Got your sunglasses on?!

I honestly don’t know what to think of this soap! Everything went nice and smooth, did some swirls...

Close up before I sprinkled it with glitter…

In the morning, this is what a found! NEON soap! Ack!

 

It must be from the fragrance oil (Black Raspberry Vanilla), but there is no milk or any weird ingredients that would react to cause the discoloration. 

Two days later, and it still seems just as bright:

I bet I couldn't replicate these colors again if I tried!
 

Yuzu Soap with Grapefruit Embeds

Sometimes when I am make soap, I get a nagging feeling it’s not quite done yet….and I have to leave it and think on it for a few days, and walk past it a few times before it finally hits me what is missing. Case in point, these grapefruit embeds:

There is nothing wrong with them as they are, but by now you have probably figured out that I am a very detail-oriented person, and these just weren’t realistic enough (why yes, I do drive myself crazy sometimes!) Also, I was concerned that they would get lost in the detailed swirl I was planning on embedding them into. I wasn’t sure how to fix them, so I left them for a few days until it dawned on me that I might be able to fill in the little wedges with grapefruit-colored soap to make them more realistic. You can see there is a little edge that runs all around the outside of the wedges, so I was hoping it would hold the soap in. I used my Brambleberry pipette for this detail job, and it was super quick and easy to fill in the wedges, but I think it makes a big difference:

 Much better!

Now the pieces were ready to embed into some swirled Yuzu soap:

They stand out much better with the detail now, don’t you think?

 

What I've been up to this week...

Swirls:

 

Roses:

Restocking Beach Bar:

 Restocking Goat Milk with Rice Bran Oil:

Thanks for reading, hope you all have a great week!
 

Honey Carrot Buttermilk Soap II

This soap is a revised version of the Honey Carrot Butter soap I made in October, the original blog post is here: http://oilandbutter.blogspot.ca/2012/10/annatto-seed-infusion-honey-carrot.html

I recently found a little carrot mold, and thought these would be the perfect embellishment for a carrot soap:

In the mold:

And cut:

 Thanks for reading!
 

Trying a new recipe - Shampoo Bar

I have a stack of soap recipes I’ve collected, and I want to try every single one at some point. However, the stack is growing faster then I can experiment.

This weekend, however, I decided to try one that I found recently. It is a shampoo bar recipe that Genny from The Naughter Soaper posted. It intrigued me because it doesn't contain any coconut oil or palm oil, and contains a good amount of conditioning oils including avocado oil and shea butter….it looks like a really nice recipe, and not just for shampoo! Genny posted that while other shampoo bars left her hair feeling dried out and straw-like, this bar felt quite conditioning and left her hair feeling silky and smooth.  I'm really looking forward to trying this shampoo bar once it cures:

 

Thank you so much to Genny for generously allowing me to share the recipe here:

 

Avocado Oil 30%

Castor Oil 10%

Olive Oil 40%

Shea Butter 10%

Soybean Oil 10%

Notes: I had all the oils except for the soybean oil, so I used sunflower oil instead. She infused her oils with chamomile, which would be lovely. I did add 1 tbsp ppo of sugar to the lye water for increased bubbles, as she suggested. I also added some sodium lactate to make unmolding and cutting easier.

Update May 2013: For a fun twist on this Shampoo Soap Recipe, see this post: http://oilandbutter.blogspot.ca/2013/05/2-in-1-shampoo-soap-and-body-bar.html

Oh, and just for fun…I got this adorable little mold the other day - how cute it it?!

I had a hard time deciding whether to use it for chocolate or soap....but as you can see, the soap won. Hello cute little 1-pound loaf of soap with a pan of mini cupcakes on top!