Handmade Skin Care for Gifts

As promised, here are the skin care projects made for this past Christmas:

Lots of recipes were tried, most of them made wonderful products that I could gift friends and relatives.  A few came out nice, but need to be tweaked to play nicer in our climate, others were great as they were.  Lip balms were one of my first adventure into making skin care products, along with melt and pour soaps, then there were scrubs made with sugar or salt, and then bath bombs, and then  recently I tried making the bubble bars, and finally lotions!  Most of the recipes came from the Soap Queen Blog and Bramble Berry website, but the solid bubble bath bars are from a recipe I purchased from Two Wild Hares on Etsy.

Of course I made lots of soap this past year since I tend to immerse myself in any new learning adventure, even creating a few of my own soap recipes and participating in soaping challenges.  As a fun challenge, I even tried making soap cupcakes and they were so much fun!

Along the way I ran out of space to dry and store all the soaps I was making, so bought a rack from Home Depot and added extra shelves (husband is using this shelving in our greenhouse for smaller plants, but didn't need all the shelves).  The additional shelves make it great for drying soaps, since I don't have to turn them every day, and it holds a lot!

Because I've made so many different types of soaps and skin care products, and it has gotten way past being able to remember what is in each one, I decided it was time to create labels so my recipients and myself would know what is in each one.  This was my biggest challenge, and luckily, I'd been keeping a soaping journal, and printouts of the skin care product recipes with my mark-ups, so knew what changes I'd made to each recipe!  It took a while to figure out a design that would work and look nice in In-Design software, but I finally figured it out and designed labels for almost everything before it got too late to ship boxes before Christmas!  Whew!!!!

Great Cakes Alternative Liquid Challenge

As usual, I'm trying to beat the deadline, and I'm running out of time as I'm writing!  This month it took three tries to get something worthy of the challenge.

My alternative liquid is coconut water.  I'd been wanting to try it, but hadn't gotten around to it, so now was the time!  I wasn't able to find much out other than it is hydrating and contains lots of potassium when you drink it, so I'm hoping it can do the same for our skin!

For my first soap, I decided to also try calendula petals in the lye water, as it imparts a slight fragrance and is skin loving.  The other colorings are madder powder and spirulina powder and I decided to use Bergamot Essential Oil for the fragrance.  It soaped like a dream, maybe a bit too liquid, and I tried a swirl.  Although it did come out way better than I thought it would, it didn't have the contrast and bold coloring I was looking for.

Second try:  Same oils and coconut water, but this time I decided to use Karma Essential Oil blend from Bramble Berry, even though it  discolors the finished soap to brown.  Since I knew that, I decided to color it with darker colorant, alkanet powder, in a large enough amount to hopefully be dark purple.  For a lighter contrast color, I used a combiation of Kaolin clay and annatto seed powder.  Since I wanted to use my column mold again and had seen others make a yinyang with plastic, I thought I'd try that, putting alkanet on one side and the other would be kaolin colored and annatto colored in a faux funnel pour.  With so much planned, I forgot the essential oil, so this one is unscented, but I like the design!

Third time's the charm!  I repeated the same recipe, including the Karma Essential Oil for fragrance this time, although I didn't have another cylinder mold, so used a loaf mold and did a swirl like I did the first time.  The difference was that this time the soap batter was a bit thicker from the fragrance (and a little more stick blending) and the top was sprinkled with cranberry seeds and strawberry seeds for a little additional color.  This is my favorite!  I never thought I would be able to get such a beautiful soap with all natural ingredients!

Clyde Slide Challenge

Over the last few months, I've been trying to participate in Amy Warden's Soap Challenge Club, but this is the first time I've managed to actually get the soap made in time to enter the challenge!

In order to concentrate on the technique, I started with Bramble Berry's Quick Mix Oils and chose Crisp Anjou Pear fragrance oil for the scent.  Once the oils and lye were emulsified, I split off some of the batter into four smaller containers, leaving a larger amount in my batter bowl and colored as follows:

Yellow:  Fizzy Lemonade Pigment (Bramble Berry) + Khaki Yellow Mica (Nurture Soaps)
Green:  Apple Green Mica (Nurture Soaps) + Khai Yellow (Nurture Soaps)
Pink:  Pink Vibrance Mica (Nurture Soaps) + Titanium Dioxide (Bramble Berry)
Black: Black Oxide (Bramble Berry)
Background: Titanium Dioxide + some of my pear yellow mix  (Originally I wanted a white background, but changed my mind as I was coloring the batter.)

With the colors ready, I poured the colors into the background a little at a time, between the handle and spout, repeating them until all soap was back in the bowl, and then poured it into my 5 pound soap mold.  Pouring was done from end to end with spout parallel to the ends of the mold.  Since the batter was still quite thin, it created a fine feathered edge.  (I'll have to try this again sometime with a thicker batter!)

