Christmas Archives - Page 8 of 8

Gift Series – Lotion Tutorial (from scratch)

November 1, 2008 Filed Under: Lotion

For the next installment in the Holiday Gift Idea series, I will wow you with how easy it is to make your own lotion – from scratch! Of course, you can always purchase a pre-made lotion base and add your own fragrance. But by making your own lotion from scratch you can choose the ingredients and make it as luxurious or as economical as you like.

update: Now that the entire series is posted learn to make bath fizzies here, guest soap here, and sugar scrub here.

This recipe only costs 64¢ per 4 ounce bottle (not counting the distilled water or label). That’s right, $.64 for something you would pay a minimum of $8 for in most any store (even the one that sounds like “Sash and Shoddy Shirks” if you say it fast).

Ingredients (by weight):

18 oz. Distilled Water
1.2 oz. Shea Butter
1.7 oz. Sweet Almond Oil
1 oz. Avocado Oil
1.2 oz. Emulsifying Wax
1 oz. Stearic Acid
.2 oz. Phenonip
.1 oz. Fragrance

Get the kit from Bramble Berry with all the ingredients to make this project. Choose from two great fragrance combinations. Traditional Christmas Forest & Cranberry Fig or a more modern Cinnamon Sugar & Fresh Snow.

Tools:

Digital scale
Stick Blender
one 16 oz. wide-mouth container
one 32 oz. wide-mouth container
Five 4 ounce bottles

step 1 Disinfect all of your tools and containers by dunking them in 5% bleachwater solution and drying them with fresh, off the roll, paper towels.

step 2 In the large 32 oz. container, add the Sweet Almond oil, Avocado Oil, Stearic Acid and Emulsifying wax. Make sure this is all weighed out (no volume measurements). Put in the microwave on 30 second bursts to melt the E-Wax and Stearic Acid (p.s. despite the scary name, Stearic Acid is derived from Palm Oil and isn’t acidic or scray. It actually adds to the fluffiness factor of the lotion).

step 3Add the Shea Butter to the hot mixture and stir to melt.

step 4 Warm up the distilled water and add it to your oil mixture. Vigorously stir with a spoon by hand to start. Then switch to the hand blender. The reason you warm up your water is because you don’t want your waxes to immediately solidify upon contact with the water.

step 5 Once the mixture is fully mixed and emulsified (usually about 2 to 3 minutes), take the temperature and add the preservative and fragrance. For Germaben II, Optiphen and Phenonip preservatives, you want the temperature to be below 140 degrees. Usage rates of all three of these preservatives start at .5% by weight. Fragrance usage for lotions is very low (remember, you don’t want to inadvertantly make a perfume!) so start small. This recipe literally calls for .1 ounces of fragrance and that is more than enough to make a lovely smelling lotion.

step 6 Pour into prepared bottles while the mixture is still warm. If the mixture is too thick to pour, heat it up for 30 seconds in the microwave and stir. Repeat as needed until it’s thin enough to pour. If the temperature during re-heating goes above 140, you’ll need to add an additional .5% preservative.

step 7 Allow to cool with the lids off. Then put on lids and label and impress your friends and loved ones with your handmade goodness!

If you’re feeling adventurous and want to experiment with other oils and butters, you can design your own recipe. To create your own recipe follow these guidelines:

70-80% Distilled Water
3-5% Stearic Acid
3-6% Emulsifing Wax
add the rest in your choice of oils and buttersTo this add
.5 – 1% Preservative
.5% Fragrance

Cinnamon Sugar Scrub-Part Two-Gift Series

October 20, 2008 Filed Under: Soaks & Scrubs

Part Two of our Cinnamon Sugar Scrub Tutorial finds us with a big bowl of delicious smelling, exfoliating foaming bath whip. You could use it the way it is – but we have a great idea for making it just a little more WOW! in the jar.

If you missed the first day click here for ingredients, set up and mixing instructions.

Step 4

Put half of the FBW & Sugar mixture into another container. Color one half with a couple of scoops of Cappuccino mica and the other with shredded glitter. Mix the color and glitter in well.

