Search Results for: alcohol

Candy Swirl Soap – Part Three

May 25, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Missed the intro for this Pinwheels Soap Project?

Click here for Part One.
Click here for Part Two.

Step 7: Fill another coffee cup or heat safe Pyrex with soap.Melt the soap and add color (to preference) and fragrance.

Step 8:Let melted soap cool so that it is no longer steaming and won’t burn your finger (if you were to dip your finger in the glass). The goal is to have the soap cool enough to not melt the white pinwheel swirls.Spray the four pieces of white soap in the round mold with rubbing alcohol and pour the remaining colored soap into the mold, over the pinwheel soap cut outs.The rubbing alcohol ensures that the pieces will adhere nicely to your overpour.

Step 9: Place mold back into the freezer for roughly 25 minutes if you’re impatient and willing to get condensation on your soaps. If you want to ensure that you don’t get glycerin dew on your soaps, resist the urge to hurry the process and wait 3 hours before gently popping your soaps out.

Step 10: Enjoy!

While these aren’t Pinwheel soaps, I think this type of wrapping would be phenomenal for the Pinwheel Soap Project.

Candy Swirl Soap – Part One

May 24, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Over on the TeachSoap Forum, Erin asked for a tutorial on making the exciting Peppermint Candy Soaps that I made at Christmas.

Here is a tutorial on making Peppermint Candy Soaps – but redone for Spring with happy pastel colors.

The set up is simple:

White Melt and Pour
Clear Melt and Pour
Non-Bleeding Colorant
Fragrance or Essential Oil
Milky Way Round Mold
Rubbing Alcohol
Knife (a little paring knife)

Directions for Making Candy Swirl Soaps

Step 1: Cut soap into small squares

Step 2: Melt soap in a coffee cup or Pyrex container (or whatever you have that is heat safe in the microwave).

Step 3: Add scent to melted soap base. I used .25 ounces of fragrance per pound of soap. Pour soap base into the round mold and spritz with a finishing touch of alcohol. If you are incredibly impatient (like me), put mold into the freezer for roughly 25 minutes. If you want to do things the “right” way to ensure no condensation is formed, wait 2 hours and pop the soap out of the molds.

Loopy Soap – Day Two

May 6, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Click here for Day One on pouring and making the swirls.Step Five: Repeat Steps 1 – 4 with the Heavy Metal Gold Mica. I used a flexible Silicone Baking Pan in a circle for the Heavy Metal Gold color.Step Six: Position the Purple Swirls on the bottom of the mold with the Gold Loops on top in a matching fashion.

Step Seven: Melt 16 ounces of clear soap in a Pyrex Container. Melt another 16 ounces of soap in a separate container.

Step Eight: Fragrance with a minimum of 2 ounces of fragrance. You can use all the way up to 3 ounces depending on personal preference.

Step Nine: Color one of the 16 ounce melted soap with with Blue Green Mica. Leave the other container of soap uncolored.

Step Ten: Spray the purple and gold curls thoroughly with rubbing alcohol. With the soap base over pour *not* steaming, pour the blue soap on one side of the mold while simultaneously pouring the clear soap from the other side of the mold

Step Eleven: Do a quick spritz of rubbing alcohol over the top of your mold. Allow the soap to harden fully overnight.

Step Twelve: Gently peel soap mold from sides of soap until airlock is broken. Carefully push soap out of the mold.

Final Step: Cut the soap and surprise yourself with how amazing it looks.

Check back later this week for our Final Reveal of how cute this soap turned out for us.

Loopy Soap – Day One

May 5, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Welcome to my fun Loopy Soap tutorial! What in the world is Loopy Soap? Follow along and find out.

Utilizing our still-not-finalized, waiting-for-harder-plastic loaf molds for Melt and Pour and our ultra cool silicone baking tray mold, this soap is easy to make.

You’ll need:

Clear Melt & Pour (I used our Bulk Base; you could use any of them)
Non-Bleeding Purple Colorant
Heavy Metal Gold
Fragrance (I used Red Lychee Tea)
Plastic Loaf Mold (I have extra of the weaker plastic molds. If you want one for $15, let me know)
Silicone Baking Tray
Pyrex (or heat safe glass)
Rubbing Alcohol in spritzer bottle
Spoon

Step One: Melt 8 ounces of clear soap in the microwave.

Step Two: Color with non-bleeding purple. Pour into Silicone Baking Tray.

