Merry Christmas

It has been a while since I posted and this has constantly been on my mind.  After all, this blog and soapmaking are my babies – born one month apart.  It’s just that it is much faster for me to post pictures and updates primarily on Instagram, and secondarily on Facebook.  I hope you follow me there!

Last Sunday was my last day to make soap for the year.  It’s nice to see my kitchen free of soapmaking clutter!  There’s still a lot of things to do and finish before my husband and I leave for Tokyo, where we will be spending the New Year.  I am really looking forward to this break and to see Maya again!

For those of you who have been following my blog, you know that I have a beloved shih-tzu named Chewie. He is currently in doggie hospital for ehrlichia, a serious bacterial infection transmitted by ticks.  Not only that, he needs his gallbladder removed for stones, but I am still hoping that the reading is wrong, or that the stones would miraculously dissolve, so that he would not require surgery.  He is staying in the hospital until we come back.  Please send him prayers and healing energy.

To close the year, I leave you with these holiday soaps I made.  See you again in 2016!  Wishing you all a Joyful Christmas and a Happy, Healthy, and Peaceful New Year!

Gift Basket

Jack Frost

Mistletoe

Nutcracker

Red Currant and Pine

Vanilla Mint

 

Luxe Naturals

Citrus Cypress – This is the same as the Japanese Indigo Soap I made earlier this year, minus the indigo, and with the addition of Australian red clay and bamboo charcoal for a new look.  I still plan on doing more experiments with indigo but using clear-colored essential oils.  This soap has cypress, petitgrain, lemon 5-fold, orange 5-fold, cajeput, and basil – too yellow to use in an indigo soap, but perfect with the current look.  I really love the smell – so fresh and uplifting!

Citrus Cypress

Orange Ylang Ylang – I was a little bit apprehensive when I made this.  Ylang ylang is known to accelerate trace or even seize soap.  Luckily, everything went smoothly.  Pure ylang ylang is so strong that a little goes a long way.  I blended it with lavender, orange 5-fold, copaiba balsam and ginger, and anchored them with kaolin and French pink clays.  This soap has olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, cocoa butter, orange wax, fresh yogurt, and goat’s milk.  If this soap were a woman, she would be someone confident and sexy, yet down to earth. 🙂

Orange Ylang Ylang

Shikon and Bamboo Charcoal – This is a remake of the one I made last February.  The only difference is that I lessened the amount of shikon.  I found the first batch too dark; I think this new batch looks better.  But knowing me, I will probably continue to tinker with the recipe.  This has lavender, rosemary, cajeput and patchouli for their restorative properties.  The smell is herbal, a bit camphoraceous, and earthy.

Shikon and Bamboo Charcoal

 

Triple Mint Dead Sea Mud

I love all things minty.  Inhaled, I find it soothing, comforting and at the same time energising. My taste buds have a thing for it, too.  I was in mint heaven when I visited Australia a few years ago.  They have a mint version of almost all their chocolates!  Have you seen mint KitKat before? I was so thrilled to discover it, and of course, I had to have my stash to take home.  🙂

I already make several soaps with mint, but I am always thinking of more variations.  This latest one is a Dead Sea Mud soap, aimed at acne-prone skin, yet none-drying.  It contains more than 50% olive oil, with coconut oil, cocoa butter, and castor oil making up the rest.  It also has fresh yogurt for its skin refining qualities.  For a spa-like scent, I used essential oils of Japanese Mint (mentha arvensis), spearmint (mentha spicata), peppermint (mentha piperita), cajeput (melaleuca cajeputi – a cousin of Tea Tree), Siberian fir (abies siberica), and dark patchouli (pogostemon cablin).  

My M.I.L.’s New Favorite

Since I’ve known my my mother-in-law (nearly 8 years), her all-time favorite scent has always been lavender.  But ever since I gave her Honeysuckle soap last year, she has declared it as her new favorite.  Poor lavender.  She hasn’t given it a second glance since she fell in love with the heady and sexy honeysuckle.

I have never smelled the real flower, so I don’t know if what I have is the real deal.  I bought several honeysuckle fragrances from various suppliers, and they all smell different.  I made a blend of the ones that I like and added a little bit of other floral elements to bring everything together.

I think this is my 4th time to make Honeysuckle, and so far this is the best looking.  I love the bright colors and the soap batter was behaved enough for me to make hanger swirls.  Typical of most florals, this usually becomes thick quite fast, and in the past, the yellowish fragrance oil had a tendency to turn pink into peach.

I thought I was not into florals, but it is becoming apparent that I am wrong.  To my surprise, many of my top picks are florals, including honeysuckle.  What’s your favourite floral? 🙂

 

Something Blue for Father’s Day

If my father were still here today, I am sure he would have enjoyed my soaps.  He loved smelling nice and clean.  I remember he would buy a lot of bath products during his travels, and he had a row of cologne bottles and after-shaves on his bathroom counter.  He also liked designing and fabricating things, like the mini island in our kitchen which also served as a huge chopping board.  The surface was solid wood with a thick stainless steel frame.  I bet he would have had fun helping me with some of my soaping needs.

