Here are the final results of the loopy swirl soap!
Check out Day one and Day two to see how I made them.
More Lipstick Springtime Recipes
From deep in the trenches, Johanna at Bramble Berry has revised and perfected a lipstick recipe to compliment our new Apricot Blush Mica. It’s such a nice, springtime color.
Sheer Lipstick (revised and perfected)
.5 oz White Beeswax
1.75 oz. Castor Oil
.06 oz. Shea Butter
.06 oz. Hemp Oil
.06 oz. Liquid Glycerin
3-4 Drops Vitamin E Oil (Tocopherol)
1 Full Tsp Lip Safe Mica or Pigment (or combination of both, add more for a deeper color, Micas are more sheer and Piments are more opaque)
Flavor and Stevia to taste if desired
This makes about 8 of the slider lip tins or 10 of the chap stick tubes.
Melt the beeswax in a double boiler until fully liquefied. Add Shea Butter to melted point, then add oils and glycerin. Mix well with a small whisk and add colors and flavor if desired. Pour into Pots and Tubes. Keep mixture stirred constantly for color and ingredient consistency.
The key to this recipe is the Castor oil to wax ratio (about 3.5 to 1). The final product is shiny but still firm enough to be solid but soft enough to glide onto the lips without difficult in a tin, pot or tube. You could likely replace the hemp oil, Shea butter with other oils or butters.
If you are using little lip balms and pots, make sure to keep a lip brush handy for the application to the lips to keep those fingers clean.
Be sure to leave a few butter knives in the freezer to dip into ready-to-pour concoctions and use tip with balm to apply to lips for a quick test. This is easier and quicker than having tor pour, wait and waste!
Loopy Soap – Day Two
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
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.
Pastel Soap is in the Air!
I want summer to be here. The snow this weekend tells me it’s not quite ready to appear but I still made springy pastel soap in the hopes it would! These soaps are made in the Small Ovals Flexible Mold with Clear Melt and Pour Soap Base, LabColors and Super Pearly White Mica. I really like how versatile the Super Pearly White Mica is, it adds a pillow-y opaque shimmer to clear melt and pour and really dresses up the stained glass effect that LabColors give in melt & pour soap.
Have a question about this blog post? Come join us at Bramble Berry’s Facebook page and we can help you out with any of your soapy questions!
Amy’s First Soap
Meet Amy! Amy originally started as a night stocker for Bramble Berry. She toiled for many months, by herself in the warehouse, doing things like cutting 55 pound blocks of shea butter or pumping an entire drum of Coconut Oil. Now, she works during the day, pulling orders and we’re all the happier for it. She has an infectious laugh and is always ready to lend a hand whenever needed.Amy just made her first bars of soap. They turned out so well, I wanted her to share her experience.
Amy says:
This was my first time making soap with melt and pour and micas. I used the Milky Way Sun Mold and Apricot Blush, Gemtone Ruby and Shamrock Green Mica. First, I took 1 pound of clear melt and pour and cut it into little chunks to melt it in the microwave. I put the Rose Pearl Mica in the smaller melted soap because I needed so little of it. I poured that into the mouth of the sun. I also put the Shamrock Mica into another cup of soap for the eyes. My goal was to have bright ruby red lips, green eyes and a gold face but because I was impatient and didn’t wait for the lips to cool and I didn’t wait for the soap that just came out of the microwave to cool down, the color of the lips and eyes melted right away when I poured the Apricot Mica into the mold. If I were to do this mold again, I would wait for the lips and eyes to cool completely and would wait so that the apricot soap wasn’t so hot when I poured it in. The other two molds were my first attempt at dropping soap color into detail areas to create interest and texture. I used the Aloha Sandal Mold and the Milky Way Dragonfly Mold because I’m ready for summer! I used clear melt and pour and light gold, apricot blush, sparkle red and shamrock micas for this mold. After mixing my micas with my melted soap, I used a dropper to get the soap to stay inside the flower and not linger anywhere else. The color I used for the flower was Sparkle Red Mica. I also used a dropper for the sandal straps. They are made with light gold sparkle mica. The base of the sandal was Shamrock Green Mica along with a mixer of Apricot Blush Mica. Again, I had no patience so I didn’t wait long enough for the soap to harden up before I accidentally melted it by pouring more soap on it again. Again, I was taught the lesson that if you want your design to work the way you see it in your head, you have to wait for the soap to cool. Overall, soapmaking is awesome and I can’t wait to try and venture out into more areas.
