Search Results for: make it monday

PurplePinkOrange

October 21, 2008 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Thank you PurplePinkandOrange for the crafty shoutout on their indie finds, DIY blog. They said:

From now until the holidays are here, you’ll find some great ideas on gifts every Monday. Today, I’m going to suggest checking out Bramble Berry. Several years ago when I worked in a rather large office, I made soap for all my coworkers. Yes, that’s the actual image of some of the soap I whipped up on the left. Bramble Berry has everything you are going to need: soap bases, colorants, scents, molds. To begin, there’s a tutorial to get you started on many different ways to make melt and pour and cold process soap. If you haven’t ever made melt and pour soap, it’s a very easy process.

We couldn’t agree more.

Tutorial: Textured Headstone Soap

October 16, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

To complete the set from Monday’s post, here is how to make a cool headstone with the same mold used for the Crypt Soap. This is a really fun way to add some technique to a soap but without needing any artistic ability. If you can dab, you will have great results. Try it with the kiddos!

What You’ll Need:
5 oz White Melt and Pour Soap Base
Black Oxide
Dragon’s Blood Fragrance Oil

Halloween Trio Mold
A small cup

A paintbrush (flat stencil brush works best)

1) In your small cup, melt 1/2 ounce of white soap base. Stir in a generous pinch of black oxide. It won’t dissolve completely, but the lumps will give your texture more dimension.2) Take your stencil brush and dip into soap. Dab soap into mold, creating a rough texture. It can be really random and sloppy since it’s good to have some light areas and some heavy areas.

3) In a larger cup, melt the rest of your soap base. Stir in some of your leftover gray soap from step 1 to make it light grey. Stir in 1/4 teaspoon fragrance oil. Allow to cool as much as possible (to 120 degrees or less). Pour into your mold and spray with alcohol to pop any bubbles. Allow to harden and unmold. Voila!

To see this technique used on a Coat of Arms Soap, click here.

Check in next week to see how to enhance your soaps even more with a cool mica technique. With melt and pour, the fun never ends!!

See you then!
Debbie, Soapylove

Bleeding Colors? What’s That Halo!?

August 16, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

After Debbie’s Guest Post on using Oxides in Melt and Pour soap, I received some emails requesting more information about bleeding colorants. Thank you for the feedback – please, keep it coming.

Melt and Pour soap is an extremely versatile art form. The options for making exceedingly clean, precise and gorgeous designs are literally endless … that is, if you have the right colors.

What is bleeding? Bleeding is when a color from an embedded object or layer leaches out into the surrounding soap base (see example photo above and below). It is often a sad surprise when a beautiful design turns into a mushy, unrecognizable color blob. It’s still soap but it’s not quite the look originally intended.

Why do colors bleed? Melt and Pour base is a water soluble product. FD&C (Food, Drug & Cosmetic) colorants (like food coloring or Labcolors) are usually also water soluble as well. When there is no barrier or medium to form a protective line, the water soluble color will start to migrate (or swim) through the water soluble melt and pour.

What is the right color? If you would like to make a soap that looks like the glamorous Silhouette Soap on the right, with clean, crisp lines, it is important that you use a “Non-Bleeding” color. The right color is a generally colorant that is oil based or one that colors through dispersion. This means that the color doesn’t mix into the soap so much as it suspends little micro-particles throughout the soap, giving the illusion of constant color.

The “right” colors for non bleeding colors are:

Oxides (without exception)
Most Micas (some oil based lip colors do bleed)
Pigments & Oxides in liquid

Click here for a list of all of the Bramble Berry colorants that do not bleed in Melt & Pour soap.

If you’ve been hesitatant to try using Oxides or Pigments in Melt & Pour soap, now is the time to do it. Debbie did an amazing tutorial about using Oxides and Pigments in Melt and Pour. Following her instructions will significantly cut down your learning curve and allow you to acheive clean, crisp designs without stress about your colorants.

I’ll be headed to the Pacific Northwest Soapers Gathering bright and early on Sunday morning. I won’t be doing a blog post tomorrow but I will be Twittering about the gathering and TwitPic’ing photographs all day. You can follow my Twitter feed here, look at the TwitPics on the right hand side of this blog or by going directly to my TwitPic feed here. I’ll (hopefully!) have a round up post about the gathering posted late tomorrow night or Monday morning.

Happy Soaping!

Using Jojoba Beads in M & P

August 7, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

There are many types of exfoliants you can add to Melt & Pour soap that add textural and visual interest to your designs. Bramble Berry carries lots of great options like bamboo powder, seeds, pumice, and now almond meal, which you can find on their exfoliants page. You can also try salt, sugar, even sand. Don’t overdo it, though. Once I added coffee grounds which resulted in a bar so scratchy “it could take barnacles off a ship,” my husband observed. Oops.

My favorite exfoliant is jojoba beads. Jojoba beads are awesome because they’re gentle and come in gorgeous colors. They can be a beautiful part of your soap design. In the soap picture above I used yellow beads in a clear bar as part of a set of citrus soaps.