The feathered edge can be quite different, depending where you pour the colors into the base color and how thick the soap is when poured in the mold.  Since we can only enter the picture of one soap, I narrowed it down to the four at the top of the post, and finally made my choice based on the one I think fit the challenge the best.  This is the one I"m entering:

12 Color Swirl

I'm really happy with the way this soap turned out!!!!! I love the way the swirls worked and the Yuzu fragrance is one I'll definitely use again, because I love it!  The leftover soap also came out nice:

On another note, my shawl is finished, but needs to be blocked and photographed, but I'm really happy with it as well.

Challenging soap day!

Finally got up my courage and a large enough time block to try the 12 Color Linear Swirl from the Soap Crafting book.   Instead of measuring the oils separately, I was working with already mixed and measured oils from a Soap Crafting class at Bramble Berry, which was greatly appreciated because the time I would have spent measuring oils was spent preparing 12 colors!  There is so much to do when making this soap that the fragrance oil is added to the oils before adding the lye. Once the oils and lye were mixed it was divided into 12 containers and colors were added, then the fun began of pouring stripes into the mold until it was as full as I wanted it.  A skewer was used to swirl the colors all the way to the bottom of the mold and create the pretty endpaper design.  It's resting now and in a few days I'll be able to take it out and get a better look.

Here's a close-up:

The leftover soap went into this 4" mold with all the colors just scraped from the individual containers, ending with pink on the top and then it was swirled just like in the large soap mold. The difference here is that I have no idea how this one will look when it is cut, because the soap was thickening and was just blobbed into the mold.  Can't wait to cut this one!

I decided to count my soap batches and this one is soap 32!

Since my last post

a lot has been going on around here.  There have been house guests, soaping, canning, knitting and a little sewing and basket weaving!

This is the first try with my very own soap recipe.  I wanted to try using all tropical oils, and should have used a fragrance that I'd used before, but I couldn't resist trying out Baby Rose fragrance oil from Bramble Berry.  My friend Cathy helped, and even though it thickened much quicker than any of my previous soaps, we were still able to do a simple swirl and get it into my new cylinder mold.  It smells great and I can't wait to use it!

Cathy and I also made Linear Swirl with Oxides together.  I'm so glad she was there to help, because there were so many colors to pour into the mold!  We chose White Tea and Ginger Fragrance Oil and it smells so good!

We have a really large garden harvest in progress and in wanting to save some pears for the future, I had my first adventure making a fruit butter. Although it too way longer than the recipe said, and wasn't finished until after midnight, it smells and tastes great!

Another canning project was pickles, which are resting and soaking up the vinegar to be ready for eating soon.

Finished up the Jeremiah Basket, which was a kit I purchased a while ago.  I did swap out some of the reed, because some of it was scruffier that I like to work with.

 On the knitting front, I usually have many things on the needles, but am currently working on Summer Moon.

Trying to Blog Again

Sorry I've been away so long!  Our life has been kind of crazy and it got turned upside down when we got a couple puppies and less than a year later one of our sons got one, and I became it's sitter during the week.  When all three were together, felt like I was running a puppy daycare.  Things have settled down quite a bit since then, but have had to change up some of my hobbies, setting some on the back burner for a while, and of course, I picked up a new one this spring.

The newest hobby is soap making.  Ages ago I bought a book and chickened out when it came to making the lye solution that is needed to mix with oils to make soap.  The book was filed away, and probably donated, because I haven't found it yet.   I made some melt and pour soap, but melting, adding some color and scent and then pouring in a plain mold didn't wow me, so I never kept it up.  Stick blenders were invented and soap making became a much faster way to make soap and now we have blogs and videos that promote handmade soaps and help others learn.  I was oblivious to this new way of soap making until one day when I was reading a blog I followed,called Delighted Hands, and she started making soap along with her other hobbies, such as quilting,  knitting and spinning.  Over time, I began to think about it again and finally looked into one of the suppliers she had mentioned and I was on my way to becoming a soap maker too.

Back in March, I started out by making some hand lotion bars, then lip balm, melt & pour soap, and finally cold process soap - the traditional oil and lye variety that is mixed with the stick blender instead of stirring for hours.  Many of my projects have been recipes from the Soap Queen Blog and Soap Crafting book, using Bramble Berry supplies, although I've tried a few from other websites and online videos as well.

My first cold process soap was made from a beginner kit and it used the box as a mold. It was a basic soap, scented with Cranberry Fig fragrance, which is still my favorite scent so far!

As soon as it was poured in the box mold I wanted  to make another, so made the Calendula Cleansing Bar with Calendula petals in it from the Soap Crafting book. Since I didn't have the fragrance it called for, I used the closest I had - Coconut Lemongrass fragrance oil!

After a few days,  the soap was removed from the molds and sliced into bars.  It takes several weeks to cure and dry before it's ready to use, and I have to say it was well worth the wait.  Making soap is fun and so far, the ones I've made have been so much better for my skin!


My first soaps: