techniques Archives - Page 10 of 16

Soap by Jess

November 7, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Jess works in the Bramble Berry warehouse, pulling your orders. She also loves being creative and blending all kinds of fun fragrances. Her creativity doesn’t stop at cool fragrance blends, she also designed the wrappers below. We’re lucky that she likes to make creative soapy ideas with our products and shares the wealth with all of us.

The Red Rose fragrance blend Jess made up is comprised of English Rose, Sensual, and Cybilla Romance in equal parts. The rose has actual rose petals, non-bleeding red and (non-bleeding) merlot mica

The Black Heart fragrance blend; Moonlight Pomegranate, Sugar Plum Fairy in equal parts
Black heart has lavender buds and black oxide

Skulls were scented with Kentish Rain, Earth Musk, Grass Stain, White Lily Cybilla – she calls this ‘Fresh Grave‘. If you didn’t use a skull mold, you could probably call it “Fresh Turf” or “Musky Breeze” or “Dank Library” or something less deathlike for your soap.

Tattoo Soaps from Dollar Store Crafts

October 28, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Thank you to Heather at Croq Zine, DollarStoreCrafts.com for taking the cool Tattoo Soap idea from this morning’s tutorial (wow! that’s fast work!) and showing everyone (even the non-soapmaker) how to make Tattoo Soaps for under $2.

Croq Zine is a blog is dedicated to bringing you crafts that feature materials purchased:

at dollar stores
at dollar sections in stores
at discount stores for $1 or less

Check out their helpful step-by-step here. There are great photos and easy to follow instructions on making your own Tattooed Soaps.

It’s Not Always Pretty

October 25, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Lest you get discouraged in your crafting and think that my projects always turn out lovely, here are the first attempts at finding the perfect color for this project:

The two test videos above were made using Orange Mica and Black Oxide. Perhaps oil soluble black oxide wasn’t the best choice for this project. You’d think I would have remembered that after the ill-fated black cloud consumed my bathtub back in January.

In an attempt to get a very seasonally appropriate color theme, I tried a variety of Blacks (from mica to labcolors) and never quite got the color I wanted which is how we went from the garish colors on the left to the gloriously sweet colors on the right.

And we ended up giving them away but some of them were so sad that no one wanted them.

Ice Cube Letter Trays

August 26, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

If you loved SoapyLove’s tutorial on making vibrant, back-to-school Letter soaps but don’t love the Exacto Knife portion of the tutorial, check out Spoon Sister’s Letters Tray. It’s $19.95 for the whole alphabet. And, if you wanted to use the tray for actual ice and not soap … well, that would probably be okay as well.

Just How Do They Make Those Dots?!

August 10, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Back in June, I blog-squealed about this super cool dice soap from DugShop. Proving that they either had a very good etiquette class or read about my obsession with thank you notes, they sent a thank you note for the Link Love *and* some of the super cool dice. We’ve turned the pair over and over, looked at them up close and obsessed about how they are made so perfectly. The black “spots” are absolutely symmetrical and mind boggling in their perfect shape. The dice are a bargain at $9! They came wrapped in a gift-worthy tube and were crafted with incredible precision. You can buy your own here.
While you’re at their shop, pick up some of their other funky creations like their Global Warming Soap, Obama Soap, Alien Abduction Soap Set or “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha” soap (on a rope).

Loofa Boats

August 6, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Look at what we just got in the mail at Bramble Berry – a colorfully creative Loofah Boat Soap from Soapier.com

Aren’t you inspired to make a creative soap like this? By using similar colors like a Flamingo Pink Lab color, a White Melt and Pour Base and a loofah, you can get your creative juices flowing and make something similar at home! Loofahs are great for scrubbing away extra skin and making sure your toes and feet look pretty for summer strapless sandals.

Glimmering Little Ghosts

August 2, 2008 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Thank you Design Sponge for consistently ferreting out cool design trends.

While wall murals may not be new, these hand-painted wall murals by Ami Suma are certainly cool and trendy. I wonder if she does murals for adults too?

Dust Bunny Band

July 11, 2008 Filed Under: Home Crafts

I have a confession to make. I hope you don’t think worse of me for it.

Your house is cleaner than mine.

You may look around at your three kids in various states of dress and undress, crawling and doing the loop-de-loop through your house and think to yourself, “No, you haven’t seen chaos until you’ve seen my house.” But sadly, your house is still probably cleaner than mine.

You see, I like to work. A lot. And if I’m not working at work, I’m at home working. Or, I’m at home reading. In either scenario, I’m not cleaning.

Following normal laws of atrophy, our house slowly breaks down. The windows haven’t been washed since last summer. The couch hasn’t been moved in a year and the dust bunnies have bred and gone fully rabid. The cobwebs in the ceiling corners have started multiplying at a rate that rivals the viral marketing loop of online phenoms Twitter and Ning. For that matter, I’m pretty sure the cobwebs have started sending out invites to their own Ning Network. Reading through their blurbs, it appears that the rabid dust bunnies and cobwebs are considering starting their own band and making it big on MySpace.

All this extra dust and collaborative chaos is all fine and well when it’s just my husband and I. Thankfully, he’s a pretty low key guy and as long as he can make it in the house, to the fridge, and to the bed without any impediments, the rapidly massing army of dust and bacteria are a mere annoyance not worthy of much time.

But, my parents are coming this weekend. That means my MOTHER is coming this weekend. My Mother is the consummate professional homemaker. She cooks, cleans, and knows how to iron shirts. She could win any Iron Housecleaning contest with one hand tied behind her back. It baffles her to no end that her housecleaning gene did not pass down to me. Thankfully, she loves me just the same.

With her impending visit, I have spent two days cleaning the house. The windows still haven’t been cleaned but that’s the last thing that needs to be done before they arrive at 7 p.m. tonight. There was a slight setback though – when I took the Clorax Bleach Product out and sprayed the sink down (yes, there were mutinying bacteria in there as well), I almost passed out from the fumes. I seriously thought I had accidentally killed myself and pictured my easy going husband never figuring out what had happened. He would never suspect the fumes from a cleaning product had killed me since it’s a well known fact that I don’t clean and wouldn’t even know where the cleaning products are located in our house.

After that little light-headed episode, I created a few natural cleaners using products found in my kitchen cabinet and the Bramble Berry Warehouse. They seem to work great. Of course, my standards are low. But, my house is cleaner, smells great and best of all, these cleaners are less toxic and better for the environment than traditional cleaners.

These are my first attempts so be gentle and if you have better recipes, by all means, post them in the Comment Section for all to share in the clean, yummy-smelling goodness.

All Purpose Cleaner
For a good all-round cleaner:

Two tablespoons vinegar
One teaspoon baking soda
Half tablespoon borax
Two cups warm water
Mix the ingredients together and keep in a spray bottle. Use for general surface cleaning.

Toilet Cleaner
To clean stubborn stains from lavatory bowls:

1 cup borax
¼ cup white vinegar
Mix the ingredients together, pour down the toilet and leave for as long as possible, but at least twenty minutes. Scrub the stains with a toilet brush, then flush away. My husband pointed out this morning that I missed a few spots. I suspect this is operator error rather than a flaw in the recipe.

Smelly Surface Cleaner
General cleaner and it smells just fine!

2 cups hot water
1 tablespoon borax
2 tablespoons white vinegar
3 drops lavender essential oil
3 drops tea tree essential oil
Mix the ingredients together in spray bottle and use for general cleaning purposes. Do not use on glass because the oil will cause smears. It was a sad day in our household when I tried to clean the bathroom mirrors with this concoction.

As with all recipes on the Soap Queen blog, please do small test batches and try cleaning to start with in out of the way places, just in case my “mad” chemistry skills are more crazy-mad than skillful-mad.

How to Cut those Gosh Darned Big Blocks!

June 30, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Bramble Berry’s Economy Bulk Melt & Pour Soap Base comes in one big block. This is puzzling and confusing to some new soapers. Adding to the mystery, the soap is poured from many feet in the air, into a bag in a box. This height factor creates thick layer of tiny bubbles on surface of the soap base. The bubbles make the soap appear opaque at first glance – and that’s in addition to the head-scratcher about how to cut the block! However, with the economical price per pound (1.25 – $1.50 per pound), it’s worth the extra effort to cut the soap yourself.

This is how I work with the Bulk Base:

1. Open the box

2. Pull, tug, gravity drop, plop and otherwise ease the soap out of the box.

3. Flip the soap over and peel open the bag

4. Scrape the foamy bubbles from the surface of the soap. When melted, these foamy bubbles create an unexpected frothy look in the finished soap.

5. Hack away at the soap base. You can use a heated knife, a butcher’s knife, a scraper/cutter or even a machete. Whatever method you use, be careful! Oily, soapy hands can easily slip on a cutting utensil, causing unintended consequences (and no one wants your blood in their soap anyways). You can cut just what you need to cut or chop up the entire block. Sometimes, the plastic bag gets interwoven into the soap around the bottom edges. Just make sure to pull it out and not melt the plastic.

6. Put all the pieces back into the plastic bag, push the air out of it, and seal it with a plastic tie. If the soap is not exposed to air, it stays fresher for longer.

There are probably other ways to work with this base but that’s the way I do it. If you have any hints, feel free to post a helpful comment to the benefit of your fellow soapers.

Weight Versus Volume

June 26, 2008 Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

The candles below are an example of the weight-versus-volume.

Both of the candles have the same weight (8 ounces) yet look at the difference in volume (height).

The candle on the left is a traditional paraffin based wax. The mottled looking candle is made out of a palm stearic soy combination.

