Teach Soap

. . . are done and in the mail to Alaska, New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Oklahoma!

No photos but here are what my peeps are getting - thanks to all you lovelies and your inspirational posts and generous sharing of ideas and encouragement *insert huggy smilie here*

Booie Psorp - infused with burdock root, honey, vitamin E and oatmeal, this unscented goat's milk soap is made to help soothe skin conditions. Block mold cut into 3/4" bars. Natural light tan color.

Christmas Tree - soft green, frasier fir scented CP 7-oil batter poured in shallow mold and sprinkled with candy sprinkles to mimic the lights and decorations, I cut them with a tree shaped cookie cutter.

Winter Woods - removed the candy bits and shredded the CT scraps. Kicked up the green, added other smells of cedar, oakmoss, fern, & florals, and processed as glycerine soap. Very lovely color and scent.

Spring Flower Garden - CP 7-oil, soft pink and light green swirled in column mold . Mostly scented with "Paris Twilight" from Peak but added some gardenia and mimosa to the mix. I also steeped both blond and red natural sandalwood and vetiver in the GM to add depth and interest to the basenotes before making my lye mixture. I close my eyes and sniff daffodils and the promise of spring.

Summer Flower Garden - same batch as Spring but colored dusky rose and TD white swirl in the column. Scented with EO's and absolutes of rose (2 different ones), ylang ylang, jasmine, neroli, lavendar, rue, and ambergris. Heady full-bodied floral that does remind me of evening in my mid-summer garden.

Autumn Garden - last third of Spring/Summer batch colored gold and sage green. Scented with Peak's "Blackberry Sage" and Anna Riva's "Black Cat". I'm not sure which one its coming from but the ozone notes adds the crispness of a fall day. Wonderful combo.

Jamaican Ginger - I was fascinated by the different colors of yellow you can make from annatto depending on if you color the oil or lye so I did both and was not disappointed. It is a beautiful, vivid, warm tropical yellow color deserving of a wonderful tropical scent. So I used Peak's "Jamaica Me Crazy" which reminds me greatly of a pina colada. I rounded it out a little by processing some candied ginger through the coffee grinder. This was the first CP batch (9 different oils, oh my) that I used the Marie Callendar yummy molds for. They set up and unmolded wonderfully and I then furthered the tropical-ness of the soaps by topping each one with a vanilla scented MP clear glycerine flower in bright blue,red, or green.


Gingerbread Harvest - this one was a bit neurotic. I wanted gingerbread and I wanted to use the "Autumn Harvest" FO so I combined them. House smelled for days. The first step was to make a 1" cylindrical embed of the same wonderful yellow created for the Jamaican Ginger (above). That took 2 days to set and another 8 hours in the freezer before I could push it out. The oil for the main part I infused with paprika to give it a warm toned base and then when I added the fresh ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice, it turned a beautiful medium-dark brown. I added the "autumn Harvest" and poured in the 3" cylinder mold around the embed and it now looks like a full moon in a night sky with the spices adding points that, while dark instead of light, could represent stars. . . I suppose. I like the effect anyway and now that the smell has calmed down, is overall quite pleasant.

Lady Lovely Face - my first attempt at glycerine soap. lets just say it smells and works much better than it looks. We'll leave it at that except to say that the little lumps have developed a slight sugar crust which I find endearing and are packaged in girly organza drawstring bags. If my lovely ladies can get past the look, the feeling it leaves on one's skin is divine.

Boy-Oh-Boy - I made this CP 7-oil bath soap for the men in my life. I infused basil in the OO and then scented with Peak's "Tuscan Nights" and a small orphaned bottle of "fresh herb" that came in a MP I picked up at Hobby Lobby to get the mold that came with it and a splash of each cedar, sandalwood, and lavender. I swirled gold and black in the yummy molds.

Muffin Soaps - just like what it sounds like. I made two different batches #1 - "Cranberry Citrus" scented which was colored orange in the muffin with poppy seeds and cranberry red color frosting with grated orange rind sprinkled on top. #2 - "Sugar Plum" is a light pink muffin with blue sugar crystals throughout and pale plum purple frosting with both red and blue sugar crystals sprinkled on top. The CP muffin soap has 6 different oils and the frosting are a whipped set-up.

Green Tea & Lemon Grass - both were infused in the GM as well as the oils. This soap used only 4 different oils: OO, CO, lard & castor. I colored 3 different shades of green - a yellow-green, a blue-green and green-green. It turned out very pretty ITP swirl in a loaf mold which I topped with lemon grass that I'd processed in the coffee grinder. I was thinking of putting tea leaves throughout but then thought better of it. Very pretty and subtle, relaxing yet uplifting scent.

Lavender - How can one make soap without making a batch of beloved lavender? My attempt at extracting some of the scent from the buds with everclear was developing well for the first few weeks, then I guess one of the kittehs knocked into it one day after I'd not secured the lid well enough. By the time I discovered it, the buds were still wet inside the jar but the extra OH- had leaked into the rug. Good news is my bedroom still to this day has a nice relaxing scent, bad news is what happened with the soap. First off, the attempt at CP had caverns that oozed when cut. I don't know if it was the recipe, the alcohol infused buds added at trace, or the Lavender EO. I waited a few days and a second attempt at cutting had stalactites and stalagmites exactly like the ones on Miller's page of mistakes. I shaved it all down and re-batched it. Yeah. Big mistake there. When I went to uncover the pot so I could stir it the bloody mess volcanoed!!! The alcohol from the infused buds that I'd incorporated immediately caught fire. Blue flames shot 2 ft in the air. Re-covering the pot didn't help because it was all over and under the stove top. Luckily the only fatality was an old towel. My kitchen survived, the stove has never been so thoroughly clean, and the soap - while not purple - is perfectly usable.

