How to Fancy Up a Plain Soap

Does plain soap have to be boring?  Absolutely NOT.  If you soap one color plain soap what else can you do to make it more eye catching?

Last month I talked about using oil mica swirl to jazz up soap top, read this one: Soap Top Oil Mica Obsession  But that's not the only other technic you can play with shimmery sparkling micas.  Here is my story:

More and more often I found myself soaping with fragrances that either discolor or accelerate trace or both.  Any fragrance that has sweet notes usually contains vanillin which is the synthetic duplication of vanilla scent.  Vanillin oxidizes and turns soap to different levels of brown depending on how much is in that specific fragrance.I'm pretty sure I'm not the only soaper tired of dealing with browning soap.  There's only so much you can do to brown color!  Because of this I hit a soaper's block due to frustration, was going to give up and just soap it plain jane looking.  But part of me refused to cooperate.  Then a light bulb lighted up in my head, I can paint shimmery mica on top for some bling bling!

Stage 1: make the plain soap and pour into the mold with peak top

This is made with deflated California Cabernet Sauvignon and Australian red clay and scented with Apple Berry Picnic (oh so yummy...)

Stage 2: paint mica on the top once the soap is harden up and ready to take out of its mold

I just used a cheap small soft paint blush so I can deliver mica into any tight nook.  That was fun!

Now look at them shine under sunlight!

 3 color gold mica gradation effect, from light gold to pure gold then copper gold!

Liquor in Soap - Sake (Rice Wine)

What is Sake?  It is rice wine in Japanese.  There are many kinds of rice wine, some are good to drink in room temperature, some are good to drink chilled, and some need to be warm.  We love going to sushi bar eating sashimi and sushi and pair it with sake!  Try it, you will like it!

I've tried using liquor to make soap before, actually quit a few, like red wine, champagne, rum, and beer, so why not sake?!  I boiled a cheap bottle of sake the night before and chilled in the refrigerator.  The next day when I mixed sodium hydroxide in the sake the whole thing turned bright orange!  I'm pretty sure it was the sugar in the wine, just hope that it would not affect the colors of my soap because purple is the color of this Violet Rose soap!

Those purple flowers were pipped a few days ago.  I'm trying to practice pipping flowers with soap.  They are not exactly what I planned but still good.
It is very hard to imagine the finished color when your started with a heavy colored lye solution.  All my purples became kind of muted looking.  I could not tell if I need to add more red or more blue or what.  See how bright the pipped flowers are?  Well, I guess the lye solution color did indeed affect the outcome of my purple... sigh.  My purple looks muted now.  But, it smells great at least!

 

Compulsion

Most of the time I see the soap and smell the soap then I get a name in my head.  But this one is different, its scent is striking, alluring, the way I imagine a sexy man would smell like!  Ok, wipe off my drooling...

My point is, I struggled for days naming this soap to a point I had to do a poll on my Facebook page.  Why frustrate myself when I can get all other smart brain to work for me?!  LOL  Anyway, the winner is... obviously Compulsion.  This is my description of the scent:

Made with Blue Moon Beer (mixture of malted barley, white wheat, & oats), it has notes of blood orange, mandarin, bergamot, grapefruit, clary sage, lavender, white flowers, amber, musk, sandalwood, vetiver, myrrh and with hint of nutmeg & coriander.  It's deep, a bit mysterious, and totally complex.

The 2nd runner up is very close, only 3 votes behind, it is Midnight Woods.  Maybe I'll use it next time, why waste it when everyone seems to like it?!

I made beer soap before but didn't seem to get why every soap maker was so in love with it.  It has been a week since cut and it still has that lye beer smell I don't care for.

Left Over Holiday Alcohol: Pinot Noir

We opened a new Pinot Noir for the holiday party and didn't like it, got half bottle of left over.  Since I've never soap red wine before, it's a good chance to do it without feeling bad wasting a good bottle of wine.  This one exercised my creative brain quit a lot, for I have a hard time planning for color scheme and scent.   The red wine turned lye solution into dark red brown!  I have no idea if it will cure with that color or not, I didn't want to take the chance.  I colored majority of the pot with merlot red mica and small portions in purple and black (activated charcoal).  Gosh it's hard to get purple with such a dark colored batter to start with!  And the soap stink for a few days, hard to describe the scent.  I guess that's how 'burned' fermented grape juice smells like... LOL
I used my new cube silicone mold I bought from Bramble Berry for this Pinot batch.  And even with the heavy trace, it still took 3 days before I can unmold those cubes out.  And that's with more than 12 hours of refrigeration.  I have never had this kind of difficulty with a silicone mold before, this one pushed me to the edge.  I don't know if I'll ever try to use that mold again!
By the way, these Pinot Cubes are scented with Black Raspberry Vanilla!

Left Over Holiday Alcohol: Champagne

This is my first post of the year 2012, it's Dragon year!  I was born in Dragon year and so was my husband. Hopefully this means we will have a fantastic year!

What do I do with the left over alcohol from all that holiday parties?  Sure I can save it for cooking but how many bottles do I need for cooking, especially champagne?!  By now you probably already guessed what I'm about to show you.  Yes, of course, if not soap then what?

I called this Champagne Pear.  It is made with left over Brut and scented with my own mix of pear fragrance oil.  I boiled the brut the night before to flatten the 'gas' then used that as my whole water amount to dissolve the lye.  Oh you should see the bubbling action when it hit the lye beads, it's like champagne all over again!  And, it stinks!  The lye champagne turned into red-ish color.  That made me worried, I had all my colors planned out!  My quick save is adding titanium dioxide and it worked.
Let's start the year with new do from last year's left over!

DO you see the 'frosting' on the pear slice?  That's caused by insulating the soap after pour, and the melt & pour soap pear slice absorbed some moisture in the insulated space.  Actually, I love that accidental effect! 

Can you believe a day ago the purple icing actually looked latte brown?

Eggnog Cheers!

How literal can I get?  Oh you will be surprised...

Introducing my holiday treat: Eggnog Soap

Made with REAL egg (organic), spiced rum, and fresh full fat cow milk!  Yum!

 I used heavy vanilla fragrance oil mixed with some amber and almond fragrance oil, cassia and cinnamon EO, oh so yummy!  The majority portion turned dark brown because of the vanilla content.  I poured out a portion before scenting and add a little titanium dioxide to whiten the color a little to get the contrast I wanted and it worked pretty well I must say!  I'm always fascinated to see how fast the soap turned color because of the heavy vanilla content.  This was how it looked like right after pour:

Fascinating isn't it?!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYONE!