrance oil about two months ago and used it in a body butter that I took on holidays with me.  It was one of those fragrances that I wasn't so sure of when sniffed directly out of the bottle but, as any soapers who read this will know, smelling a fragrance directly out of the bottle (or OOB in soaper talk) really doesn't give it a chance to bloom sufficiently well and it's often a case that you need to try it in a product to really know how it smells. 

When I made the body butter, I found out what a beautiful fragrance it was - it's described as a warm spicy Oriental scent with top notes of fresh lemon and tangerine, a spiced heart of clove, cinnamon, ripe plum and tuberose resting on a base of rich incense, patchouli, soft moss, amber, caramelised sugar and vanilla - it is an utter delight, deep warm and totally sexy! 

When I soaped it on Saturday, using my usual recipe of Sweet Almond, Golden Olive, Avocado, Coconut, Palm and Castor oils along with some beautiful creamy Cocoa Butter, the fragrance oil made my soap batter turn a bright yellow (instead of it's usual pale cream), turning my prepared colours of plum and violet into a very dark plum and a khaki green. The white was yellower yesterday but seems to be recovering somewhat. Also it gelled even in the fridge plus it seems to overheat and the tops turned a browny colour.  This fragrance was a heater for sure!

I showed some just cut pictures to some soapy friends who loved it and gave me the thumbs up on it so I've decided to issue it as a Limited Edition.  I'll reserve it for other products as it is really fabulous.

We went out to a lovely place today, Mount Usher Gardens - it's a courtyard with fantastic gardens, a coffee shop and some other stores including a stunning furniture store, Strawbridge Country Furnishings .. David, the owner, kindly allowed me to take images in his store as I felt it would give a lovely background to the soaps.  The furniture there is so fantastic, I would happily buy up the whole place! And, even better, it's all handmade and Irish too!

So, here are the images, I hope you like them - the soap will be available online from 21 September; remember it's a Limited Edition soap and there are on 10 bars available so if you'd like to pre-order one, please do make sure to drop me a line at info@soaperstar.com or write me a note on our Facebook page. 

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!

Wild Blueberry

When I came back from holidays, I was lucky enough to still be able to have another two weeks off - I also haven't soaped for at least 6 weeks so the soaping urge was beginning to shout at me!

Just before I went on holidays, I ordered some new fragrance oils that I just wanted to try out.  One of these was Blueberry - I had tried this in a sample previously and used it in a sugar scrub and just loved it, it smells just like the best blueberry muffin ever.  So I had to use this first, I was just dying to ... my mouth watered just smelling it. 

So I lined up all my ingredients, all perfectly weighed out and mixed carefully.  Then prepped my colours - I used Blueberry POP mica (yeah, blueberry, what else could I have used really?! It was just asking for it!).  I mixed some with oil in one jug, a little less in another with a tinch of TD to give a paler blue, in a third jug I mixed more of the Blueberry and then added some Grape POP mica to make a really deep bluey/purpley sort of colour.  In my final jug, I mixed TD to give a really white soap.  So all was good.. the oils were ready, the lye with dissolved silk was ready, the colours were ready, the mould was lined and all my worktops cleared to give me space for my favourite spoon swirl. 

I mixed my fragrance oil into the oils before adding the lye water, as always and gave it a little stick blend to make sure it was fully mixed.  Then I added my lye and mixed everything together - I wanted to make a spoon swirl which is my favourite technique and you have to have the soap at a very light trace so I needed to make sure I didn't stick blend too much.  Then it happened .. the FO turned my soap batter into a VERY yellow colour; like neon yellow, I kid you not!!! Ok, not good when I'm using blues as my colours!

So what to do but to go ahead and make my soap... so I mixed the now amazingly yellow coloured batter into my blues and everything went a pretty green! Yep, my green blueberry soap! The colours were fab though so I just went for it ... I did my spoon swirl and it took about 30 minutes.  Fortunately I got the soap at the right trace level so I had the time to work with it.  Everything was in the mould and I decided to swirl not just the top of the soap, as I normally do, but the body too.  I put my wooden chopstick into the soap and swirled the whole depth of the soap, banged the mould on the worktop a few times to release any bubbles and then sprinkled the glitter on top and popped everything into the fridge. 

I made this on Monday and it stayed in the fridge til Tuesday morning, then I took it out of the fridge, brought it to room temperature and then took it out of the mould and allowed it to sit, uncut, til this afternoon.  And so, here you go, pictures of my Wild Blueberry soap ... it certainly was a wild ride!

I really like it and, actually, it has stayed pretty blue for me which I'm happy about.  Not sure the swirl on the body of the soap has worked that well though - what do you think? Also I've decided not to use glitter for a while... I've noticed that the tops of the soaps become a different colour from the body and I'm convinced that it's glitter related.  It's a pity but I think I'll lay off it for a while and see if it's makes a difference. 

Hope you like this - if you're interested in having one in your own bathroom, it'll be cured by the end of August.