My other soap

Well, here's the other soap from the other night. I promised to post the pic so here it is, scented with Forbidden Fruit:


Fruitopia


This blog is serving to be my journal of my soapmaking journey. I want to be able to go back to see how far I've come. It will also serve as a journal for life-changing events and daily occurences that I feel compelled to journal about.

Some New Soaps

I hadn't soaped in a couple of weeks so I made 2 batches last night. 1 with "monkey farts" fragrance which sort of smells like fruit/candy so I think I'll name this soap "Candyland". The other batch I made with a scent called forbidden fruit so I think I'll name that one "Fruitopia". I only have pics of Candyland right now. Will cut Fruitopia tomorrow and post pics then. Here's candyland.....not great pics but you get the idea....

Here's the soap uncut:



Here's the soap cut:

The start of my time-off

Howdy folks. Today, Monday, August 10, 2009 starts a new phase in my life. Very shortly, after a short stint telecommuting for the World Bank until end of November, I will no longer be staff there. Hooray, yipee, hip,hip,hooray, woohoo!!!!!!!!!!! Can you tell I am happy about this new development? I am elated yet apprehensive because now comes a time that I will have to look for new work and that may prove to be very difficult but with God on my side I know I'll be fine.

This has been a long time in coming. I've been wanting it for 20 years. I've never felt that I was a good fit there. So my life starts anew.....woohoo! I'm on vacation for the month of August so I'll have time to spend with my son Nicholas and time for making some soap. I'll try and document the days so as to have a journal to look back on. Scully, our new labradoodle, is doing just great. He has his good days and his bad, naughty days (pees all over) but overall he's doing amazingly well. He's such a sweety ya can't help but fall in love with him. Today he got to meet a black cat named panther and got so excited that he had a potential playmate that he started chasing after the cat and scared it half to death. He just wanted to play ;-)

Take care all, I'll be back soon.

A Soapin weekend

I hadn't made any soap in quite some time, about 4 weeks and was feeling the yearning so I made 2 batches yesterday. One came out great! A manly soap scented with Aspen Forest for my husband and son. It smells lovely and even looks quite nice with swirlies and all. The second batch remains to be seen. It was scented with Creme Brulee which naturally turns the soap brown. I colored a small bit of soap with pink and left it unscented. I don't really like the way it smells but I'm hoping it'll change or grow on me. If it doesn't then I may use it as doggie soap, who knows. Anyways, here are some pics....




an up close of the swirlies


Creme Brulee Squared


Creme Brulee Round

Scully

Well folks, we finally did it, we added a new member to our family, a beautiful black labradoodle puppy which we've named Scully. Nicholas and I drove down to North Carolina, a 3 1/2 hour drive, to pick him up on July 4, 2009. He is very frightened and doesn't move around much. I'm guessing he is still not sure what happened. And he must miss his brothers and all the other dogs that surrounded him at the breeders house. I hope that with time he'll get over all this and be happy with us. We've only had him for 1 day be already we love the little guy! Here are a couple of pics of him. I'll get better ones in the future.

My first beer soap

Just wanted to post a quick pic of my first beer soap/shampoo bar. It'll need to cure for 4 weeks before I can test it out on my hair. I can't wait!!! I'll post the results here.

Monday, Monday......

It's Monday, but a beautiful one at that. It's one of those picture perfect sunny, not a cloud in the sky, days when you're stuck inside an office bldg. the whole day ;-( Woe is me.....

Despite the fact that I must work I am in a rather good mood for a Monday, suprisingly. It could be because I got loads of sleep this past weekend. I stayed up late on Friday and Saturday nights and woke up LATE. The only thing I don't like about waking up real late, 11:30ish for me, is that I feel like half of my day is already gone, ya know? That sucks! But I am rested and that's always good.

