More Inventory for Christmas

I still feel like I am so far behind, but we were able to get a couple of batches of soap made yesterday afternoon. I was really trying to make sure we used scents that would have a broad appeal, and I think we managed to do just that!

Our first batch was a guava scented bar. Guava is my all time favourite fruit and I was very excited to use this scent. It smells very tropical and bright. I think a lot of people will enjoy this fragrance. The other neat thing with this bar was that we tried a new technique (and I am happy to report... it worked! At least I think it worked.... thoughts?) This time around we were able to use up some of our scraps from previous batches. I cut them up into very small cubes so that we could imbed them in our fresh batter. We separated out roughly half the batter and colored it a really pretty cantaloupe orange color. The remaining half of the batter we left white. This was the resulting bar:

Our next batch used a Butter Brickle fragrance. We added some extra honey, hoping to get a nice caramel color, and then added raw sugar and sea salt to the top of the bar. This has now become our Salted Caramel Bar. It smells like heaven and I can hardly wait until it has cured so I can snitch a bar and hit the bath!

Slacking Off!

Wow, it has been quite awhile since I last found myself in the kitchen whipping up soap. In fact, looking back, the last batch was made May long weekend. Yikes! It suddenly dawned on me that Christmas is coming soon! Now before you boo me.... understand that Christmas means craft shows for me. My first one is actually at the beginning of November, and since it takes about 6 weeks for soap to cure.... I better get crack a lackin'.

Meghan came over last Wednesday and we were able to knock off a couple of batches. I tried to think of scents that would be a sure hit so we came up with a Peppermint Pumice Pedicure soap and an Exfoliating Oatmeal Milk and Honey soap.

Both of these smell amazing! I love that both of them will be nice and exfoliating, and I think the oatmeal soap will make a perfect facial bar. The peppermint soap is very cooling, so I can see it being a favourite for people who are on their feet a lot.

Here's the lot of them. I was able to get 10 bars of Oatmeal and 11 bars of Peppermint when I cut them. There was also some extra Oatmeal batter left over, so it was poured into some silicone muffin cups I had around. 

Oatmeal Milk and Honey (with real honey)

Peppermint with Pumice

Meghan and I are hoping to get back into the kitchen sometime this week to whip up a couple more batches. I'll keep you posted on what we decide to brew!

Soapy Long Weekend

I had the pleasure, this long weekend, to teach my lovely husband how to make cold process soap.

We chose to scent this batch with a Poison Pie fragrance oil I had on hand. The plan was to go for nice blue swirls throughout- intermingled with some kaolin clay swirls.

None of this turned out as planned, but the finished product still looks pretty nice (and smells divine!)

It was really fun to share this process with Dan, he said he had a good time and would like to make more. Being the little photo bug he is, he also took a ton of photos of the process, which is pretty neat.

The finished soap has more of a purple color than blue. My fragrance oil must have reacted with the blue colorant that we used. You are also hard pressed to see the kaolin clay that was mixed with a portion of the soap. Either way, i think the purple and cream color represents this scent well. It smells like blueberry, saskatoon berry pie. We glittered the top with some dark blue and some fuschia.

I also had the opportunity to try out all kinds of new toys with this batch of soap. I had ordered a couple custom made soap stamps. I am really pleased with how this one turned out. The other one i'm not as happy with. The stamps are easy to use, and i think they work well to finish off the bar of soap.

The other new toy we played with was my new mold! This mold comes apart, and in theory, that makes it easy for you to get your soap out. We struggled to get the loaf out of the mold, so next time I think I will have to line the mold. It was kind of funny too, the mold says it holds 3 lbs of soap. Our typical recipes are 2.5 lbs. I looked at the mold and thought there is no way that will hold 3 pounds, I think we will be lucky if it holds 2.5. Boy was I right. We were left with so much extra soap. Dan was able to make a couple of small bars and I stacked the top of this one really high. Next time we will be cutting back to 2 lbs. I am really happy with how straight the edges of the soap are. Weigh in here, do you like the fluted shape of the previous bars? Or do you prefer the straight edges of this bar?