There are 2 challenges to using jojoba beads, though – they can melt or float if you’re not careful. In my Citrus Set, the two other bars also had jojoba beads but they totally melted, making my bars look like solid colors. That was a mistake. I should have waited until my melted soap was between 120-130 degrees before stirring them in.

To avoid floating, you should be very conservative with how much you use. The more you use, the harder it is to get them all incorporated. So start with a pinch and add more until you’re happy, but then wait until the soap starts to thicken, like a thin pudding, before you pour into your molds. Or you can get soap base with a suspension additive which takes all the guesswork out of it. This is a must if you’re adding botanicals like tea leaves which LOVE to float!

You can also use jojoba beads as a garnish for your soaps, instead of stirring them in. Here’s a picture of some Soap Tarts where I sprinkled a mixture of beads onto a pink sheet of soap while it was still hot, which I later cut into frosting shapes (see my Cameo Soap Kit for how to make your own embeds like this). You can also sprinkle them on top of a loaf soap for some cute color.

Next Monday I’ll have a new tutorial featuring Jojoba Beads, so make sure to come back and check it out! Thanks and have fun!

Class is in Session Soon – Get Your Supplies

July 26, 2008 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Want to follow along with the Soap Queen blog as we guide you to making the fabulous soaps from the Soap Weekend Intensive? You can buy the full kits here or make your own with what you already have in your soap cupboards. If you buy the kit, you get the Soapmaking Intensive Weekend booklet (with full project instructions to all of the weekend fun) included for free. Links to individual ingredients are below or go directly to the Kits page to get the entire kit for each project:

Clam Shell (Bivalve) Soap

1 oz. Seamoss fragrance

1 pound Shea Butter Melt & Pour

1 pound Shaving Soap Melt & Pour

.2 oz. Brown Oxide pigment

.2 oz. Green Chrome Oxide

.2 oz. Black Oxide

1 Mold Market Bivalve Clamshell mold

1 PJ’s Toolkit

Crescent Moon Soap

1 oz. Lily of the Valley fragrance (Cybilla)

1 pound Shea Butter Melt & Pour

1 pound Shaving Melt & Pour soap

.2 oz. Ultramarine Oxide

.2 oz. Black Oxide

1 Heavy Duty Crescent Moon Mold

Cameo Soap

1 pound clear melt & pour soap

1 pound white m elt & pour soap

1 oz. Soapy Clean fragrance

.2 oz. black oxide

1 Four Basic Shapes Milky Way Mold

UFO Soap

1 oz. Freesia fragrance (Cybilla)

1 pound white melt & pour soap

1 pound clear melt & pour soap

.2 oz Opalescent Turquoise Mica (soap pictured uses Non-Bleeding Blue Pigment Liquid)

.2 oz. Iridescent Glitter

1 Milky Way Spaceship mold

4 mini martian toys

Soap Weekend Intensive Schedule for blog

Monday Aug 18th – Soapylove’s UFO Soaps
Tuesday September 2nd – PJ’s Seashell Soaps
Monday September 15th – Crescent Moon Soap
Monday September 29th – Cameo Silhouette Soap
Monday October 13th – Lotion class

PJ’s Soap Goodies AND Giveaway

April 22, 2008 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Do you want to learn how to make glorious soaps like these? The easiest way to learn is to be taught by the actual master herself, Paula Kates from PJ’s soaps. You can learn in person at our Soapmaking Weekend Intensive this July at Otion. Two days of expert teaching from some of the best soapers in the business. There are just 8 slots left. Click here to learn more about the fabulous weekend.

The next best thing is to buy PJ’s kit. PJ has an entire kit that she’s designed available through Bramble Berry to make these amazing soaps. To kick off our new product, PJ has graciously donated a deluxe, ultra super duper kit just for Soap Queen readers. This kit is valued at $45.

What do you have to *do* to win this kit? It’s simple. Post in this thread and tell me what project you’ve made off the Soap Queen blog and what you thought of it. If you didn’t exactly make the same project but did something utilizing a technique you learned from the blog, that’s okay as well.

You have all week to do it. I’ll pick a winner next Monday from the Soap Guild Conference and announce the winner next week.

Super Saturday Round-Up

April 12, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Our Super Saturday started off in a promising way – the sunshine rose bright and high in the sky. It was our first weekend of real sun. Apparently, even the weather in Washington wanted to show respect to the Dalai Lama.

Before the Seeds of Compassion show, Chris and I had a chance to wander around Pioneer Square. We found a cute little cafe (Cafe Umbria) that served European Drinking Chocolate. It was a bit like eating warm, runny pudding. The effect was delicious and comforting.

Then, we went to F.X. McRory’s for a s-l-o-w (service) lunch. We were delighted to be joined by Lela Barker from Bella Lucce and her Marketing Director, Jennifer. Lela had lots of energy and bountiful amounts of drive and ambition. We talked business, shared self-employment horror stories and laughed a lot. Lela shared that her very first order in her crafting career was from Bramble Berry. I was honored that she took the time to go to lunch with us.