I have more but this is a long enough first post. Please forgive the length but as most of you have experienced when it was all new to you, I am very excited about how it all turned out. So again, thank you to all my enablers!

WOW!!!
Some lucky peeps!!

_________________
Lisa
“What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul” ~ Yiddish proverb

Lucky recipients!

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Thanks, y'all!!!

and with that tiniest little bit of encouragement, here's the rest:

Hard Working Hand Soap - lard, crisco, coconut, lanolin & cocoa butter made in the little celtic knot molds I bought the MP kit to get. Fragranced with rosemary, cedar, and tea tree with a little vit E & ground up bits of almond seed scrubbies. I've already used this myself after an afternoon spent raking leaves and moving plants in the garden and I can honestly say that it lives up to its name.

Mocha Kitchen Hand Soap - basically the same recipe as HWHS but with a little more cocoa butter for smell and instant coffee and cocoa powder for authentic mocha looks and mocha smellies, coffee grounds in place of the ground almond seeds for mocha scrubbies.

Tie Dyed Hippy Chick - possibly my favorite. Yellow, Pink & Green CP 7-oil swirled in the yummy molds and fragranced with "Nag Champa" and "Patchouli Patchouli" from Peak and patchouli EO. I then added hemp protein powder at trace because that's the way I roll. I was hoping for more vivid colors but I don't know if it was the colors themselves or the fact that I use GM instead of H2O to mix with my lye but the tye-dye is very soft colors and even though there is not blue in there it reminds me of a comfortable pair of worn jeans.

and for the youngsters on my list I made 3 different ones depending on age (oldest is 6):

Sea Creatures - are those little animals (fish, starfish, & turtle) that grow when you put them in water embedded in medeterranean blue colored clear glycerine MP soaps.

Duck Ponds - blue colored, "Blueberry Muffin" scented 4" round ponds of whipped soap (so they'll float, of course) topped with bigger ducks for the little ones and little ducks for the bigger kids and sprinkled with blue sugar crystals. I love that the big kids' little ducks have wild frilly "hair-do's" and a flashing light-up inside to make them super fun! I found them at Michael's Craft Store for just $1 a piece.

Baby Soap - whipped soap made with chamomile infused GM. I sieved the flower buds back into the milk after straining it and before freezing it for processing. I added no other scent or color. This is going to the world's happiest 9-month old, a set of brand new twins and a yet-to-be born little fella.

and finally . . .

Bath Fizzies!!! - so much fun to make. I'm so out-of-cool un-hip and not-with-it that I'd never heard of these before going through the Soap Queen video library. I put together my recipe after studying several on the web and deciding what I wanted my fizzies to do. I made a prototype batch and since my recipe makes 5 fizzies, I rounded up 4 co-workers (one each in her 20's, 30's, 40's & 50's) to be (along with myself) my guinea pigs. I convinced them (it wasn't hard) to take baths instead of their regular showers and gave them each a questionnaire along with their fizzy. I'd say from the reviews (I asked them to be honest so I could improve where needed) they were already a hit. One even wanted to purchase some for stocking stuffers for her family. LOL - thank you, I'm honored, but no, sorry. I've made a variety of scents, mostly single note fruits and florals but I did make a set that I individually scented with Shalimar, Jean Patou's Joy, Chanel #5, Blvgari pour Femme, & Penhalligan's Amaranthine. I don't know if EDT would work but to be safe, and because I have a bit of each (it only take a little, eh) I used either EDP or pure parfum with no fizzing at all. That set is for me.

The one thing I really wanted to make but just ran out of time was lip balm. I have a small brick of bees wax around here somewhere but didn't find it and won't purchase something I know I've already got. No sweat. If the Mayan's are wrong, there's always next year.

Ummm.....sounds like you have been busy and have covered everyone, great work!

WOW. Just. Wow. Do you want to be my friend? I'll let you send me soap!

Do you have pictures? I would love to see these!

The fact that you're a hobbyist, and not making these with sale in mind, just shows the thought put into each soap with the recipient in mind.

I agree with you on the bath fizzies- so much fun! I made Millineum Falcon fizzies for my sons Star Wars Lego birthday party this year. The boys loved them! Between those and the Lego soaps, I was surprised at how much a bunch of 9 year olds could love bath products. The moms thanked me as well, said it was nice not to have to fight them into the bath!

Wow that is lot of soap. You must be having a ball with all the ideas. I love the sound of the garden soap with the EOs!! Lots of soaps.

Tracy - That's awesome about the Star Wars birthday party stuff. Very thoughtful of you. I might've planned ahead enough to get fizzies ready but I honestly don't think about birthdays a month in advance so my hat's off to you foo having soaps ready in time to give out.

Lila - Thank You. Yes it was a blast - except for the lavender incident. That just really really got my adrenalin pumping.I agree with you, the garden series soaps were some of my personal favorites and a natural for me. I am simply incapable of passing a rose bush in bloom - whether in a garden center, public park, or someone's fence line - without sticking my nose in a bloom for a whiff. Liilacs, petunias, jasmine, heliotrope, fir trees (and on and on) I think nature in bloom is my favorite blessing bestowed on the Earth.