Ideas in the Making

I haven't had a chance to get in the kitchen and make any soap this week. It's been busy!

I was lucky enough to be invited to have a table at a "Ladies Night Out" last night. What a great time! A room full of women shopping, wine and cheese. There was a constant crowd at my table, and there is now a serious dent in my jewellery. I will have to get busy between now and Christmas. Unfortunately i wasn't able to have any of my Bath and Body products for sale. I hadn't left enough time for my soaps to cure. Next time, for sure!

I did get a box of goodies in the mail this week. I had ordered a bunch of stuff online. The creative juices are flowing and i am coming up with some tasty concoctions that will incorporate some lovely new clays and some special salts. I am very excited to experiment a bit with some pink kaolin clay that was in the package. Think i might try and make a nice facial soap. I'm also looking forward to playing around with some Dead Sea salts. I think those will help make some pretty special products.

There is also some lip balm in the works (I'm just waiting on some peppermint essential oil to arrive). So, in the mean time, i'm on the hunt for the perfect, moisturizing, lip balm recipe. A few months back i ordered a lip balm on Etsy that i am in love with! I would very much like to be able to come up with something nearly as creamy as this. It's the most perfect balm i think i have ever used.

Bubblegum!

I finally got the bubblegum soap cut. This is my first experience with not gelling a batch. It sure took a lot longer to firm up so that i could cut it. I was really happy with how the coloring turned out, but i thought the colors would have sunk a little deeper in the loaf. Still have some practicing to do when it comes to swirling.

I still really love this scent. It reminds me of Double Bubble gum. The bars look like they are creamier. It will be hard to wait for this one to cure!

New Scents have Arrived!

I went a little crazy online a couple of weeks ago. I found a great source for fragrance oils, and never dreams of so many options! In total, i ordered 34 new scents and i am so excited to try them all out.

After a sniff session yesterday afternoon, Meghan choose bubblegum to be our first fragrance of the day. I have been learning more about the gel phase of soap and we decided not to gel this batch. This is the first time we have made a batch like this so i am looking forward to using the final product. We thought pink and blue swirls in a white base would be perfect for bubblegum, so we mixed it up, got it in the mold, swirled it, and put it in the freezer to discourage the gel phase. I went to take it out a few hours later and my whole freezer smells like bubblegum! It was enough to make my mouth water! This soap wasn't ready to cut this morning (it's still a bit soft) so you will have to wait a day or two for some photos.

For our second batch i thought strawberry rhubarb sounded delicious! Another first for us- we decided to try a layered batch with green and pink. This batch was gelled, but this time we gelled it in an oven at low temperature. It was hard to insulate this batch because i made the top of the loaf taller and fancier, that's why we used the oven. I took it out and cooled the soap down. I jumped the gun on this one a little (i was just too excited to see how our layering turned out!) and cut it a little too soon. It was still gooey in the middle, so one of the slices has a blemish in the centre. I reluctantly left the loaf to cool down completely before cutting the rest of it. I am so happy with how this turned out! When we poured it the colors were quite muted, but they certainly sprung to life after being gelled.

This is the perfect scent for spring and summer! I am so thrilled with how this soap turned out. Looking forward to trying some more layering.

I think the next order of business to tackle is to get or make a mitre box. It's harder than it looks to cut straight!

First Milk Soap

It wasn't long after i whipped up the watermelon/anise soap, that Meghan and i were back in the kitchen! This time around we decided to try our hands at making a milk soap (well actually a heavy cream soap).

We had some time to kill while we waited for our cream to turn to slush, so we thought what better time to try another batch!? Meghan LOVES the scent of lemongrass and i just so happened to have some lemongrass essential oil. We also found some poppy-seeds in my bag of tricks and thought the two were an obvious combination.

By now we were becoming seasoned pros at getting our ingredients together and to the proper temperatures. It wasn't long before our lemony delight was poured into the mold.

This is what it looked like when i cut the loaf the next day.