Then, we went to the Qwest Field show to watch the Dalai Lama with 50,000 other people. Click here if you missed my post on the event.

After Qwest Field, we headed out to grab a bite to eat. Chris is thinking about getting some new glasses so we had fun trying on eyewear. These are the same spectacles that Bill Gates wears. Chris is in good company if he gets this pair.

After the fashion show, we headed to Trophy Cupcakes in the hopes of trying the Marshmallow Graham Cupcakes that Martha featured last week. Alas, they were out of them so we had to make do with Lemon (for Chris) and my traditional Red Velvet. Unfortunately, I had blocked out my last visit to Trophy. Their cupcakes have not improved since that last time and tasted heavy, bland and oily. But, we persevered and despite the challenges presented by the sub-par texture, we finished both cupcakes. I’ll be back in Seattle on Monday and aim to stop by again for one of those Martha-approved, Graham Marshmallow Cupcakes.

For now though, we’re happy to be back safe in our little home in sun drenched Bellingham and feel fortunate that we had such a jam packed, fun filled and enlightening Saturday.

The Search Continues ….

February 22, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Thank you to everyone that posted such positive, supportive comments yesterday for my Mom and Dad. It’s great to have such an awesome community at the blog.

We had a fabulous tour of the Nike facility (I want to work there when I “grow up”). Much thanks goes to customer Kate Dixon from Portland for arranging it and shepherding us around the sprawling campus. I am inspired after seeing their amenities for staff. Serving lunch and providing a workout facility for our Bramble Berry staff would be a dream!

Here we are on the Nike Campus; check out the beautiful grounds!

Then, we went in search of the best cupcake in Portland. We visited the Alphabet District’s Saint Cupcake. Sadly, they were out of Red Velvet cupcakes when we made it in so we had to make do with three minis and one Vanilla on Vanilla large dose.
Here is an employee making cupcakes for tomorrow’s hoard of rabid cupcake fans. She was using an ice cream scoop (? or something that looked like one) to get the cupcake batter into the wrappers.

After eating all three mini cupcakes tonight (the diet starts Monday), my experienced cupcake-tasting-buds declare that while Saint Cupcake isn’t as good as the Red Velvet cupcake at Cupcake Royale, these are better than the Trophy Cupcake from last week.

Tomorrow is Cupcake Jones. With the filling in every cupcake, it’s going to be an experience not to be missed.

PS – If you’re a soaper in the Portland area Saturday, stop by Besaw’s at noon to hang out, talk soap and have some good eats; more information here.

Skillful Newbies, Artistic Wonderment

December 10, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

These soaps were made by first timers at Otion’s Soap Bar. Aren’t they amazing for first timers? Our soap bar is open to anyone that wants to come make soap. You rent the bar for $7.50 (and get unlimited use of fragrance, color and molds) and only need to buy the soap base that is used.

Of course, Erik did a great job instructing them and helping out in between customers but I think that they had some soapmaking blood in their veins because these are very artistic soaps.

Copious use of glitter makes these Alien Head soaps really stand out.

Today, Monday, I teach a Cold Process Soapmaking class at Otion. We have two spots left for the 5:15 class. If you’re in Bellingham, sign up by calling the store at 360-676-1030.

Using 3-D Molds – Unmolding

July 25, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Welcome to Day Three in using 3-D Molds. Monday covered set up. Tuesday dealt with pouring and fill linesand today is all about unmolding and trimming.We recommend waiting a full two to four hours when unmolding your 3-Dsoap. The longer wait period is necessary because the soap retains its heat (and therefore stays liquid) longer than a traditional, open-topped mold. You can put the soap in the fridge for a few minutes to help with the release process. If you leave the soap in the fridge too long (fifteen minutes plus), it is prone to forming condensation and sticky glycerin dew.Using both hands, gently pull both sides away from each other. Most of the time, soap will seep out of the edges of the mold. This makes the mold harder to pry apart. Be gentle and patient. While 3-D molds are very heavy duty, they can crack if you apply too much pressure.

Despite the overfill, there is still a hole in this bar. As the soap was cooling and contracted in volume, the soap shrunk up, leaving a hole as bubbles drifted to the top of the surface. In this case, the bubbles caught at the top of the mold and became more concave as the soap shrunk. To help prevent this, tap your mold several times on the counter right after you’ve poured the warm soap. This will force the majority of air bubbles to the top of the mold and out the spout.

Watch for a post later today about trimming and finishing your 3-D soaps.

Contest! Prizes! Fun!

July 23, 2007 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Anyone that posts a comment this week on any article/blog post through Sunday will be entered into a drawing to win an assortment of 3-D soap molds! You’ll get five 3-D Soap molds and, if you’re a brand new soaper, let me know and I’ll make sure you get a free copy of the beginners Melt & Pour DVD as well.

If you’re looking for things to post about, a simple “Hi” would suffice. A “Hi! I wish you would focus more on XYZ on the blog” would be very helpful if you want extra-credit bonus points.

The winner will be chosen on Monday.