Father’s day is just around the corner and this year I remembered to prepare early.  I try to have a good variety of colors for my display, but currently I have more blues than usual. Yes, it was by design, but coincidentally blue is one of my favourite colors to soap with.  I like how there are so many different shades and tones to choose from and I think all of them are beautiful.  They tend to stay true to their colour, and unlike yellow and orange,  I don’t need to use as much.

Vetiver & Sage – fresh top notes of lemon, grapefruit, rosemary and sage, balanced with light florals, sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver and musk

Deauville – a breezy unisex blend of orange, ginger, ozone, hyacinth, vetiver and light musk.

Ocean – smells fresh and soothing with ozone, marine and watery notes, and eucalyptus.

Tropical Sunset – bottom blue part is scented with coconut cream; upper part is a delicious fruity mix of lime, pineapple, papaya and passionfruit.

Happy Father’s Day to all the Dads! 🙂

 

Soap Favors for a June Wedding

Have you ever wondered why June is the most popular month for weddings?  Perhaps most of you already know, but I didn’t until I read The History of June Weddings.

In essence, it was all about practicality in the olden days.  June meant warmer weather and a good time to take one’s annual bath.  Since people were at their cleanest and least smelly during this month, it would logically be the best time for a union. Children conceived during the honeymoon – referring to the first full moon after the summer solstice on June 21- would be born the following spring, thus escaping the harsh winter and not interfering with the fall harvest.

Nowadays people are clean all through out the year, and unless one is a farmer, no one has to think about harvest, yet June’s popularity for weddings hasn’t waned.  Undeniably, it is a beautiful and colourful time of the year.

Last month, I was approached by a lovely young couple to make 220 soap favours for their June wedding on the 13th, which, coincidentally, was also my birthday!  They chose Lavender Mist and Ginger Apple for their scents, and their only request was to have a custom stamp reflecting the design on their invite.  They were fine with my normal packaging, but I personally wanted something more special for them.  And this is where the saying “if there is a will, there is a way” applies.

I have seen on Pinterest cute packaging ideas featuring a doily folded on top of a paper bag, with a ribbon securing it.  I thought doilies evoked the perfect feel for a romantic wedding, and since I love those stuff, I’ve managed to hoard a small stash.  🙂  The idea was there but how to execute it?

For me the problem is usually about finding the right materials.  I could not use my normal plastic packaging since it doesn’t have side folds and would not fit the look I was going for.  I went all around town and couldn’t find the right plastic with the right size for a single bar of soap.  I had some custom-made plastic bags for my granola, but it was too big.  At that point, I had to improvise, yet remain mindful of the amount of time it required. In the end, I found an efficient way to tailor fit the plastic for the granola by chopping a good 6″ off the top, adjusting the side fold to follow the back border of the soap, and folding and taping the excess plastic at the bottom.  Plastic has a tendency to slide and dance around, so making those folds was very challenging.

After I conquered the plastic part, I had to deal with punching the doily with plastic sandwiched in between.  My single hole puncher had a hard time punching through all the layers.  Surprisingly, my smaller hole puncher did a better job, but every now and then, it would get stuck after punching and would not open.  This required prying with the handle of a spoon, and sometimes doing so would rip the doily.  Originally, I was going to make two side by side holes for the ribbon, but no way was I going to punch more than I had to.  I settled for a single hole, and as you can see, that worked out fine, too.  🙂

Lavender Mist

Ginger Apple

I was really excited to make these soap favours and it pushed me to be creative.  I am very thankful to the couple, Manolo and Chinggay, for giving me the opportunity to make their wedding favours, and for allowing me to blog about it.  I wish you both all the love and joy a marriage can bring.  🙂

Rice Water Fil-Castile

A friend of mine introduced me to making porridge with glutinous purple rice, and ever since then, I would buy a small pack whenever it makes its sporadic appearance in the supermarket. The high amount of amylopectin is responsible for its sticky quality –  yielding a thicker and richer porridge compared to one made with regular rice.

As I was preparing to cook some glutinous purple rice last month, I remembered reading somewhere that rice water, or the water used for washing rice, was good for the skin and has been used by Chinese and Japanese women for centuries.  Without doing much research, I went ahead and soaked rice in distilled water at a 1:1 ratio.

Purple rice water

I also had some shikon roots going through a second infusion. It was much lighter than the first infusion so I thought if I used it together with the purple rice water, I might get a lavender-colored soap.  Wanting to keep things simple, I decided to use these 2 ingredients in my 2-oil Fil-Castile formula.  And instead of my usual unscented Fil-Castile, I added essential oils of lavender and rosewood (all-natural blend since the real thing is endangered and too costly.)  At the last minute, I added bamboo charcoal to have some kind of design for the top.