I love how creamy this soap looks! And it smells amazing! The essential oils certainly have a lot more punch than the fragrance oils do. I am very excited to hop in the shower with this one.

Once we finished up this batch we realized we were running low on supplies so we piled into the car to go grab some fresh ingredients. I had been reading online that it was relatively easy to buy lye in the hardware store... apparently only in the US. We were not able to find any pure lye drain crystals, so for now it looks like the soap store is our only source. We picked up what we needed and then headed for home.

By now our cream was nice and slushy and ready to go. Chocolate seemed like a natural fit for this soap. It's a very light scent with just cocoa powder and little bit of white cake fragrance oil. We thought the cocoa powder would double as a chocolatey smell as well as color. Once it was poured it smelled like chocolate cake batter! Mmmm! Over all i was really impressed with how well we did with our first milk soap. I think, in time, our skills in dealing with this ingredient will only improve, and i am looking forward to creating new combinations and trying out coconut milk, as well. The milk in this batch almost looked like it curdled a little bit once it mixed with the lye. You can see tiny little white specs. I tried to look up why that happened, it doesn't look like it's lye spots, just little bits of milk solids. I think it happened from the lye solution getting too hot, so next time we will work on keeping it a bit cooler.

I could not wait to use this chocolatey soap so i hopped into the shower with a bar, the other day. Smells great, has a nice lather.... but i think we made a bit of a whoops! Too much cocoa powder! On the upside, using this bar of soap makes you look like you've got an awesome tan! We will have to cut back on cocoa next time.

New Batches

I will try to get some photos up of our first few batches. I must say, even in a few weeks, we have come a long way! A bit disappointed with the CP soap class that i took (with my lovely best friend Meghan!). It seems like we glazed over a few things and didn't learn about other things involved in the process at all. I have been doing a lot of reading over the last few weeks( soap making supplies are expensive! I didn't want to go into it making costly mistakes and having nice ingredients go to waste) and have learned all kinds of new techniques.

The first few batches we made were pretty horrendous! Looking back at them now they just look awful! I don't think we had been making large enough batches (our first few were only 1 pound batches) and we had been measuring our ingredients rather than weighing them. That was the method we had learned in our class. I later learned that measuring is not a good idea because there is too much room for error. The last thing you want is to end up with a lye heavy soap that is going to burn you! Measuring makes it too easy to wind up with more or less of an ingredient.

Once we got ourselves a kitchen scale and started tinkering with our own recipes, our batches turned out exponentially better!

This was the first batch i made after figuring out we should be weighing our ingredients. I made this one on my own because i wanted to try out the process. It was poured into a loaf pan that i had, it's slightly larger than the bars we make now. I scented this soap with watermelon and anise. I was surprised with this combination, it's very refreshing! This recipe uses coconut, olive, grapeseed and avocado oils, it also has shortening and lard in it (with a few lavender buds on top to spruce things up!). 

I would make this scent again, however i would make it stronger. This soap should be ready to go in a couple of weeks. I will admit i have been using a small piece by the bathroom sink and i really love it!

Been Awhile!

It really has been awhile! But, i am so happy to announce that Anemone Designs is still going strong and i am expanding my product line!

When i started AD the plan was to focus on jewellery as well as bath and body products. I had gotten my feet wet making melt and pour soaps, bath bombs, and bath salts. While i still like these products (really love the bath salts and bombs!) the MP soaps just never got me very excited. They were too easy to make and i didn't get any creative thrill from them. Nice to use, in the end, but a chore to make.

Like a bath bomb, my interest fizzled out. But, it has been renewed by attending a workshop on making cold process soap. Making soap from scratch! This is the creative process i have been searching for and craving! Soap is about the only thing i am able to think about now. New recipes, new scents, how to make it better, which colors to use, best places to buy supplies... it goes on and on. I have several batches whipped up and on the curing rack, and i can hardly wait to package them up and start getting those bars out there!

One thing about it... my friends and family are going to be the cleanest bunch around town.