More Color Testing
I had a creative night playing around with even more colors! We’re in search of a hardcore, non-bleeding red right now. While Bramble Berry already carries a liquid non-bleeding red color and our Merlot Mica is ideal as a non-bleeding burgundy red, I’m working on finding an even deeper, more burgundy wine red color in a liquid form.
Unfortunately, the only color that’s holding color fast right now is the slightly coral color (bottom right). The beautiful vibrant colorful wine colored flower is already bleeding in less than 12 hours. Sigh.
Back to the drawing board … or, in this case, the soap pot.
But will it turn my lips blue?
I received a note yesterday from a Soap Queen reader who noted that I hadn’t clarified the amount of color in the recipe posted yesterday. She was a concerned that I was turning Mom’s lips blue, or green or just an unflattering tone of Apricot.
She has a point. Moms all over America getting green colored, Passionfruit Rose lip balm might be a wee bit worried about the color of their lips.
Fear not. The green, blue and apricot won’t turn your lips the shade of a bruise without extreme amounts of mica and titanium dioxide added to the mixture.
What’s “extreme“? In order to turn your lips any sort of shade of smurf blue, you’d need at least 5 to 6 Tablespoons of Cellini Blue and 1 Tablespoon of Titanium Dioxide in 2 ounces of lip balm base. Adding just teensy bits of color will only provide an interesting look and variation to your balm. In order to really make lipstick, you need a lot of color.
To achieve the colors below, it doesn’t take much color – one quarter teaspoon of color in an ounce of lip balm will get you a nice color without staining or coloring the lips.
Soap Queen commenter, Love Michie, asked: “Is it possible to flavor each layer individually?”
This is a *great* idea! You can easily individually flavor and color layers for a unique blend or to make four lip balms in one.
If you missed my lipstick tutorial from February, you can head here to learn more about making a lipstick.
Colorful Mom’s Lip Balm – Recipe 2
Mother’s Day Lip Balm, recipe 2
The goal of this lip balm is to make a fun, springtime moisturizing lip product in a matching suite with soap and lotion. If you missed the Mother’s Day Soap project, click here to review it.
The goal of this lip balm is to make a fun, springtime moisturizing lip product in a matching suite with soap and lotion. If you missed the Mother’s Day Soap project, click here to review it.
by weight:
.5 oz. Cocoa Butter
.5 oz. Coconut Oil
.6 oz Olive Oil
.6 oz. Avocado Oil
.5 oz. Beeswax
.5 oz. Mango
Flavor: Passionfruit Rose Flavor
Colors: Cellini Blue, Cellini Red, Apricot Blush and Shamrock Green
Containers: Heart & Daisy lip balm pots and chapstick tubes
Step One: Melt the Beeswax, Avocado Oil and Olive Oil in a double boiler. As proven during the microwave-blowing-up-incident, beeswax takes prolonged heating time not well suited for microwaves.
Step Two: When the beeswax mixture has been fully melted, slowly add small chunks of Cocoa Butter. The smaller the chunks, the easier the melting will be. Stir, stir, stir until the Cocoa Butter is melted. If the Cocoa Butter simply refuses to melt, heat on very small spurts in the microwave or double boiler.
Step Three: Add the Mango Butter and Coconut Oil and stir until all the chunks are melted.
Step Four: Add the flavor, Passionfruit Rose (or another lip safe flavor). Suggested usage rate is 1-2% by weight or to taste.
Step Five: Add lip safe color. Mix in well.