This example illustrates why soapmakers prefer measuring oils by weight to ensure precise lye usage.

Cool! Where Do You Buy Your Supplies?

June 18, 2008 Filed Under: Business Musings

Click here to see the entire list of Commonly Asked Craft Show questions.

Click here to see the answer to “Why does your soap cost so much?”

Click here to see the answer to “Cool! How is this made?”

Click here to see the answer to “Cool! Can you teach me to make this?”

Cool! Where do you buy your supplies!?

Answer You Might Want to Give: “Sorry, no. I’m not telling you where I buy my stuff so you can go copy all of my best ideas. Learn how to do it like I did it – from scratch with hard work and effort put into it. Good luck.”

Or “Can you keep a secret?” (they nod) “Well, so can I.”

Being diplomatic at all times is a good business skill to learn and there’s no better time than right now. Here are some different answers for this pesky question based on your comfort level with freely sharing your knowledge. At Otion, one of our Core Values is that we freely share information. I generally divulge everything I can without jeopardizing our core business. Where you fall on this scale (stony silence to verbal fountains) determines how friendly and encouraging you’ll want to be with this answer.

Nice Freely Sharing Knowledge Answer: “I am so flattered that you like my XYZ (scent, color, mold). I get it at Bramble Berry Soapmaking Supplies. Their web site is www.brambleberry.com and their phone number is 1-87-SOAP-STUFF. Soapmaking is so fun and easy! I hope you like it as much as I do!”

Less Sharing but Still Nice Answer: “I am so flattered that you like my XYZ (scent, color, mold). I’d prefer not to share my sources for my supplies but I’m happy to give you some good starting places for you to search around so you can find a (scent, color, mold) that’s unique to you and really appeals to your sense of style.”

“When I started out, I actually bought all of my molds and stuff at Michael’s craft store. You could get a basic starter kit there or you can always go online and Google “Soapmaking Supplies” and some of the top vendors in this industry will pop up. (transition question) So, you’re crafty? What other crafts do you do?”

Using PJ’s Tool Kit – Final – Part Four

June 17, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Step # 24-25This green stock color was the right scent but too small in amount and too dark for the job; it needed more soap.

Step # 26-27 After adding a sufficient amount of soap melting and mixing well more pigment and fragrance was added ’til the color and scent were perfect. Because it’s easy to add too much colorant I often drip the colorant on my mixing tool, that way I can pull it out and rinse it off if it looks like I might be adding too much color.

Step # 28-29 Once you are happy with the color/scent for the base of your soap, mist your mold of layers already set up and pour in your green base. Larger volumes of soap will retain heat and can melt your earlier layers. Dip your pinkie into the base (green here) and if you can hold it in without feeling discomfort it’s ready to pour (after you mist).

Step # 30-31 As soon as you fill your tray of molds mist one last time to dissolve any bubbles that rise to the surface.

Step # 32-33 After the soap is hard to the touch (2 hours) you can peek at the finished look of your soaps while still in the mold. After they have cooled overnight pop them out and enjoy!

Click for Part One, Part Two and Part Three.

Using PJ’s Tool Kit – Part Three

June 16, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Step # 19-20Dip a white object to the depth the soap will be poured to see if sufficient richness has been achieved. If so, mist your mold for the next layer.

Step # 20-21Draw and inject your pink to finish off the flower, returning any remaining soap to it’s container. Rinse injector in simmering water.

Each tool should be swished around in the simmering water immediately after use so it’s ready for the next use.

Step # 22-23 Again, Allow layers to set until fixed in place then inspect both sides of the mold for imperfections.

Using PJ’s Tool Kit – Part Two

June 16, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Step # 7-8After melting and mixing color fill injector and squirt color where desired (returning any unused soap back into container)

Step # 9-10 Rinse injector and any tools in your pan of simmering water, after each use while preparing next color. The tip of the injector simple needs to be dipped into your pot of simmering water — draw hot water up and squirt it back out once or twice for cleaning between each use.

Step # 11-12 Immediately before injecting the 2nd color (already melted) mist the first layer of soap in the mold with alcohol so the 2nd layer/color will adhere. Misting a layer of soap too early can result in layers that fall apart. Mist ONLY JUST BEFORE adding your next layer.

Step # 13-14 Allow layers to set until fixed in place then inspect both sides of the mold for imperfections. Use the curved edge of your clean up tool to remove any excess soap and/or mist alcohol and fill in any spots you missed.

Step # 15-16This pink stock color was close but insufficient for the job; it needed more soap and more color.Step # 17-18 Ultramarine violet was added but is so sheer Merlot Mica was added to intensify the color. Use mica’s in clear or sheer soap base so light can penetrate and show off the mica. Use a mini whisk to disperse the grains evenly, adding only about a grain of rice at a time (mica’s go a long way).

If you missed Part One of this tutorial, click here to read it.