Optional: If using an old or dried out melt and pour, add 1 Tablespoon of Liquid Glycerin at Step Two to help with pliability.

Step Three: After soap has hardened (about 20 minutes), gently peel soap out of mold. Cut into strips. Start to fold the soap over and on itself.

Tip: Fold within 20 or 30 minutes of pouring. If you wait too long, the soap will form small cracks (like the soap in the photo). The cracks will also happen if you put the soap in the freezer to speed the hardening process. It’s important that you allow the soap to harden at room temperature.

Step Four: Carefully position the soap in the mold, checking to make sure the fit is perfect.

Click here for the next steps!

Or Click here to skip ahead and see the final results.

Mother’s Day Rose Soap Project

March 26, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Mother’s Day is coming right up (Sunday, May 11th). It’s never to early to shower the woman who gave you life with gifts galore.

We’ve designed some easy soap, lotion and lip balm projects around the flavor fragrance Passionfruit Rose. It’s an edible fragrance oil so it can be used in all manner of products, not just soap and lotions.

A big shout out to the Otionites who spearheaded the fun creativity of this project.

You’ll need:

Flexible Rose Mold (exclusive to BB!)
Labcolors Canary, Red & Emerald
White Melt & Pour
Clear Melt & Pour
Droppers
Passionfruit Rose Fragrance & Flavor
Rubbing Alcohol in a spray bottle

Step One: Melt 2 ounces of clear melt and pour. Color it with one drop of Emerald Green Labcolor (or any green you have). Draw up the melted green soap into a dropper. Carefully dropper the melted soap into the vines on the soap mold.

Step Two: Repeat step one with a yellow, red or any rose color you’d like. Dropper the melted soap into the rose. If you are using clear labcolors, the bubbles will show through the front of the rose so be sure to spritz away any bubbles that form with rubbing alcohol.

Step Three: Once the roses and vines have set up, carefully tilt the soap mold and outline the vines on the side of the soap mold. Hold the mold steady as the green soap hardens in the vines.

Step Four: Melt the white soap in the microwave. Add Passionfruit Rose flavor fragrance and stir the fragrance in fully. If your soap is steaming, it is too warm and will melt vines and roses.

Step Five: Spritz the vines and roses with alcohol to help adhesion of the white melt and pour layer.

Step Six: Slowly pour the melted, scented white melt and pour into the mold. Spritz the back of the soap, once poured, with alcohol to get rid of any pesky lingering bubbles.

Step Seven: Wait for soap to harden fully. Gently pull mold away from sides of soap and carefully push soap out. Marvel at your creation. Wrap it and label it with love.

Hints for getting layers to stick:

Fresh soap is best
Use the same brand of clear melt and pour as white melt and pour
Alcohol between layers helps adhesion
Pouring layers quickly helps adhesion

Microsoft Soap – Set Up

March 23, 2008 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Melt & Pour Soap

To make the Microsoft Small Business Summit soap (or any soap using Water Soluble Paper), you will need the following:

White Melt and Pour Soap
Clear Melt and Pour Soap
Fragrance (non-yellowing)
Water Soluble Paper
Optional: Dropper & Glitter

Knife (to cut the soap)
Spritzer Bottle filled with Rubbing Alcohol
Pyrex (or heat safe container)
Spoon
Soap Mold (I like Milky Way Molds)

Water Soluble Paper is a super soluble paper that can be printed on with an inkjet printer or written on.

Step One: Design & Print your Project

Since Water Soluble Paper is $.60 per sheet, try to fit as many logos, photos or wording onto a full sheet of paper. Print a full sheet using an ink jet printer. With a fine mister of hairspray, finely mist the entire sheet. The hairspray helps to keep the color from bleeding once the paper is embedded in the soap.

Step Two: Test

Cut the logo, the photo or the wording out of the paper. Test to make sure the object easily fits inside of your chosen mold.

Microsoft Soap – Backing

March 23, 2008 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Melt & Pour Soap

Day One – Set-Up
Day Two – Drop In

Step Six: Final Layer

Once the first clear layer is fully hardened, melt the white soap. The white backing will help the photo show up well. The cooler and thicker the soap is, the less bleeding you will get with the water soluble paper. Allow the white soap to cool until it is no longer steaming. Add fragrance now (optional). Do not spray alcohol in between layers. The alcohol wets the paper and makes it more prone to bleeding. Pour the white soap slowly over the clear soap and photo layer.

