Friday, March 30, 2018

Soapy Friday: Soaping to Relieve Stress

Happy Good Friday everyone! Easter is the farthest thing from my mind right now as I have bigger fish to fry:

Bye bye big country house
Yup. We had a contract in less than 4 days! And between all the inspections, repairs, more inspections, more repairs, work and travel for work, all I've wanted to do to relieve the stress is make soap. It really calms me down and helps channel my nervous/anxious energy.

But a couple of these help too. This is the only pic I grabbed from Fort Worth, TX...an awesome margarita. In a few weeks, I'm off to L.A.

Fort Worth Margarita
We DO have a place picked out to rent that is exactly 2.7 miles from hubby's office and it's practically perfect. So much so, we may even consider buying it if we like renting there and the community it's in. I'm not going to jinx anything though, as we are still waiting for our appraisal to come back.

If our appraisal comes back low and we have to go back to the table and renegotiate, then things could get sticky.

So, I make soap.

I've made more soap than I've taken pictures of, but I did feel confident enough about my current luxury bar recipe to remake a large, 7 lb. batch of "My BFF Rosie". It's one of my most popular bars and it's a keeper.

Big BFF Rosie
My 7 lb loaf gives me just shy of 20 bars at a time. In the future, I will be making this at 100 bars at a time or more...mark my words.

In SUPER exciting news, I've received the first logo and branding concepts from the graphic designer I hired to help me with design. I am in love. I'm not going to give anything away, but it's going to be pretty awesome; I have a gut feeling about this.

So, now I need to reorder almost ALL my supplies as I've run out. Keep soaping!

Beautiful BFF Rosies


Friday, March 16, 2018

Soapy Friday: My Little Hooters

Happy Soapy Friday everyone! Hope you are getting ready to drink some green beer tomorrow and enjoy the weekend. There will definitely be wine enjoyed somewhere, SOMETIME for me. 


Ugh. I can't even begin to explain the chaos that is going on in my life right now. Long story short, we listed our house for sale and have had a bidding war going on. So, we will be moving soon, hopefully it will be into another home that we own, but the market is so HOT right now who knows. If not, then we will rent again.

On top of that, my job wants to send me on a traveling odyssey for the rest of the year...just really bad timing. Next week, I'm in Fort Worth, TX.

Anywho, on to soap, shall we?

First, I tried to rebatch some old soap that I didn't like. I "tried" to go for a turquoise stone look that is so hot right now, but ended up with soap that looks like 1950's terrazzo tile. LOL!

Ugly soap only a mother could love...

Ugly terrazzo tile soap
Second, I wanted to retest a few theories about a certain fragrance oil (Rosemary Mint) and using mango butter in my soap. About 2 months ago, I made a beautiful green soap using this fragrance and my usual recipe that contains mango butter.

This soap smelled off after cure
When it cured and we tested it, the soap weirdly lost it's scent in the shower (but smelled great dry!) and had a more waxy, crayon scent. This has never happened before and I figured it was either two things: One, the mango butter I was using was right at its expiration date and it went bad I think, and two, the fragrance oil may not be sticking.

So I made another test batch. Both with the same fragrance (Rosemary Mint) but only one containing fresh mango butter. I wanted to test if it was the fragrance, the expired mango butter, or just mango butter itself.

Two soaps, one scent - with mango butter and one without
The conclusion: I think it is a little of all three! The fragrance really has toned down, which has allowed the "natural" soap scent to come thru. I CAN smell a difference between the non-mango butter bar and the one containing mango butter, BUT, it's not anywhere near the scent I had from my very first batch using old mango butter. In other soaps that have mango butter, I can't smell it at all.

Note to self - Use fresh mango butter always and don't use that fragrance again.

Now, finally my little hooters! Aren't these just the cutest things ever? They are perfect for medium-sized bars of soap. These were made with Lavender Lemongrass essential oils. Heaven!

Hello little hooters!


 

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