Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
Nothing does more damage to your skin than being outside in the elements in the sun and wind. Treat your overly sunned face to some pampering oils to help nourish, replenish and reduce inflammation. We’ve had a string of nice weather here in Bellingham, WA so you better believe that I’ve been wearing SPF protection and treating my eyes at night with this serum. Stay away wrinkles! You are not welcome here!
What makes this recipe so healing and skin loving?
This simple, four ingredient recipe only has 4 steps, making it easy to whip together a luxurious bath after a hard day on your feet. What’s so great about goatsmilk?
Goatmilk is particularly moisturizing and nourishing to the skin because of capric-caprylic triglyceride. Capric-caprylic triglyceride is an effective skin moisturizer that helps to contribute to skin softness by forming a barrier on the skin to help inhibit the loss of moisture. It is the only milk that contains naturally occurring capric-caprylic triglycerides. The protein strands of goat milk are shorter than other types of milk and are more readily absorbed by skin.
Goatmilk also has naturally occurring lactic acid that helps keep skin smooth by encouraging skin turnover (it acts similar to a gentle peel). It also contains many vitamins, specifically A, D and B6, as well as the anti-oxidant Selenium.
Mmmmmm…… A hot bath with soothing salt and delicate fragrance sounds really good right now. So here’s an easy and fool-proof method for making bath salts.
Dendritic Salt has a greater surface area than other salts which means the fragrance (or essential) oils and color stick better and with more OOMPH! Many crafters add Dendritic Salt to their Sea Salt formulations for the non-clumping capabilities. But this isn’t just any bath salt recipe…this is a baked bath salt recipe. We’re baking in the colorant and fragrance oil leaving a smooth, dry and clump free texture. People are going to ask you how you got such a nice consistency with such a fine salt. Shhhh…it’s our little secret!
There have been so many requests for a lotion bar tutorial so I hopped into the soap lab and busted out a twist on the traditional Lotion Bar Kit found at Bramble Berry. It’s made with fun colors, a fruity fragrance and skin loving ingredients. Time to soften up those hands as the nice weather starts to roll in.
Make your own solid sugar scrubs jam packed with skin-loving ingredients. No more mixing the liquid oils and the sugar before you shower – which can be a bit of a mess! Just grab one of these adorable solid sugar scrub cubes for an easy, mess free, luxurious shower.
Rainbows and hearts… I can’t seem to get enough! One of my favorite looks lately is graduated color. Several years ago I taught at Otion’s Soap Weekend Intensive and was thrilled to attend a class by Paula of PJ Soaps (she’ll be teaching again this summer!). She showed how to make her beautiful moon soap (click here for tutorial), where she tilts the mold to get a lovely fade between the moon and midnight sky.
I have used this several times with a single tilted color, but realized if you use one on each side and then fill the center, that you can get a 3 color fade!
Here’s what you’ll need:
Coral Mica
Yellow Mica
Liquid Blue
Striped Heart Mold
NOTE: The mold in this tutorial has been discontinued. The kit now contains the Swirled Heart Mold.
Clear M&P soap base
White M&P soap base
Or click here and get everything you need all at once.
Here’s how to do it:
Prop your mold up on one side or corner. I used the Soapylove Striped Heart Mold. Next, melt and color a small amount of clear soap using non-bleeding red or coral mica. Spray your mold with alcohol, then pour a small amount of soap into one side, allowing it to only cover 1/3 of your mold surface.
It’s okay if your color doesn’t line up perfectly with the stripes. Allow to harden. Now turn around your mold so the opposite side is propped up. Melt and pour some blue soap into the opposite side, again only covering 1/3 of the mold face. Allow to harden.
Move your mold to be flat on the table. Color your third batch of soap yellow, spray mold with alcohol, and pour in soap so it fills the center area and covers a bit of each side color. Allow to harden. Spray with alcohol and top off with fragranced white soap. Voila!
Here’s a tip: color your soap with a light hand – if your colors are too dark then the background color won’t show through. When I do this project again, I’ll use a little less blue so the green tone will be more noticeable.
Enjoy!
-Debbie
Soapylove
Yes, I know I’m always declaring that this or that is my favorite. But I really mean it this time. . . for now, anyway. I love our new 12 bar square silicone mold. It is so perfect for testing soaps but also makes 12 perfect bars of soap in a flash! We do a lot of soap testing to ensure that each fragrance we carry is safe for use in cold process soap. For every fragrance you see at Brambleberry.com, we’ve tested at least 100 more (really, I swear, that is not an exaggeration) that didn’t make the cut.
Rather than go over the basics of how to make cold process soap again, I’m just going to share my basic technique for testing fragrances. If you’ve never made cold process soap before please learn about the safety precautions and basic steps first. My series of 4 videos about how to make cold process soap would be a great place to start. Episode 1: Lye Safety, Episode 2: Basic Terms, Episode 3: Using Fragrances, and Episode 4: Using Colorants. And if I catch you making soap without goggles, may the Soap Fairies forever take away your soaping luck.
Next, I weigh out all of my fragrances. It is really important when testing fragrance oils, like I am here, that everything is accurately weighed so that you can duplicate your successes .And, when all the fragrances are weighed out, you can just do a quick ‘dump ‘n’ stir’ – you need 12 little dishes if you’re working on 12 individual fragrances.