Step Seven: Spritz and Wait

Spritz the back of the white layer with the rubbing alcohol. Wait 4 to 6 hours before popping the soap out of the mold. Wrap quickly with saran wrap.

Lucky Shamrock Soap

March 6, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day which is coming right up, I’ve designed a fun St. Patrick’s Day, green themed, soap project. You can find other St. Patrick’s Day inspirations, including more molds and colorant ideas here.

You’ll need:

2 pounds, 8 ounces clear melt and pour
8 onces white melt and pour
Milky Way Shamrock Mold
Loaf Mold (ours aren’t ready but I have 20 made up in a slightly too flexible plastic if anyone wants them for $17 each. Just email me at info -at- brambleberry -dot- com to get it)
Opalescent Green Mica
Iridescent Glitter
Emerald Green (Shamrocks on top)
Non-Bleeding Oxide Green (Shamrocks on bottom)
Fragrance: Lettuce or Green Tea is perfect!

Pyrex Container
Spoons
Rubbing Alcohol in a Spritzer Bottle

Instructions

Step 1: Make the Shamrocks. Be sure to fragrance them. They end up making up 20% of your total soap in the final product. We used Emerald Green (which bleeds) and Non-Bleeding Green Oxide.

Step 2: If you allow the Shamrocks to sit overnight, be sure to cover them in an airtight container. The more fresh the soap is, the easier it is to adhere in the final product.

Step 3: Heat 8 ounces of clear soap in the microwave. Stir thoroughly until it is no longer steaming and there are no chunks. Fragrance this soap with .1 to .2 ounces of fragrance oil.
Step 4: Pour the clear soap in the bottom of the loaf. Spritz each Shamrock down with rubbing alcohol. Embedd them at an angle to allow air bubbles to flow up the sides. The loaf mold holds three Shamrocks easily.

Step 5: Allow a thick skin to form. Pour a layer of white soap to really make the shamrocks pop.
Step 5.5: Then, it’s time to swirl! Using 2 to 4 ounces of colored soap per pour (don’t forget to fragrance), swirl and layer varying green. We used Emerald Green, Irridescent Green, and White melt and pour to get the final look.

Step 6: Allow to harden to a very thick skin. This layer needs to support the next layer of soap and three Shamrocks! Pour a thin layer of Clear Soap (colored with Iridescent Mica).

Step 7: Spray each Shamrock liberally with rubbing alcohol. Gently set each Shamrock, face up, into the thin layer of soap. Pour remaining soap around the Shamrocks, filling the soap so that the Shamrocks are just barely set into the surface of the soap.

Step 8: Do one final spritz of rubbing alcohol and allow soap to harden at least four hours or overnight.

Check back tomrorow for the final photo to see how this fun loaf turned out.

Cut Out Soaps – Embedding

March 2, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Day One – Set Up

Day Two – Making Daisy Cut Outs
Day Three – Marbeling Option

Embedding soaps is best done with fresh soap. The more moist and glycerin laden that the soap is, the easier the embedded soap sticks in the soap without separating.

Embedding the Daisies

Step One: Melt clear melt and pour soap in the microwave on short bursts. Stir to ensure all the pieces are evenly melted.

Step Two: Fragrance the soap. Remember, yellow or orange fragrances are fine to use but may make greens and blue colors not show up as clearly as you want.

Step Three: Pour a thin layer of soap into the bottom of your basic shape mold. Make sure that the soap is not steaming. If you cannot easily put your finger in the soap without burning your finger, it’s not ready to be poured for embedding. This is what happens if you pour the clear soap too warm.

Step Four: Spray the surface of the clear soap with alcohol. Insert the daisy flower at an angle. If you place your flower down flat, air bubbles can easily be caught under the flower, marring the beautiful look of the soap. The angle allows the air bubbles to flow up the side of the flower.

Step Five: You can pour clear soap over the back of the embedded daisies and have a clear, see-through bar. Or, you can wait for the clear soap to harden (about 10 minutes) and move onto Step Six.

Step Six: After the clear soap layer is thick enough to support a second layer, spritz the clear soap with rubbing alcohol. Then, pour a contrasting color. Opaque soap backs are particularly nice to show contrasting spring colors.

Step Seven: Finish your second layer off with a final spritz of alcohol.

Check back tomorrow for final photos showing color and option variations.

Cut Out Soaps – Ingredients & Tools

February 27, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Bramble Berry got a nice press recommendation today. Thank you Modish for listing Bramble Berry as a top supplier for soapmaking supplies.Spring is coming! So, it’s time to pull out the pastel colors, white melt and pour soap and make happy designs. In this project, you’ll learn how to use cookie cutters to create soap inserts, marble those inserts and use cut-outs to make two-toned soap soap inserts.

So, gather your supplies and let’s get started!

You’ll need:

Cookie Cutters (we used the Daisy Flower Fondant Cut-Outs. You can buy them here along with a great alphabet cut-out set for $3.99)

White Melt & Pour Soap Base (I used Bramble Berry’s Economy Base)

Clear Melt & Pour Soap Base (ditto on the Economy Base)

Non-Bleeding Colors (I used the Non-Bleeding Blue, Yellow & Pink)

Spring Scent – pick your own but might I humbly suggest Rosehip Jasmine, Lilac or Lettuce?

Basic Shape Mold (Milky Way Square, Round and Rectangle)

Heat Safe Container

Spoons

Droppers

Spray bottle with rubbing alcohol

Tomorrow, we’ll start the cut-out process for these happy spring soaps.

Lipstick making – ingredients & melting

February 20, 2008 Filed Under: Lip Products

Click here for day one – lip stick colorants

When making lipstick, there are a lot of different ingredients you can use. The basic ingredients are covered here but there are many, many more exotic oils, waxes and butters that can be used in lipsticks.

Wax – Waxes can be beeswax, candelilla wax, jasmine wax, orange wax and ozokerite wax. Most common to the home crafter is beeswax because of its pricing and easy availability. For vegans, candelilla wax is the preferred alternative since it is derived from a plant. Waxes are used to help provide a barrier against the elements, seal moisture in the lips and keep color on your lips. Waxes also help to provide shape and form to the lipstick mixture.

Oils – Oil in lipstick are used to be moisturizing, help provide a barrier against weather and also mix with the waxes to form a smooth, spreadable mixture. Popular oils in lipsticks are Sweet Almond Oil, Avocado Oil, Olive Oil and Hempseed oil. There are many other liquid oil options to use. It’s fun to play around with exotic or lesser known oils but remember, if your lipstick really takes off in the market, you want to make sure that the oils you choose are easily available and cost effective.

Butters – Butters are used in much the same way as oils are. They are designed to moisturize, help protect and make a stable mixture that is solid at room temperature yet glides and melts on the lips. Common butters in lip balm recipes are Shea Butter, Mango Butter and Cocoa Butter. Generally, large brands of lipstick do not use butters in their formulations. Since butters are comprised of many different fatty acid chains, they are described as “polymorphic,” which means that they have the ability to crystallize in several different forms according to how the liquid fat is solidified. What this means to you is that butters must be treated with gentle loving care in lipsticks. You need to melt them slowly (temper them) and then immediately place the finished product into the freezer for quick chilling. This will help to minimize any crystals that might form hard, unsightly bumps in your final product. Or, you can do what the “big guys” do and just avoid butters all together.

Lip Safe Fragrance – Lip Safe Fragrances are commonly referred to as “flavors.” They are not the traditional alcohol based flavors or extracts in the grocery store. While fragrance oils have up to 3500 different ingredients that can go into them, less than 10% of them are classified as safe for lips. This is because you “eat” your lipstick so anything that goes onto your lips must be GRAS (“generally recognized as safe” as classified by the FDA). Flavor oils, or lip safe fragrances, do not taste like anything. Rather, the user is tricked into believing that the lipstick or lip balm “tastes” because they inhale the scent. Seventy-Five percent of what we taste is actually from our sense of smell.

Before you get started, gather your equipment and ingredients.

Equipment Needed:

droppers
knives
spoons
small glass jars (microwaveable)
chapstick tubes/or lip pots
lip safe colorants
beeswax or another wax
liquid oil (sweet almond oil, hazelnut oil, jojoba oil – it’s your choice)
lip safe flavor

President’s Day Soap

February 18, 2008 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Melt & Pour Soap

President’s Day was originally designed to celebrate President Washington’s birthday. Now it’s common to include President Lincoln, also born in February and all the presidents in this federal holiday. To celebrate the day, I made soap (no surprise there).

This soap is an easy three layer loaf soap, with some sparkles thrown in for fun.

Ingredients:

White Melt and Pour
Clear Melt and Pour
Non-Bleeding Red Liquid Color
Non-Bleeding Blue Liquid Color
Iridescent Glitter

For this project, I used the new Bulk Economy base (150 pounds for $180). With its extra glycerin, the layers stick together easily.