Step Six: Pour the colored and flavored balm into your choice of containers. We used Chapstick Tubes and the Daisy and Heart lip butter pots for this Mother’s Day lip balm project.
Optional Steps:Layers! Prepare each lip balm color separately. We used Cellini Red, Apricot Blush, Cellini Blue and Shamrock green.Once the colors are prepared and flavored, use a dropper and pour layers.
Tip: Are you having a hard time getting rid of those little holes in the middle of your lip balm tubes? Check out this quick-fix post!
Mother Day’s Lip Balm – Passionfruit Rose
Making a matching lip balm for Mom with Passionfruit Rose is easy. Ingredients like Mango Butter and Shea Butter are nourishing to the skin and help provide a barrier against environmental irritations.
This recipe uses:
1 oz. Mango Butter
1 oz. Shea Butter
.7 oz. Beeswax
.5 oz. Castor Oil
.5 oz. Sweet Almond Oil
Passionfruit Rose Flavor
Merlot Mica
Rose Pearl
Measure out, by weight, the individual items. Melt the beeswax with the liquid oils in a double boiler. The beeswax takes significant time and energy to melt. Melting the beeswax in the microwave may take up to 10 minutes and is not recommended due to the extreme heat needed to melt the wax.
Add the Shea Butter and Mango Butter to the melted wax and oils. Allow the heat of the wax and oil to melt the butters. Stir well.
By weight, use 1 – 3% flavor. Start with the small amount (1%) and flavor to taste. Freeze some knives ahead of time and dip the frozen knife into your lip balm. The lip balm will harden instantly, allowing you to taste and try the product prior to pouring into containers.
Add color to preference. The list of Bramble Berry lip safe colorants is here.
Once the color and flavor is fully mixed in, pour mixture into lip balm containers, label and you’re all done.
Microsoft Soap – Set Up
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 – Drop In
Click here for Day One – Set Up
Step Three: Cut & Melt Clear Soap
Cut the clear melt and pour soap into small squares. Melt the soap in the microwave on bursts of 30 seconds until the soap is fully melted.
Step Four: Fragrance & Pour
If you want fragrance, this is the time to add it. Keep in mind that some fragrances will yellow your clear soap or make it cloudy. Test a small amount of fragrance in your base prior to making an entire production of soap. Pour your melted (and fragranced) soap in a thin layer. Fill up 25% or less of the soap mold. Allow a skin to form.
Step Five: Drop In & Position
Once a skin has been formed, slowly place the hairspray-treated water soluble paper onto the clear skin photo side down. Allow soap to harden enough to support another layer. The paper has a tendency to slide to the sides of the molds. Keep an eye on it and push it back into the middle of the mold if it does this.
Microsoft Soap – Backing
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.
We Love Our Community – from Bakima
This is a guest post by our fabulous marketing intern, Bakima. She’s been hard at work on our MySpace Page and worked on the Commenters Love post for this week.
Hey Soapers!
I want to take the time to congratulate everyone on your efforts and evident passion towards this amazingly creative and useful art form. Your involvement in the Bramble Berry community (as well as multiple others) is inspiring through your constant support, encouragement, and constructive criticism of one another, which is nothing like the cut-throat competitiveness other interests can bare. Although soaping isn’t a personal passion of mine, being exposed to it through the past few months has really opened my eyes to the vast possibilities available to people to pursue their passions- whether it be professionally or merely used as a fun hobby. I hope you all continue to pursue other passions in your lives as persistently and optimistically as you do your soaping. That being said, here’s a big CONGRATULATIONS going out to Teresa (was ShadesOfGrey), comment number 35/48, who is our winner for this round of the blog giveaways.
Teresa, look out for a nice package rounded up from the Portland Soapers Unite event including:
Jojoba Beads
Shimmer Mica
Non-Bleeding liquid colorant
New bulk Melt and Pour bases from Bramble Berry
Soap Rope & 3D mold
3 Cavity mold by Milky Way
3 of our latest fragrances from your very own Bramble Berry
Congratulations again Teresa, can’t wait to see what you create with your prize!