Essential Oil Blend

I have been interested for some time to soap with Essential Oils.  All of my soaping is done with fragrance oils and I have yet to try Essential Oils.

Why?  Well for one they are bit more costly and while I have gained more experience and started to feel more comfortable with my soaping, I still do have my occasional "oops".  It's bad enough that I may compromise precious oils (Peacock Swirl...), but even fragrances I am sad to waste as well (Peacock Swirl...). 

I think I found myself finally ready to give it a try.  Now, I am a little lost when it comes to Essential Oils.  Aside from Lavender and Lemongrass, it's all pretty foreign to me.  Browsing Bramble Berry's site it was a little tough to come to a final decision.  I knew I did not want to try Lavender so instead I decided to give Karma a try. 

Here is Bramble Berry's description of Karma Essential Oil Blend:
blend comprised of: Patchouli Oil (Pogostemon Cablin), Orange Oil (Citrus Dulcis), Lavendin Oil (Lavendula Hybrida), Pine Oil (Pinus), Lemongrass Oil (Cymbopogan Flexuosus), Elemi Oil (Canarium Commune), and Gardenia Extract (Gardenia Jasminoides).

I would call this a sexy scent.  Very alluring and spicy :)

Now I had recently shopped my local Trader Joe's and stocked up on some Goat Milk.  This was going to be my special soap.  I also used my 9 bar slab mold.  I just recently recalculated the volume of how much soap to make and I must say I got a little too ambitious.  My bars turned out pretty huge!  I had to cut them in half.

Since I was feeling the spicy I decided to try some "Fall" like colors.  Now I did got a little carried away with the black and next time, "less is best!"

Let me tell you, after my peacock swirl "challenges" I was VERY happy with my swirls.  I am in love with this look!!! Reminds me of rich caramel in some ways.

Do you have any Essential Oils that you would recommend I use? 

Thanks for checking out my blog!

 

HAPPY SOAPING!!!

ROXANA

 

 

Nice and Bright ...and Crisp :)

After the disappointment with my lumpy Peacock Swirl I decided to go look for a nice colorful picture to soap and cheer myself up!

I browsed the Design Seeds website and I really fell in love with this theme :)

 

 

Look at all those pretty colors...now can I come close to it? probably not, but I was sure going to try :)

 

I decided to soap with Bramble Berry's Crisp Apple Rose.  I think I have found a new favorite for sure.  This is such a nice crisp scent...not to strong, or sweet, but very crisp and light.  Very nice.

 

Can I also share that I have been playing around with this new IPhone App called Vine.  I saw Anne-Marie from Bramble Berry and Cee from Oil & Butter Blog Spot start to use it I was itching to try it.  Now I had some difficulties at first.  I really wish that there was a "mute" button of some sort.  My house tends to be a little active at times so you can hear the TV blaring and the kids playing in the background. 

 

Here is one of the videos texturing the soap on the top :)

 

 

 

Here is the one of the final textured tops, and as you can see, I got a little carried away in the end.

 

 

 

Here is the final result.  The colors are not as bright, and my red was a bit pink but I really love this look :)

 

 

It smells amazing!

 

 

I am going to try to work on my soaping survey this week for  my soapy friends that have volunteered to be my testers.  I am certainly looking forward to it and VERY NERVOUS as well.

 

Thanks for checking out my blog!

 

HAPPY SOAPING

ROXANA

 

 

Peacock Swirl, or something like it

I have signed up for Amy Warden's Soap Challenge Club (Click on the link to learn more about it).

Out first challenge is the Peacock Swirl.  I was pretty excited and could not wait to get started.  I picked my colors and fragrance and was set to go!

I wanted some nice bright colors, so I decided to go with the following:

 

 

Now I did make a change to my standard recipe.  I used more Olive Oil, took out my Palm and Palm Kernel Oil and made sure to go with Mango Butter instead of Cocoa Butter.  I thought I would be safe, but little did I know I was headed for my first failure. 

 

I think I may have over blended my soap.  By the time I added the fragrance oil I was already at medium trace.  My soap moved fast and here I thought I was going to have enough time due to the high content of olive oil.  I could not even squirt my soap out of the condiment bottles, much less mix them.  It was pretty bad!

 



I decided to give it a go one more time. I just keep going back for more punishment :)

This time I took off the Castor Oil and used more Olive Oil and decided to add Rice Bran Oil.  Wouldn't you know it...I almost did it again.  Over blended my mixture again.  This time I was able to barely mix the colors in my condiment bottle and little by little added the soap to the mold.

 

I used my made up little tool and dragged it down the soap

 

 The soap was pretty thick.  It certainly did not look anything close to what I was suppose to have :(
I finished by creating the "8" pattern, and I am thinking that maybe I should have made my swirl a little smaller.

So here are the final bars.  I can't say that I am completely happy with them, but at least they are a lot better than the first batch.

 

 

I think this will be it for me and the peacock swirl for some time.  I need to come up with a nice slow moving recipe before I decide to try it again. 

 

In the end I would say that I did have fun with this project...sort of.  I did allow me to try a new technique and play with colors.  All is not lost after all.

 

Thanks for checking out my blog!!!

 

HAPPY SOAPING!

ROXANA

 

Apricot Freesia

I recently have started to try some natural colored soap.  I fell in love with the look of my chamomile soap. 

I have some clays on hand and just recently received a free sample of nettle leaf powder from Soap Making Resource :).  I love freebies!

I wasn't sure if I should use a fragrance or just leave it as is.  In the end the fragrance called out to me and I decided to use Bramble Berry's Apricot Freesia.  This was one of the first fragrances that I tried when I started to do Melt and Pour soap.  I loved it then and I still love it now.  It's not too strong and it's a nice light scent...too bad that I did not have enough on hand for my batch.  So I sort of short handed my soap a bit and did not fragrance it as much.  Oops. 

For colors I used Bramble Berry's rose clay, kaolin clay, and like I mentioned above; nettle leaf powder from Soap Making Resource.

Here is my final product:

I really liked the green that the nettle leaf powder gave out.  A nice soft green :).  I did end up using a little more rose clay than I was going for, but I'm still OK with the final results.

I am in the middle of trying to finish the Peacock Swirl Challenge.  So far I've had two failed attempts and I am going to give it a go one more time :)

I have also been thinking of doing a short soap survey.  I have been playing with my soap recipe and I am undecided which one I like the best.  I have been toying with the idea of offering up a couple of bars of soap to some of my soap blog friends to give me some feedback.  Stay tuned if you are interested :)

Thanks for checking out my blog!

Happy Soaping!!!

Roxana