In stark contrast to the dark purple colour that I got with my Shikon and Bamboo Charcoal Soap, this second-infusion batch had a greenish hue when it was wet, and dried out to a greyish bone colour.  The colour I had hoped for was not there, but it smelled nice and expensive. 😀

I finally got to test a bar a few days ago.  It was slimy, pasty, and barely bubbly.  If I really wanted to, I could create a little lather by coating my hands with wet soap and rubbing them together for a few seconds.  But if I just glided the bar on my body, there was no lather and the soap was so slippery that it kept jumping out of my hands. Because I like using soap with a good lather, this soap rates low in usage pleasure, but it leaves my skin feeling very soft.  My conclusion is that I used the wrong type of rice, but rice water is certainly good for the skin.

As for my sticky purple rice porridge, it was delicious. After cooking it and adding enough water to make it into the consistency I wanted, I seasoned it with a little himalayan salt, added coconut milk for richness, and coconut nectar for sweetness. I forgot to include it in the photos, put I also like to sprinkle it with toasted Japanese sesame seeds, either the white or black variety. Yum.

Glutinous purple rice, coconut milk, coconut nectar/syrup, himalayan salt

Glutinous purple rice porridge.

 

 

Shikon and Bamboo Charcoal Soap

Sitting in a dark corner of my pantry, I had shikon roots macerating in olive oil since November. It was huddled together with my collection of various infusions: calendula, mugwort, chamomile, stinging nettle, guava leaf, papaya leaf, moringa, and turmeric.  A few of them have been there for over a year.  Not forgotten, mind you. 🙂  The shikon infusion, with its deep rose-burgundy hue, got me the most curious.

Shikon is Japanese for Lithospermum erythrorhizon, also known as red-root or purple gromwell.  It belongs to the same borage or Boraginaceae family as the alkanet – a popular natural blue/purple colorant for soaps.   But more than its pretty colour, shikon is known for its medicinal properties. According to Plants for a Future:

 “It is used internally in the treatment of irritant skin conditions, measles, chicken pox, boils, carbuncles, hepatitis and skin cancer. Externally it is used to treat nappy rash, burns, cuts, wounds, abscesses, eczema and haemorrhoids. The plant is an ingredient of commercial skin care creams.”

Whether any of its skin healing properties is retained after saponification is arguable.  Nonetheless, I wanted to create a luxurious soap with the shikon and bamboo charcoal powder from Maya. If you have been following my blog, you would know that Maya had generously given me a bunch of soaping ingredients to experiment with.  (One of them was  Japanese Indigo.)

It was my first time to soap with shikon and it was fascinating to see the colour change in every step of the process.  The infusion had 60 grams shikon root and 450 grams olive oil, which, after straining, formed part of a batch with a total oil weight of 1500 grams.  It consists of olive oil, coconut oil, macadamia oil, shea butter, fresh yogurt, goat’s milk, and and an essential oil blend of lavender, rosemary, cajeput and patchouli.

1. The colour of shikon-infused oil is a rich rose-burgundy. 2. Infused oil mixed with the other oils, yogurt and goat’s milk – before the lye was added. 3. As soon as the lye was mixed with the oils, the colour changed to a very dark purple. The white specks are from the milk, before it was properly mixed. 4. From purple, the soap batter turned into a very dark blue, nearly black.

In the mold, the blue-black soap batter had morphed into blue and stayed that way even after it had dried. The black portion is coloured with bamboo charcoal.

Seeing how dark blue the soap batter was, I had serious doubts that it would turn to purple or that it would lighten up.  In fact, I was having second thoughts whether to continue with my plans of making bamboo charcoal swirls.

When I cut the soap, it was still blue and the inside was a muddy gray.  I was honestly disappointed with the colour.  But after a few minutes, I noticed that the outer edges were starting to turn purple. Half a day later, the colour had stabilised into a deep, dark purple-grey.

I have just started using a bar and I love the way it feels rich and creamy, with pretty good bubbles.  It is quite hard considering that it contains more than 50% olive oil.  There’s no salt but I added sodium lactate. The scent is soothing and fresh, and while it makes the bathroom smell wonderful, it does not linger on the skin.

The actual colour is a much darker and duller greyish purple than what the photos depict.

Inspired by Gordana’s body butter, I also whipped up a batch for myself, colouring it a baby pink from what I could squeeze out after straining the shikon infusion.  This recipe contains 70 g. raw shea butter, 10 g. guava leaf-infused coconut oil, 10 g. calendula-infused coconut oil, 10 g. shikon-infused olive oil, and a few drops of cajeput. The consistency is that of a rich buttercream!  l like using it on my legs and feet, just before going to bed.

Naturally pink body butter with shikon infusion.

If you are interested to see the different shades of purple one can achieve with shikon, here are some links:

https://infusionsblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/purple-natural-dye-for-soap/

https://infusionsblog.wordpress.com/2014/02/11/shikon-soap/

https://infusionsblog.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/here-comes-the-next-autumn-soap/

http://mojsapun.blogspot.com/2013/02/shikon-soap.html