Next I mix my lye and oil and bring it to a very light light trace, after everything is prepped. Then I weigh out 4 ounces of soap batter into each container. I fill all 12 containers before moving on to the next step. You may have noticed that this recipe makes a little more than 48 oz. This is because you can never get every last drop of soap out of the pot, and with this recipe you are sure to have 4 full ounces for each bar.
Finally, I thoroughly mix in the fragrance into one of the cups (by hand with a spoon) and pour it into the mold. Then move on and do the next one. I have 12 individual spoons waiting to go. It’s the only way to ensure no scent contamination.
For clean-up there are a couple of ways you can tackle the job. You can wipe out the wet soap with a paper towel and then immediately run very hot water into the cups to wash the oily mess down the drain. Or you can wait a couple of days and wash the fresh soap out the cups. The waiting method is easier – but it only works if you have the space and enough containers that you don’t need them for a few days!
Do you have other testing tips and techniques? I’d love to hear them!
In this episode of Soap Queen TV, I show you how to make Erin Pikor’s (of Naiad Soap Arts) wildly popular solid sugar scrub soap. The original post on how to make these solid sugar scrubs is a classic project that our readers keep coming back to.
In the video, I put my own little twist on this project by taking inspiration from Neopolitan ice cream. I made cubes of Strawberry, Chocolate and Vanilla. Yum!
Make Solid Sugar Soap Scrub from Soap Queen on Vimeo.
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Here’s what you’ll need to make this project!
NOTE: The Soapylove fragrance oils used in this video have been discontinued. The kits now include Vanilla Select Fragrance Oil, Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil and Strawberry Fragrance Oil.
For Strawberry scrubs:
3 oz Shea Melt & Pour Base
2 oz Sweet Almond Oil
6 oz White Granulated Sugar
Strawberry Fragrance Oil
1 drop Tropical Hot Pink LabColor (undiluted)
For the Chocolate Scrub:
3 oz Clear Melt & Pour Base
2 oz Sweet Almond Oil
6 oz White Granulated Sugar
Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil
2 mini scoops Cappuccino Mica
For the Vanilla Scrub:
3 oz Shea Melt & Pour Base
2 oz Sweet Almond Oil
6 oz White Granulated Sugar
Vanilla Select Fragrance Oil
Heavy Duty Slim Rectangle Mold
(Note: This mold has been discontinued. It has been substituted with the 12 Cavity Rectangle Silicone Mold.)
Click hereto get everything you need added to your Bramble Berry shopping cart.
I love reading each and every blog comment posted by Soap Queen Readers. Thank you for all of your input and inspiration- It really makes it fun for me! Mid July, I posted a tutorial on Watermelon Soaps and received a comment from SweetMadeSoap that she had made a delicious Mojito Soap with shades of green and white scented with Lime and Peppermint Essential oils. I just had to give the Mojito soap a try (as my mouth started watering just reading the comment). And the results are in…
Mint Leaves: For my dark colored mint leaves, I used clear melt and pour mixed with Liquid Green Colorant and a sprinkle of Yellow Mica. Then I poured a thin layer into a brownie pan tray mold. Once it cooled, I used my mini leaf cookie cutter to cut out the leaves. Try adding a little bit of white soap base to the mix if you want a lighter mint color. As you can see, I did both!
Assembly: Pour a thin layer of clear melt and pour (that has cooled to 130 degrees) into your scalloped round soap mold. Spritz four mint leaves and add them to the soap base. Then add another thin layer of clear melt and pour. Spritz three or four ice cubes with rubbing alcohol and add them to the soap, on top of the mint leaves. Then start the random assembly. Add more mint leaves and ice cubes until the mold is full and you have mint and ice sticking out everywhere. Repeat with the other cavities and remember that they’re not all going to be the same. There are no two Mojito Soaps alike (in my experience).
Note: The ELF Cupcake Mold has been discontinued. It has been substituted with the Round (cupcake) Silicone Mold. To create a two tone cupcake, make soap in the Round (cupcake) Silicone Mold, then top it with this Foaming Bath Whip Frosting.
Check out other popular cupcake projects like Whipped Soap Cupcakes, Cold Process Cupcakes and Bath Bomb Cupcakes
My brother, Erik (from ELF Industrial, Otion and The Soap King blog), designed 2 massage soap molds: The Round Massage Mold and the Oval Massage Mold. They have been a huge hit so far so I thought I would do a last minute 4th of July project with them. This project literally took me 10 minutes, it couldn’t have been easier. Give it a try!
ONE: Melt 1 ounce of white melt and pour in the microwave and use a dropper to fill in the dots. Let cool for about 5 minutes.
TWO: Melt 11 ounces of clear soap base in the microwave and add .25 ounces of your favorite summertime fragrance oil (I used Coconut Citrus Sorbet). Mix well and separate the soap into two separate containers. Color one container of melted soap with Liquid Blue and the other with Perfect Red Color Block. Mix both colors well.
THREE: Once the melted blue soap has cooled to 125 degrees, spray the first layer of white soap with rubbing alcohol and fill up two cavities with the blue soap. Spritz with the rubbing alcohol to get rid of any air bubbles and repeat with the melted red soap. Let cool for 4-6 hours.
