Vanilla Chai Tea Soap

I just realized that I never posted photos of my Chai Tea soap. I made this batch with a wonderful blend of olive and palm oils, beeswax, silk fibers, vanilla FO, chai tea FO, poppy mica, water, and NaOH. I am writing NaOH instead of sodium hydroxide, because it is the scientific short form term. For some reason, I dislike the word lye...so I would love if other soapers started referring to sodium hydroxide as NaOH. This would really help with my laziness since I hate having to type out sodium hydroxide. Anyways, enough ranting, here is the long awaited soap. Enjoy!



Again, I must thank my wonderful partner, Dylan, for these amazing photos!

Goals for tomorrow

Okay so I have a lot planned for tomorrow. I want to try out a recipe for natural deodorant that I saw on craftster.org posted by Spa Therapy Works. I have been waiting to get the deodorant containers that I needed and I received them on Thursday so I am ready to give it a try. I also want to make another sugar scrub since I am totally addicted to them now. I was thinking of doing a ginger scent. Maybe I can grate in some fresh ginger as well. I will have to see if I have a ginger FO in my work area. If I have time and all the ingredients I think I will also try a bath bomb, but I am not sure that I have any good bath bomb molds. I also plan to go to the pottery studio for studio hours and finish trimming some pieces and maybe throw some more pots. I just got my first pots back last weekend. The glazes look really nice but the pots show that I am clearly a beginner. I will post some pictures soon so you all can have a good laugh. I also need to run to the post office and I am kinda in the mood to do some shopping. I was thinking new jeans would be nice. What are you all doing this weekend?

Chocolate Truffle Sugar Scrub Tutorial

I made a wonderful scrub last weekend using the recipe below that was posted on the natural beauty workshop blog. I added a brown sugar fragrance oil instead of what the recipe recommends. This scrub is to die for. I made it on Saturday and it is just about used up. I think I will need to make more this weekend. I will probably modify the recipe a bit so there is not as much separation between the oils and sugar. I think I will either increase the sugar amount or decrease the amount of oils. I have some bad red marks on my body from eczema and this scrub has done wonders for them in a week. I found it best to shower and then scrub my body with this and then just quickly rinse off the sugar to leave behind the oils on my skin. It was really nice and I had no need for lotion. Plus the oils don't seem to make my pants too tight like lotion does. ;)

Scrub a dub dub

The Chocolate Truffle Sugar Scrub
This scrub makes about two 4 ounce jars.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup Demerara Sugar
2 ounces Hazelnut Oil
1 ounce Castor Oil
1/2 ounce Cocoa Butter
1/2 teaspoon Cocoa Powder (unsweetened)
1 teaspoon Vitamin E (T-50)
1/4 teaspoon Grapefruit Seed Extract

Directions
Gently melt the Cocoa Butter in a double boiler or in very short bursts in the microwave. Be careful not to overheat your butter. Meanwhile, pour the Demerara Sugar into a mixing bowl. Stir in Hazelnut Oil, Castor Oil, Vitamin E, and Grapefruit Seed Extract. Add Cocoa Powder and mix well. Now add you final ingredient, the melted Cocoa Butter. Stir the mixture well to make sure that the butter is distributed evenly.

Fragrance
This scrub will have a slight natural aroma of Cocoa Butter while you are preparing it. However, this aroma will dissipate once the mixture has cooled. If you prefer a scented scrub you may add a 1 teaspoon of synthetic Fragrance Oil such as Dark Chocolate Supreme or Raspberry Truffles. Another option is to add several drops of Bourbon Vanilla Absolute or Vanilla Oleoresin. Although they are not chocolate, these natural Vanilla aromas would compliment this scrub nicely.


The recipe in the post was taken from http://www.naturalbeautyworkshop.com.
Thanks

Cake soap

I really wanted to make a soap that looked like a cake. This was my first attempt at such and it turned out nice, but boy was it a pained to remove from my makeshift mold. I had finished up all of the coconut oil from a round bottom tube and decided that it would be great to use as a mold. Since it still had a layer of oil on it I thought would help with removal. Well I made this soap last Sunday and was not able to get it out of the mold until today! Dylan took at mallet and went to town on the mold. Luckily, the bashing didn't really damage the look of the soap. I really like how the soap turned out in the end, but I think I will try to find an actually circle mold. If anyone knows of a place to get one please leave me a comment. I think this type of soap would look really lovely if you did a cream base with a colored top layer and poured the top layer at a thick trace so you could make it look a bit more like frosting. Anyways, here are some pictures of my lavender soap.
This soap should have a very nice lather as it has castor oil in it. It will also be very moisturizing and soothing to your skin because of the shea butter and silk fibers. The lavender EO adds a soothing scent.

Pictures of new soaps

I finally motivated my partner, Dylan, to take pictures of my most recent soap. He does such an amazing job so I really have to just wait for him to take the pictures otherwise they just turn out horrible. This soap is my Calendula castile soap. I made it with 100% olive oil, calendula infused water, and a pinch of silk fibers.

This next one is for the hippie in you. It is a Patchouli scented soap with shea butter and silk fibers.

Vanilla Chai tea, Patchouli, and Lavender soap

I made 3 new soaps yesterday: Vanilla Chai tea, Patchouli, and Lavender soap. They are looking so nice. I will be taking them out of their molds tonight. I changed the shape of the lavender soap to a large circle tub and plan to cut the soap in pie type slices. The other two were molded in my wooden rectangle molds. The patchouli and lavender soap have shea butter in them. Oh and I also put a pinch of silk fibers in all three. I have read that they help to make soap super smooth and silky. I don't want to wait 3 weeks to try them out :(

I can't wait to get my supplies this week so that I can try out making lip balm, lotion, scrubs, and deodorant. I have made lip balm in the past but I am excited to give it a try again.

Buy 3 soaps get 1 free sale

In an effort to get more people to try my fantastic soaps I am going to have a sale starting Monday the 18th and going to Monday 25th. Visit my store and send me a convo with the 4 soaps you would like. I will put up a specific listing for you to purchase with the least expensive soap for free.
Ladybugsoapworks.etsy.com

New soaps

I have been dying to try out some of my new scents. So tomorrow I am planning to make a Chai tea soap, a Patchouli soap, a Cranberry soap, and a Lavender soap. I also received a shipment of shea butter, coffee butter, macadamia nut butter, and cocoa butter which I may play around with. I just placed an order for ingredients to make lip balms, body butters, and sugar scrubs which I look forward to trying out. I will let you know how the soaps turn out tomorrow!

Commercial "Soaps" vs handmade cold process soap

I have be actively reading other soaper's blogs and have found them to be quite entertaining. Hopefully, mine will be as pleasing to other people. I make cold process handmade soap using all natural ingredients with the exception of some fragrance oils. If you are new to handmade soap you should know that there is a big difference between the soap you buy commercially and what you would get from me. What I sell is actually soap made through a reaction of oils and lye called saponification. This chemical reaction creates soap (a salt) and glycerin. Most commercial "soaps" are not soaps at all, they are actually detergent bars. Commercial soaps usually use a synthetic detergent such as sodium lauryl sulfate. I am a PhD student in Molecular biology and biochemistry and we use this detergent quite regularly in our lab. I find it a little scary that so many people used products made from this detergent since when we use it in the lab we wear masks to protect ourselves from it. In addition to use of detergents as the cleaning agent, the naturally produced glycerin in commercial bars is removed since it can be sold and used for other products. If you are interested in checking out my soaps I have a website where I am selling them on LadybugSoapworks.etsy.com.