Before starting the layers, make the sparkle corridors by adding a dense amount of sparkle (1 heaping teaspoon to 8 ounces of clear soap) to melted clear soap. Keep stirring until the glitter suspends in the soap. The soap will be thick and soupy and almost ready to set up before the glitter will evenly suspend. Pour into a mold long enough to span the entire length of your loaf.

The first layer is made with clear soap and non-bleeding red. It’s important to use clear soap to get a true red. If you use white soap, the color will end up pink. Hint: if you use a yellowing fragrance (such as orange essential oil), your red color may end up orange. Choose your fragrance wisely.

Pour the first layer. Allow it to harden with a thick skin. Depending on how hot you poured the soap, this may take 5 to 15 minutes. While you’re waiting, cut the glitter soap into long strips.

Spritz rubbing alcohol onto the first layer to help layer adhesion. Pour the second layer of white soap. Because you will be embedding the glitter strips in the soap, make sure that the soap is a cool temperature. If it is too hot, the surrounding soap will melt the glitter strips giving a different effect than wanted. Once the white layer is poured, add the glitter strips to the soap. Make sure that you are fragrancing each layer. I normally forget to fragrance at least one layer.

Wait for this layer to harden with a thick skin, enough to sustain another layer of soap. Prepare the blue soap. To ensure crisp, clean lines, make sure that your blue color is a non-bleeding color. Spritz the white soap with isopropyl alchol. Pour the blue layer.

Wait for the entire soap to harden fully. Cut with a sharp knife or a crinkle cutter. Oooh, ahhh and celebrate President’s Day with your patriotic soap.

Cutest Cupcake Soap

February 6, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

It seems a week cannot go by without a cupcake or cupcake related product catching my eye. When you see the detail work on the soap cupcakes below, you’ll understand why these caught my attention.

Heather from Twin Birch Bath and Body created these amazing cupcakes.

When I make them, I use your cold process m&p base (which we all know I am in love with!). I pour the base and let it set up until it’s fairly solid on its top. (about 5-6 minutes) then I whip the “frosting”. It’s your base, whipped with a hand mixer until it just this side of stiff. It sets up quite a bit in the pastry bag, so I try to start a little loose. I give the base “cake” a big spritz of alcohol, then I just release my inner pastry chef and pipe it on.

I use the huge pastry tips so that the soap is easier to pipe. The decorations are actual cake sprinkles.

I’m playing with a Mimosa Soapcake featuring your Champagne FO (which I love!) and your Orange Peel FO. I’ll ship one out when they are done!

Head over to her Etsy shop to buy a pack of 3 for $18 or just a single (but, it’ll be lonely!). It’s not too late to be thinking of fun Valentine’s presents.

Heather, I can hardly wait to see one of these pieces of art in person. Thank you for sharing your technique with the Soap Queen Community.

Soap on a Rope – a second way to try it

February 3, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

We’ve covered Soap on a Rope extensively already (here, here and here). Nicole in Customer Service wasn’t satisfied with how soapy her ropes ended up getting when the soap was poured around the ropes. This is the alternate project she came up with to solve the Soapy Soap Rope Conundrum.
Supplies Needed
Opaque Melt and Pour soap base
3-D Soap Mold
Microwave safe container
Saran Wrap
Spritzer bottle filled w/ rubbing alcohol
Colorant (we like Labcolors for opaque soap)
Fragrance oil
Soap Rope

Cut melt and pour soap into 1” cubes and put into microwave safe container (about 5oz should be enough for one bar). Cover with saran wrap and microwave for 30 second intervals until soap is melted.
Stir in the fragrance oil and colorant.
Take apart your 3-D mold so that the two sides are flat on your work space.
Pour a small amount of the soap base into each side of the mold and spray with alcohol.
Wait a few minutes until the soap has set up a bit and is stiff to the touch.
Spray your soap rope with alcohol and place your soap rope where you want it to be in the mold (centered).
Snap the mold shut, put on the rubber bands.
Get the rest of your soap base (will probably need another trip to the microwave).
Spray a few times with your alcohol into the hole on top of the mold.
Pour your melted soap base into the mold until full.
Slighty tip the mold from side to side and tap on your counter to get any possible trapped air bubbles to float to the top.
Spray once more with alcohol to pop any air bubbles that have risen.
Let mold sit for a few hours before unmolding (the longer you wait the easier this will be).
Trim the edges of the soap.
Look! No extra soap on the rope!