Step 5

Spoon the colored, scented FBW mixture into the pastry bags – one color in each. I like to fold the top of the pastry bag down, forming a little sleeve cuff, to keep the top of the plastic bag clean. Once filled, fold up the top cuff and snip off the end of the pastry bag to form your funnel.

Carefully pipe the scrub into the jars. Make sure to press the tip of the pastry bag around the sides to get clearly delineated layers. Alternate between the two colors until your jar is filled.

Finish it off with one of the cute labels available in the kit or make your own! Your family, friends and co-workers will be very impressed with how nice their skin feels once they bathe with the Cinnamon Sugar Scrub.

Cinnamon Sugar Scrub – Part One – Gift Series

October 19, 2008 Filed Under: Soaks & Scrubs

Cinnamon Sugar Scrub

Cinnamon Sugar fragrance is our soon to be released scent just in time for your holiday projects. Making your own scrubs couldn’t be easier with our Foaming Bath Whip. Unlike traditional oil based scrubs, you don’t have to worry about this one separating or leaving a slippery mess in the shower. Try variations with Jojoba Beads, Cranberry Seeds, or Pumice.

This is the first project in our Christmas Gift Idea series. Once we’ve shown you all of these projects, you will have the knowledge you need to create delightful gift ensembles that are the perfect gift for holiday party gift exchanges, office co-workers, as well as family and friends. We think making holiday gifts with your children or friends is an ideal way to spend quality time with the ones you love.

update: Learn to make bath fizzies here, guest soap here, and lotion here.

On to the recipe:

Ingredients you will need:

2 lbs. Foaming Bath Whip
1 ounce fragrance
2 ounces of an emollient liquid oil
Iridescent Shredded Glitter
Cappuccino Mica
1 to 2 pounds of Sugar

Tools:

Hand mixer
Bowl
Spoon or Spatula
2 Pastry bags
Containers for the finished product

Step 1

Place your Foaming Bath Whip, fragrance, and oil in the bowl. I like to do 1 pound of FBW (Foaming Bath Whip) to 1 ounce of liquid oil. Sweet Almond Oil, Avocado Oil, and Olive Oil all work well to soften the FBW up.

Step 2

Mix on low until the FBW is smooth, then switch to high to whip up the butter. Whip until fluffy – this usually just takes a couple of minutes.

Be sure you don’t over whip the Foaming Bath Whip or it can deflate like a souffle. I’m wearing gloves just to keep my hands clean but you don’t need to if you don’t mind a little extra FBW on your hands.

Step 3

Stir in the sugar by hand. We used a slightly coarser grade of unbleached sugar but regular granulated sugar works fine. When stirring in the sugar by hand, it’s more of a folding. The mixture is thick enough to suspend the sugar and make it into a dense whipped cream feel.Check in tomorrow for how to add color and do a fancy layered look in the final jar.

Jelly Roll Love

February 5, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Congrats to Gassner Custom Soaps for clearly getting the gist of the Jelly Roll Tutorial down! Doesn’t the soap look great?

Learn how to make your own Jelly Roll Soap here. While you’re learning to that, I’m making chocolate … from scratch! It’s Amber’s 2 year anniversary with Bramble Berry and she loves chocolate. So, I’m making chocolate and, if all goes well, the outcome will produce Peanut Butter Cups, Marshmallow Cups and maybe toss in a few candied spicy dried fruit chocolate just for fun. The chocolate is tempering right now. Here’s to hoping it all turns out … or else Amber will be stuck with a store bought cake tomorrow! Then again, given the um, newness of this chocolate making venture, perhaps she would prefer the store bought product.

Make Your Own Packaging

January 9, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

You can use packaging to make your products stand out on shelves and differentiate yourself from other soaps and lotions with just a glance.

What a little gem The Toymaker site is for that purpose. A site originally for designing paper toys for children, it has a small selection of do-it-yourself packaging. With the right kind of paper, these could easily be adapted for your own brand (color scheme, patterns) with easy tags with logos and contact information.

Just think about the reaction if you showed up at your local gift store with your products completely gift ready. How much would that premium be worth? Local, handmade and ready for gift giving – it’s a nice value proposition for the store owner.

