Archive for March, 2009

Don’t worry, I didn’t forget that I have a blog here!  I have been very busy with family lately…and soap making.  But I have lots of pictures just waiting to be blogged about.  I just pulled them off my camera and there were 132!

I finally bought a loaf mold for melt and pour soap.  I used to use my silicon bread loaf pan, but it makes wide bars and uses too much soap at once.  I prefer smaller batches.  I bought mine at Go Planet Earth, but you can find them pretty much anywhere soap making supplies are sold.

Here are a few of the soaps I made.  I finally gave in to the food-as-soap craze, even though I myself do not get it.

Inspired by the Bramble Berry fragrance Hello Sweet Thang! – which smells like sugary lemony amazingness – I made a lemon meringue soap, with yellow mica semi-circles for the lemon slices.

Today, I made carrot cake.

Carrot cake soap, that is, using the Bramble Berry fragrance of the same name.

They look and smell good enough to eat, but I wouldn’t recommend it!

This week, I have been playing around with bath bomb recipes.  It is so fun and easy.

Most of the ingredients you need can be found at the supermarket.

The process is as easy as baking, except you don’t need an oven and the finished product won’t make you fat, but it will make you feel fabulous.

If you want to make your own bath bombs, here are some links to help you get started.

Make Fizzy Bath Bombs – About.com: Candle & Soap Making

Bath Bomb Recipes – Teach Soap

Later this weekend, I will share some pics.

Here is a quick little melt and pour project I did to make soaps for my bathroom.  This is a great project to do with kids.  All of the materials are available at your local craft store.

(I am sorry that the pictures are kind of blurry.  I couldn’t find my camera, so I had to use Big E’s 30-dollar special.  That picture above I took with my camera, after.)

You will need:

• Clear melt and pour soap base
• A flexible flat mold, such as a silicon brownie pan or a stepping stone mold (I used a silicone loaf pan because I only wanted to make a few soaps.
• Green liquid soap colorant (this does not need to be non-bleeding) or yellow and blue
• Gold mica
• Fragrance of your choice (I used Kentish Rain from Bramble Berry because it smells like the color green to me.)
• A shamrock cookie cutter, preferably metal, but plastic will do
• Alcohol in a spray bottle
• Basic supplies, such as glass measuring cup and spoons

For starters, figure out how much base you need.  I put my cookie cutter in the pan and added water until it came to the top of the cutter.  Then, I poured the water into the measuring cup to see how much base I needed, by volume.

Next, cut up the base into chunks and melt in the microwave.  If you are new to M&P soaping, read this intro tutorial.

I ended up adding some more chunks after the base was melted, until I had the volume I needed.

Next, add fragrance and the green colorant (or mix yellow and blue to make green).  Do NOT add the gold, yet.

Pour the soap into your pan and spritz with alcohol to remove any air bubbles.

Now it is time to add the gold mica.  Sprinkle a little around on the top of your still-melted soap.  Then, using a toothpick or butter knife, or something, gently swirl it around, so that some of it goes into the soap and some stays at or near the top.  Play with it to make it look the way you want.

Unfortunately, my picture of this step did not come out because I have a dark blue loaf mold.

If there are bubbles, spritz again with alcohol.  Allow to cool until the soap is set.  It is easier to cut if it is not fully hardened.

Unmold your soap slab and put it on a flat surface.

Cut out the shamrocks with a cookie cutter.

Voila!

Remelt the scraps and pour into a bar mold or cut them up and embed them in soap bars.  Just remember, if you did not use non-bleeding color, the embedded chunks may bleed.