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.

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!

New cold process soap experiment

So, I had a day off and decided that I'd make a new cold process soap - I'm still experimenting to get a perfect recipe but used one I'd already tried out because I wanted to practise with some additions too.

I was sent some tussah silk and some titanium dioxide along with a gold mica, by a fabulous soaper friend of mine.  Silk adds a huge luxury factor and makes the soap feels so smooth and luxurious (check out some of the really high level brands of cosmetics, they often have some form of silk in them).  Titanium dioxide is a natural white powdered pigment that helps you achieve a white white white soap - it can create more heat though so it can be tricky to work with.  Finally the gold mica ... ahhhh, what can I say? I must have been a magpie in an earlier life because I do love the glistening shiny things!

I choose a recipe with Cocoa Butter and Apricot Kernel Oil - both fabulous for your skin and both light coloured oils to help keep the colour of the final base oil whiter too. 

I decided to use a Vanilla fragrance oil - vanilla based oils can be problematic as they often make the soap turn brown but I used a specifically designed non-discolouring version so my soap will stay as white as it is supposed to be.

Not the best picture in the world, I will admit that but you can see how creamy the colour on top is... why is this, I hear you say, when you wanted white soap? Well, here's the thing.... the gold mica was calling me and I thought why not do a lovely sprinkle on top of the final soap.  Great idea! Yes, good idea when it sprinkles but not when it clumps! So I decided to swirl it and colour the very very top layer of the soap - it created this delicious creamy looking top, I love it.  I'm hoping some of the glisten may show but I'm doubting it.  You can see from the blob on the bottom edge of the mould how white that base soap is.  Now, one of the problems with using Titanium Dioxide (or TD) is that it can produce a crackle effect - this can be due to overheating issues and TD can be the cause of that at times.  We'll see when it's cut!

Now, here's a problem ... a tiny crack.  I am showing a close up on this but it's not huge, if you were to cut the soap, it'd be the width of one bar.  The crack can be possibly caused by a little bit of overheating - the soap was kept in the fridge for a few hours to help keep the temperature down.  As I said, the TD may produce a crackle effect and the heat produced could mean that I won't have the perfect white soap either. 

Tune in for cut pics in the next few days.  I will say, it smells damn fine!!!