Holiday 3-D Soaps

December 28, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

A few weeks ago, I made Holiday 3-D soaps for the Skincare Naturals Gift Guide. The soap in the top photo is colored with Opalescent Green Mica, Non Bleeding Red and a opaque soap and scented with Christmas Spice. In the bottom photo, the round is colored with Merlot Mica and Super Pearly White in clear soap.

I know it’s post-Christmas but the photos turned out so good that I wanted to share the cute final project.

If you missed the week of 3-D soap mold posts, here’s the final poston coloring and layering 3-D soap mold projects.

Salvation Army Shopping

December 22, 2007 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News, Business Musings

Every year for the last eight years, Bramble Berry has adopted families through the Salvation Army. Our staff donate their time after work to pick out perfect Secret Santa gifts and Bramble Berry donates our dollars. For 2007, Bramble Berry donated over 5% of our profits to various non-profits, both local and national. Bramble Berry’s social responsibility statement can be found here. One of our values at Bramble Berry is “Be Socially Responsible,” and another is “Be Kind to our Employees and Customers.” The Secret Santa Shopping trip meets both of those criteria. This year we had 17 people on our Christmas Secret Santa list.

That’s Amber (customer service and marketing) handing out lists for shoppers. Andrew (on the right) got 2 boys, ages 6 and 8. Andrew packs most of the Bramble Berry orders and has been at Bramble Berry for over two years.

This is Jess (from the Pouring Area) looking dubiously down at the shopping cart and comparing it to her list. She’s wondering if the gifts are exactly perfect for her Secret Santa person. Jess had a Mom who wanted a nightgown and new towels. Joanna (on the right, works in the Shipping Area) is wearing a hat she knitted herself. She has a small business selling her knitwear on Etsy. Click here to go see her shop. Her hand-knitted hats are just $15.

With 17 people on our list, we had quite a few full carts but thanks to Amber’s extreme organization, the shopping was done in record time – two hours. The sorting of the gifts to deliver to the Salvation Army took a bit longer. There were a lot of bags filled with gifts.

It took almost 45 minutes to check out. The poor clerk was very shocked when our entire 13 cart caravan showed up at her lane. The manager of the Bakerview Fred Meyers shut down the lane for our purchase (thanks Larry!). Because of Amber’s Mom’s crafty coupon sleuthing (that’s her in the red coat in the top photo), we saved 15% on all of the clothes and 10% on all of the toys. With the savings, we were able to buy extra big gift cards for the food portion of the gift. Hopefully they will be spent on a bountiful Christmas dinner (and beyond). The receipt that came out of the printer was literally over 2 feet long. I was thrilled to swipe the credit card for the donation.

This holiday season, all of us at Bramble Berry, Otion & Organic Fusion are grateful for the abundant blessings of the 2007. Here’s to a successful, joyous and delightful 2008!

Jelly Rolls! Jelly Rolls! Day One

December 10, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Making Jelly Rolls with melt and pour soap is easy, fast and fun! The Jelly Rolls are the soap on the far left and far right (bottom). This tutorial will focus on how to make Jelly Rolls out of melt and pour soap. The project takes about 30 minutes to complete and requires singular purpose (no multitasking) to ensure success.

The set up is simple:

White Melt and Pour
Clear Melt and Pour
Non-Bleeding Colorant
Fragrance or Essential Oil
Flexible 9 x 9 pan
Rubbing Alcohol
Liquid Glycerin

This is a silicone baking pan, commonly used for making cakes. It has a higher purpose – soap. You can buy one from Bramble Berry here or try and find one at a local high end cooking store. Glass pans are virtually impossible to get the soap out of.

Once all the ingredients are prepared, cut the first layer’s worth of soap into smallish blocks – the size of a domino or so.The smaller surface area of the soap allows for a more smooth even melt. In my microwave, eight ounces of the Bramble Berry soap brand of base melts perfectly in one 45 second melt, stir a few times, and then an additional 30 seconds.

Shorter microwave spurts are better than one long melt. Boiled soap smells badly and will not roll when needed.

Check back tomorrow for coloring and layering timing tricks.