Green Tea and Lemongrass

There are those rare times when everything falls into place, just as you'd hoped and planned. It doesn't always happen but when it does, it's exciting. For me, it happened yesterday.

The Green Tea fragrance oil is such a lovely, gentle scent that I thought would work well with Lemongrass essential oil. Once I decided on my combination, I mulled over the design in my mind. It had to be green. And white. With an accent colour of some sort. Then, I knew just what I wanted to do... a pencil line swirl. I could see it in my mind's eye.

The recipe, a low coconut recipe, came together beautifully; I had just the right texture to do all the swirling I wanted. For my pencil line, I used Aztec Gold mica, an almost coppery-looking mica that perfectly accentuated the green in the batter.

I am so pleased with this soap. I love the scent. I love the colour, I love the swirl. I love the mica lines. Of all the soaps I've made, this one is way up there on my fave list.

Tobacco Leaves Soap

Yesterday's soap is out of the mold and was hard enough for me to cut right away. Seriously, it was so hard that when I tried to shave off the end, I ended up with crumbles rather than a slice. I will take that as a sign that it will be a nice, hard, long lasting bar of soap.

I'm pleased with the final soap. I did have one (minor) issue. See the yellow spots/streaks? They're supposed to be white. I even added Titanium Dioxide (a whitener) to that batter. I'm not sure why it turned yellow but I do know it's a cosmetic issue and not a flaw.

The Tobacco Leaves scent is really nice, not overpowering. From the vendor's description: "the Tobacco Leaves Fragrance Oil is a fresh aroma possessing notes of orange, vanilla, and amber".

The circular bits near the bottom are the embeds. The larger ones, with pink and black, are left over from the All Sorts soap, made with soap dough. The moon shaped bits are made with melt & pour soap coloured with copper and gold micas.

I'm pretty happy with this one, all in all. The idea for this one has been rattling around in my brain since I made the All Sorts soap. It finally came together.

So Much to Tell You

Right now, I'm almost halfway through Day 1 of a five day long weekend. John and I are celebrating fourteen years of marriage and, since today is the day before the Friday before a long weekend (July 1, Canada Day), I decided to take both days off, giving me a very rare five days off.

Soap was made today.

There's nothing new in that. I've been making plenty of soap over the last while. The thing is, I now have a reason to make soap, other than the fact that it's just plain fun! I am now a vendor at a local market, the East Kelowna Sunday Artisan Community Market. I'm not there every weekend but will be there twice in July and twice in August. I've already been once and it was fun! I'm looking forward to the next market.

So, you see, soap must be made!

These are a few of the soaps made within the last two months or so. I've also added Bubble Scoops to my repertoire. What are Bubble Scoops, you ask?

These are Bubble Scoops. They're a solid bubble bath. Each of these scoops (just over one ounce each), is enough for one regular bubble bath. Each is scented quite strongly (my house smells amazing, sometimes a bit overpowering) but it's diluted in a full bath. I'll be making a few more batches before my next market, just to see how they'll sell. I have a feeling they could be quite popular.