Archives for October 2013

Sunday Night Spotlight: Beeswax

October 6, 2013 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

It’s time for another Sunday Night Spotlight, and this week’s ingredient is an all-natural wonder. You can use it in lotions, cremes, soaps and even lip balms. Have you guessed what it might be yet? It’s Beeswax! It is a popular ingredient in natural and handmade bath and body products, and there is no shortage of it in Soap Queen blog tutorials. Read on to learn more about this versatile product.

White Beeswax & Yellow Beeswax

Beeswax has an indefinite shelf life and it’s usually added to bath and body recipes as a hardening agent. The difference between the waxes is slight: Yellow Beeswax is fully refined, while the White Beeswax is naturally bleached by exposing it in thin layers to air, sunlight and moisture. In cold process soap, Beeswax is a natural way to harden your soaps and can be used up to 8% in your recipes. When using it in a recipe, melt it first (make sure not to explode it in your microwave), and add it at thin trace when the batter has reached 140 degrees Fahrenheit or higher (hint: this means you have to mix your lye-water and oils at 140 or above; hotter than most normal recipes). Otherwise, the beeswax will begin to harden in your soap. Be aware that beeswax can contribute to overheating your soap, and you could end up with a soap volcano or heat tunnels if your temperatures are too high. Because of this, I typically don’t insulate beeswax soap or only lightly insulate it for recipes containing 1-3% beeswax.

Everything Balm (using White Beeswax)

Beeswax makes cold process soap harder, but that’s not the case in melt & pour soaps. Adding beeswax to most melt & pour bases will actually make it softer. If you are finding that your particular base is too soft, take a look at your ingredients. If you want a harder base, try our LCP (Like Cold Process) Melt & Pour Bases, which are available in both White and Clear. Alternatively, you can let your soap sit out under a fan for up to a week to get a harder bar of melt and pour soap. If you’re still curious about beeswax and melt & pour, check this post from the beginning days (2007!) of the Soap Queen blog — the recipe didn’t work out as expected, that’s for sure!

Chocolate Lip Balms with Cocoa Powder (using Yellow Beeswax)

You can also use beeswax in your lotions, lip balms, cremes, salves and soaps. Below are some examples of the wide range of products you can create with either yellow or white beeswax.

Tutorials using white beeswax, top left (clockwise):

Coffee Butter Foot Creme, Valentine Cold Process Soap, Lotion Bar Love & Cuticle Salve Recipe

Tutorials using yellow beeswax:

Left (Clockwise): Busy Beeswax Soap Tutorial, Bite Me Not Lotion Bar, Naturally Trimming The Tree & Exfoliating Kisser Scrub

What are you favorite recipes that include Beeswax? Or, have any questions I can answer for you?

Visualizing Success

October 5, 2013 Filed Under: Business Musings

I’ve been working on goals and dreams for 2014 and beyond. It’s hard to remember in the hustle and bustle of daily crazy but an intentional life is always worth planning for. It’s hard to keep priorities straight when opportunities are coming at you a mile a minute. Goal setting started a little early this year so let me be the first person to get you thinking about your 2014 goals. This is your time to start thinking, planning and yes, dreaming.

I use the Stephen Covey “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” method of planning. I go through the book every few years and update goals and priorities. But, I don’t do it alone – I do it with my ‘Front Row’. That’s the term my Mastermind Business Group uses to describe the people who are most important in your life. The litmus test for ‘Front Row’ is who you would chose to put in the front row of the auditorium at a very important event with you.

After we confirm what our priorities in life are, we spend an entire day drilling down into our yearly goals. We share these goals with the group, the group helps to refine those goals (are they ‘SMART‘?) and then comes the best part! Vision board time!

I’ve blogged about Vision Boards before (here, here and here) but in a nutshell, it’s a poster sized board of your goals … in picture format!

We all save pictures from magazines all year and when we can’t find the perfect picture for our goal, resort to the internet and print them.

Everyone puts their boards in places of prominence around their homes as a daily visual reminder of what they’re striving for. My goals for the upcoming year revolve around family (take a family vacation!), friends (quality activities 4X next year), health (maintain my weight for 2014 through healthy eating and exercise and decrease body fat by 1% over the year), business (start a new soapmaking book, successfully lead the Soap Crafting Club) and finance (college savings for the kids).

To learn more about the Vision Boarding process, Jack Canfield’s book “The Success Principles” has an entire chapter on Vision Boarding and setting up a Mastermind Group.

The new year is right around the corner! What would you put on your Vision Board for 2014? Or, put another way, what are some of your goals for 2014?

Facebook Photo of the Week (September 27th ~ October 4th)

October 4, 2013 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Happy October, everyone! We’ve officially entered the season of pumpkin patches and trick-or-treaters, and we’ve been keeping warm by making batches and batches of soap. Earlier this week, we showed you a rustic Leopard Spot Melt & Pour project, discussed pesky (or awesome, depending on what you’re after!) vanilla discoloration in soaps, and capped off the week by introducing you to the Frog Foot Swirl.

We’ve been busy coming up with tutorials for the holiday season and we can’t wait to share more of them with you in the following weeks. Are you ready to see which soap inspired us this week?

Our Facebook Photo of the Week is a layered soap with a very artistic twist. Patricia, owner of Lathered Pony Soap Company, made a soap she said imitates the “…evening sky when the Montana mountain moon rises.” Using Bramble Berry’s Indian Sandalwood Fragrance Oil and vibrant, deep colors, she definitely pulled off the imagery she was going for. The soap almost looks like an oil painting! She has even made her own versions of the Peacock Swirl, Swirled Hearts and Leopard Spots (see below). Thank you so much for sharing your soapy creations with us, Patricia. Expect a lovely soapy package on your doorstep soon.

For the rest of our fellow soapers, we encourage you to keep posting and sharing your soapy creations with us on Bramble Berry’s Facebook page — we love seeing what you create!

Patricia’s Facebook Page: Lathered Pony Soap Company

Post pictures of your soap creations on the Facebook page each week for a chance to be featured on the Soap Queen blog and receive a sweet soapy package from Bramble Berry.

Brotherly Love

October 4, 2013 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

“Family is not an important thing. It’s everything.” — Michael J. Fox

I’m so excited; Grandma and Grandpa Faiola will be here this weekend (!). This means lots of delicious food (I’m cooking Halibut for dinner with a beautiful arugula salsa verde) and laughter (so, so much laughter).

Grandma arrived early this week so we played a little bit of hooky this morning and went hiking with Jamisen to our favorite place in Whatcom County, Clayton Beach. Jamisen was delighted to rock climb (“I climbed a mountain!”), play with sea anemones and better yet? We saw a train!

Soap wise, it has been a crazy busy week. If you haven’t seen Instagram, you definitely need to check out our Vine and Instagrams. It’s difficult to say what my favorite one is but it’s probably the Fall Leaves soap we did yesterday. And, we also gave a sneak peek of our Rainbow Clouds soap. It got 105 likes in Instagram, the most ever for any photo we’ve ever posted. I’m off to go to a Scent Panel (smelling all the fragrances for Spring 2014 – so soon!) right now but won’t forget about the Facebook Photo of the Week. Expect that post before midnight tonight =) Happy Friday, everyone!

Frog Foot Swirl

October 3, 2013 Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with swirling because of these new swirl tools — they make achieving techniques like the Peacock Swirl a breeze! For this tutorial we tried our hand at the Peacock Swirl’s counterpart, the Frog Foot! Simply drag the Easy Swirl Tool in a different way (basically, the opposite way) to achieve this beautiful, striking design.

What You’ll Need:

16 oz. Coconut Oil

16 oz. Canola Oil

24 oz. Palm Oil

3.2 oz. Castor Oil

4.8 oz. Hazelnut Oil

8 oz. Rice Bran Oil

8 oz. Sunflower Oil

11 oz. Sodium Hydroxide

26.4 oz. distilled water

Aqua Pearl Mica

Apricot Blush Mica

1982 Blue Mica

Super Pearly White Mica

Activated Charcoal

18 Bar Birchwood Mold with Silicone Liner

Swirl Tool Kit

Fragrance blend of:

3.4 oz. Cedarwood Essential Oil and 1.6 oz. Peppermint 2nd Distilled Essential Oil

Click here to add everything you need for this project to your Bramble Berry shopping cart!

If you’ve never made Cold Process soap before, stop here! I highly recommend checking out our FREE four part SoapQueen.tv series on Cold Process Soapmaking, especially the episode on lye safety. And if you’d rather do some reading, Bramble Berry carries a wide range of books on the topic, including my newest book, Soap Crafting. You can also checkout the digital downloads for that instant gratification factor. This is an advanced technique and should not be attempted without a few recipes under your belt.

SAFETY FIRST: Suit up for safe handling practices! That means goggles, gloves and long sleeves. Make sure kids, pets, and other distractions and tripping hazards are out of the house or don’t have access to your soaping space. Always soap in a well-ventilated area.

COLOR PREP: Disperse 1 teaspoon of each pigment into 1 tablespoon of liquid oil (we like Sweet Almond or Sunflower oils). Prepping your colors in the beginning will allow you to work quickly and give you more time to work with your soap. Use the mini mixer to get all those clumps worked out smoothly.

FRAGRANCE PREP: In a glass container, combine the Cedarwood and Peppermint Essential Oils. Give the mixture a good stir, and then set it aside.

TOOLS: This is a tutorial that uses two brand new soaping tools: the Comb Swirl Tool and the Easy Swirl Tool. You’ll use them in steps seven and eight to create the beautiful Frog Foot Swirl in just two motions. If you decide to order the new tools, please note that they will arrive fully assembled and ready for use in our 18 Bar Birchwood Mold. If you’d like to use them in a smaller mold, or rearrange the screws to create a different pattern, you can easily disassemble the whole tool and configure it to your specifications. Each tool is lovingly handcrafted in our Bellingham, Wash. warehouse, and just like all handmade items, variations between products are normal.

ONE: Slowly and carefully add the lye to the water, and stir until clear. Set aside to cool. If you’d like a harder bar of soap that lasts longer in the shower, you can add Sodium Lactate to the cooled lye water. Use 1 teaspoon of Sodium Lactate per pound of oils in the recipe.

TWO: Melt and combine the Coconut, Canola, Palm, Castor, Hazelnut, Rice Bran and Sunflower oils in a large glass container. Once the lye water and the oils have cooled to 130 degrees or below (and are ideally within 10 degrees of each other), add the lye water to the oils and stick blend until thin trace.

THREE: Split the batter equally into five containers, and then add one colorant per container. We added:

1.5 teaspoons of dispersed Super Pearly White in container 1.
3/4 teaspoons of dispersed Super Pearly White and 1/3 dispersed Activated Charcoal in container 2.
1.5 teaspoons dispersed Aqua Pearl in container 3.
1.5 teaspoons Apricot Blush in container 4.
1 teaspoon 1982 Blue in container 5.

Using a spatula or whisk, mix the colorant into the batter.

FOUR: Once you’ve fully mixed in the colorant, divide the fragrance oil blend equally between the 5 containers and mix.

FIVE: Once the fragrance has been fully incorporated, pour each color into its own condiment bottle. Fill each bottle about halfway (6 oz.) full.

SIX: Using the remaining soap in the containers, pour one color at a time down the middle of the mold. Layer each color on top of the other in the same order to create a unique pattern that will spread outward. Repeat this process until you’ve emptied all 5 soap containers.

SEVEN:Once you’ve emptied all 5 containers, use your condiment bottles to squirt horizontal lines of soap across the mold. Repeat this process with all 5 colors, layering one on top of the other in the same order, until you’ve emptied all the bottles.

EIGHT: Insert the Comb Swirl Tool at the top of the mold and slowly and smoothly drag it straight down to create a non-pareil pattern.

NINE: Pay close attention, because this is where the Frog Foot differs from the Peacock Swirl. Instead of dragging the Easy Swirl Tool in the same direction you drug the Comb Swirl Tool, drag it in the opposite direction. So, if you drug the comb tool down from the top of the mold, start with the swirl tool at the bottom and drag it up in slowly undulating ‘S’ curves. The resulting design will create the same S-curves, but they will have points instead of soft bubbly plumes like the Peacock.

Spray the entire top with 91 or 99% Isopropyl Alcohol to reduce soda ash. Cover and insulate for 24 hours and unmold after 3-4 days, and allow to cure for 4-6 weeks. Below you can really see the difference between the Frog Foot (top) and the traditional Peacock (bottom).

Have you used either of our new swirl tools to create either the Frog Foot or the Peacock Swirl? We’d love to hear how they’ve worked out for you!

Leopard Spot Melt & Pour

October 1, 2013 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

After we posted our Cold Process Leopard Spot Tutorial, one of the commenters asked if we could make this out of melt and pour. Challenge accepted! You could easily whip a top to make this look even more similar to its cold process counterpart. This is a fun project that utilizes our 4-in-1 Mini Cylinder Silicone Mold to creatively make leopard inspired-spots. This is a multi-part tutorial that requires several days to complete, but we think the result is worth it. For even more animal print goodness, check out the cold process version of this tutorial.

What You’ll Need:

50 oz. Clear Melt & Pour Base

Black Oxide Color Block

Electric Bubblegum Color Block

Ultraviolet Blue Color Block

Titanium Dioxide Color Block

.7 oz. Mango Peach Salsa Fragrance Oil

4-in-1 Mini Cylinder Silicone Mold

2 lb. Wood Log Mold with Silicone Liner

Click here to add everything you need for this project to your Bramble Berry shopping cart!

NOTE: You may want to give yourself a few days to complete this project. After you create the spots, you’ll need to let them set up overnight. After that, assembling the rest of this recipe is a breeze!

ONE: Cut 10 oz of Clear melt and Pour into 1 x 1 inch chunks and then add chunks of the Titanium Dioxide Color Block. Melt the soap in a heat safe container on 30 second bursts and stif to mix the base and colorant.

TWO: Once the soap has been fully melted, add 3 mL of Mango Peach Salsa Fragrance Oil.

THREE: Pour the white soap into the cylinder molds. Note: the Ice Tubes mold was discontinued, so this project now includes the 4-in-1 Mini Cylinder Silicone Mold.

FOUR: Let the soap harden in the molds overnight.

FIVE: After allowing the soap to sit overnight, remove it from the mold. Use a Soap Cutter to cut the soap cylinders in half. It’s okay if shards break off unevenly, that will add character to your leopard spots!

SIX: Reassemble the cylinder molds. Fill 12 cavities with the white soap shards.

SEVEN: Cut another 10 oz. of Clear Melt and Pour and add 4 mL of Mango Peach Salsa Fragrance Oil. Then split it equally into two containers (with 5 oz. of soap each). Shave of chunks of the Ultraviolet Blue Color Block to color one container and chunks of the Electric Bubblegum Color Block to color the second. Melt the soap in heatsafe containers on 10 second bursts, stirring between each heat. Spray the white soap liberally with isopropyl alcohol, and then once the soap has cooled to 130 degress or below, pour the soap into the mold over the white chunks.

Just like before, allow the soap to sit overnight. This will make the tubes much easier to unmold.

EIGHT: Cut and melt 30 oz. of Clear Melt and Pour base and color with chunks of the Black Oxide Color Block. Fragrance with .5 oz. of Mango Peach Salsa Fragrance Oil.

NINE: Pour a thin layer (about 2 – 4 oz.) of soap into the mold. Spray with isopropyl alcohol and wait 15 – 20 minutes for the soap to form a thick skin.

TEN: Once the soap has formed a thick skin, unmold your colored “spots” and place them in the mold.

ELEVEN: At this point you may need to reheat the black soap. Melt the soap on 30 second bursts, and then once it has cooled to 130 degrees or below, pour the remaining black soap over the spots.

Let the soap harden overnight and it’s ready to use right away!