already and I’m back at the Vancouver Farmers Market selling my handmade soap along with some natural bath and body care products. It is heartwarming to me that I have customers that continue to buy handmade soap from me year after year. I really appreciate the continued support I receive from everyone and I love visiting. That just makes my week end! This year I decided to change the booth display around. It is a bit different but I think it offers more room. I make quite a variety of handmade bar soap and need all the room I can get!
Popularity: 58% [?]
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Everything on the internet says that making bath bombs or fizzies is easy and fun. Fun yes, when they turn out. Easy, no. Nothing is easy about these suckers. I am however, determined that I will figure out how to have constant success with these things. There must be a way to make them even when it is pouring outside. It doesn’t sit well with me that I’d have manage my bath bomb making days according to when the sun is out. Today, I tried something a bit different and added some sugar to the dry mix. Sounds silly, but last night I was thinking of what happens when sugar gets kinda dry and damp. It sticks together and gets really hard. I’ve got a hunch that sugar fits in the mix somewhere. My bath bombs molded together really well and they felt good and not crumbly. I was so happy with my accomplishment. Then disaster hits. I go to move all of them to the drying room and 1/3 end up falling off the pan and onto the floor! I can’t seem to win with these things. Tomorrow is another day….
Popularity: 36% [?]
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About a year and a half ago Patchouli essential oil went sky high and I had to discontinue the handmade soap I make with it. The oil is still on the high side but I was lucky enough to get into a coop with other handmade soapmakers and get the oil at $44.00 a pound. This is still higher than what you used to be able to buy the oil for but so much better than it’s high of $189.00 a pound. Yikes! That was unbelievable! I am pleased to announce that our popular Patchouli handmade soap will be ready around 4/17/09. While I’m thinking of it Patchouli & Orange, Patchouli & Spearmint, and Patchouli & Lavender sound pretty good too!
Popularity: 69% [?]
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When I make handmade goat milk soap the first thing I do is measure out my goat milk and freeze it. Adding sodium hydroxide (lye) to frozen goat helps to avoid the nasty stinky burning of the milk. It is important to keep the milk as cold as possible so that it doesn’t burn and you get a nice creamy color to the soap once it sets up. Stirring the lye into the milk while the pot is sitting in a cold water bath helps keep the milk from heating up too much. As the milk heats up it changes from cream to yellow to orange. You want to avoid the deep yellow to orange color. Last week I made some Raspberry Mint goat milk soap and took some photos of the process.
Frozen Goat Milk and Solidified Fats and Oils
Melted Fats and Oils
Stirring lye into the Frozen Goat Milk
Blending Goat Milk Lye Solution into the Melted Oils
Finished and poured in the mold! This is a batch of Raspberry Mint goat milk soap. I don’t like my milk soaps to gel so they just sit in the mold with no insulation until ready to cut into bars.
Popularity: 100% [?]
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Sometimes we have handmade soap bars that cure out to be a tad underweight. And when I say a tad underweight that is exactly what I mean. Like 3.98 ounces in lieu of 4 ounces. We may even have handmade soap on hand that we are testing new fragrances in or color combinations. I’ve decided to offer these handmade soaps at a discount. For those that like to take advantage of bargains this is the perfect opportunity! These soaps are naked bars with no individual wrapping and will be shipped to you wrapped in brown paper and tied with raffia. We just make sure you get an assortment of our usual great soap. So take a look at our Handmade Soap/Grab Bags. Enjoy the soap and the value!
Popularity: 66% [?]
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I had a customer stop and ask me if I had heard about Soap Nuts? I really didn’t know what she was talking about and had never heard of the term. She kindly explained that there is a nut that can be used as a natural alternative to laundry detergent. There are indeed Soap Nuts but it is the shell that actually works. The shell of the soap nut contains and releases saponins (soap) when it comes in contact with warm or hot water. I am interested in testing these out in my own washer machine. Apparently, you use them by putting 3 to 5 of the soap nuts into a muslin bag and tossing the bag into the washer machine before adding your clothes. After about 3 or 4 washes the soap nuts need to be replaced with fresh ones. The used soap nuts can be composted. How neat is that! I am really intrigued by these things and can’t wait to try them out. Think I’ll test them out on my big man’s and little man’s white dingy, dirty underlings….
Popularity: 45% [?]
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I use shea butter in almost every product I make from natural bath and body care products to handmade soap. It has excellent skin care properties and I would not know what to do with myself if I couldn’t use it. When I first started making natural skin care products I did not know that there were different grades of butter. From unrefined, refined to ultra refined. Of course the more refining you do the less of the “goodies” are left in the butter. I, in my newbie ignorance and enthusiasm just bought “shea butter”. I didn’t realize I was buying an ultra refined product. This butter was pure white and I had to cut it with a knife. On accident I ended up ordering some shea butter from another supplier and this butter came to me creamy beige and soft enough that you could scoop it with a spoon. It also had a slight nutty odor. Thinking there was something “wrong” with this shea butter I started asking questions. It was from this experience that I learned that there were actually different grades and quality of shea butter out there. A couple of my favorite shea butter suppliers are Oils by Nature and Agbanga Karite. I must say too that if shipping wouldn’t kill me I’d love to get my hands on some of the shea butter sold by Shea Radiance.
Popularity: 66% [?]
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When making handmade soap one of the first things we learn as soapmakers is how to combine the properties of different oils we use in the soap making process to give a particular recipe it’s unique quality in the finished soap. It’s like participating in a chemistry experiment on finding the perfect bar of soap. Here is a list of soap characteristics contributed by the more common fatty acids.
Lauric Acid - Hard Bar, Cleansing, Fluffy Lather
Lenoleic Acid – Conditioning
Myristic Acid – Hard Bar, Cleansing, Fluffy Lather
Oleic Acid – Conditioning
Palmitic Acid – Hard Bar, Stable Lather
Ricinoleic Acid – Fluffy Lather, Conditioning, Stable Lather
Each oil we use has it’s own particular fatty acid profile and no one fat or oil has all the characteristics we soapmakers find advantageous. One of the tools I use when designing a recipe can be found here.
Popularity: 63% [?]
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Every time I make a new handmade soap batch I never really know how it is going toturn out until the soap is released from the mold. Having never used pink kaolin clay in handmade soap before I had no clue how the color was going to come out. I am pleasantly pleased. It is a pretty pink salmon color and is a perfect color for the Lavender & Geranium soap. The Citrus Spice soap smells pretty yummy. I can’t stop sniffing it. All I can say about the Black Lavender soap is that if you like Lavender and you like Anise then this should be a favorite.
Popularity: 62% [?]
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Yes, I know, you missed me. I took off from attending the Vancouver Farmers Market today to stay home with my husband and son. It’s been a grand day. I made three different batches of handmade soap today and I am so excited about them. I can’t wait to take all three of these batches of soap out of the mold tomorrow. The fragrances are all essential oil blends. I was a little apprehensive cause these are new blends and you never know how things are going to go in the handmade soap making process. Two of the blends contained essential oils that are known to seize up quick. That means you have soap on a stick! To help this situation I added my fragrance blends directly to the warm oils prior to adding the lye solution. This really helps but forget about any fancy swirls. I’ve been resisting peaking. Trust me it’s been difficult. For now they are under wraps so to speak. I’ll be posting photos and the blends tomorrow.
Popularity: 56% [?]
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