I made a few salt bars over a week ago, which seem to be all the rage in our soap making forum and I never posted photos and since I want this blog to be a sort of history of my soaping hobby I'm going to post the pics of my first ever salt bar. Rather than worry about color issues I just colored it with Paprika and it turned out a nice peachy color which I'm happy with. However some parts of the soap are quite crumbly which I'm not happy with but I believe I either waited to long to cut it or I put it in the fridge instead of letting it gel. I'll have to do some more experimenting with this to figure out what went wrong. But all in all the soap came out quite nice for a first try. I'm gonna post the recipe here for anyone who is interested in giving it a go:

Sibi’s Salt Bar

Total oil weight: 2 pounds
Water as percent of oil weight: 38
Super Fat/Discount: 7

Olive oil: 16 ounces
Coconut (76 deg): 8.32 ounces
Shea Butter: 4.48 ounces
Castor Oil: 3.2 ounces

Water: 12.16 ounces
Lye - NaOH: 4.347 ounces

Add 16 ounces of salt to oils (50%). Add lye solution to oils, bring to trace and add approx. 1 Tbsp. honey. Add your favorite fragrance, and color (I used paprika for color but any soap safe coloring can be used) and put in mold. If you let it gel you will need to keep an eye on it and as soon as it gets hard cut it because if you wait too long it will crumble when you cut. Good luck!

What's up?

I've got the hohums cause the weekend just zipped on by. Now I have to drag my behind for 5 days before the next one................bummer.

My first ever soap swap was so much fun I'm gonna have to do it again real soon!! I received some lovely homemade goodies and it felt like a mini-christmas in a box. I will post some of the pics later when I'm at home. Right now I'm at work on a break.

I've been retaining loads of water lately and my Doctor gave me a prescription diuretic which I'll have to say I'v been reluctant to take. You shouldn't take them too often because they can mess up your kidneys and who wants to do that. But the amount of water I'm retaining in my ankles and calves has become ridiculous. Sooooo, I bit the bullet and took a pill Friday evening. OMG - I was going to the ladies room every 10-15 minutes!! My sleep was interupted repeatedly. But you know what? Overnight I lost 8 pounds!!! Imagine that, that's how much excess water I was carrying around, mostly in my feet it seems!!

Gosnopping is doing quite well with traffic. I hope to see it take off real soon. It is such an awesome site that I can't imagine it doing anything but being off the charts successful. It is so visually appealing and the stores on each street are the best out there. I believe that the future of the internet is going in that direction. Keep the audience engaged and the people will come. I'll keep ya posted on future developments with Gosnopping.com. And if you haven't been there, for goodness sakes, go check it out!

I made some more soap the other day and all went well except with the coloring. Golly, I surely need to take a course in "soap coloring 101" or "soap coloring for dummies" cause I'm a total dork when it comes to getting the colors I want. In the pic below all you'll see is a yellow soap. Do you think that was my intention? You'd be wrong. I wanted blue and green.....duh....how the heck did I get yellow???? I've already figured out why but I'm too embarrassed to tell you all so I'll just leave it at that, you'll probably figure it out at some point.



Have a good one everybody! ;-)

Just had to post this. This was actually supposed to be a 1 lb. test batch of oatmeal/honey soap made room temperature cold process, but w/out melting any of the hard(solid) oils ahead of time. I wasn't expecting it to work or expected to have problems when I added the honey to the mixture. But everything went quite well and I produced a lovely, moisturizing soap. How about that??? When I want things to work out perfect they never do and when I'm expecting the worse I get something pretty nice. It's all in the cosmos I tell you. Either the full moon at work or Murphy's law. Glad it worked in my favor this time though ;-)

Don't have time to post right now, just wanted to share my newest batch of soap scented with Apricot-Papaya and a little Patchouli. I'm not terribly happy with the way the colors came out, and it's a bit greasy right now but that could easily change after the 4-6 week cure. Let's see what happens. I will be giving this soap away in a Spring Swap that I am participating in. Oh what fun, my first swap!! ;-)