Merry Christmas everyone!

Hope you've had a great year! I know it has been super busy for me. May you have a blessed Christmas with loved ones and friends! God bless you!

Marla Riedling
MJR Soaps

At Waggener HS on S.Hubbards Ln.

Come on down!

Saturday there will be a fall craft show at Gloria De Lutheran Preschool

Come out and see us if you can! Lots of fabulous vendors will be there for your shopping ecstasy!

Right behind Target in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

See you there!

God bless,

Marla

Enjoyed the summer!

In between making stuff and selling stuff we enjoy boating on Nolin Lake, we live right next to it so we might as well enjoy it! :-)  (View from the seat of the boat)

Daughter sitting on the front

Putting Tubby into the lake

Our boat "Tubby"!

EOQA

Well I met the president of EOQA (Essential Oil Quality Alliance), Daniel. What a nice man!

I was in a fix, and needed sage essential oil in a hurry as I'm going on vacation and had a last minute order to fill. They are located in Jeffersonville, IN and I was in Louisville so I called them up! Unfortunately they have no store or place to pick up product. When I explained my situation, Daniel offered to meet up with me! Hallelujah! I bought 2 4 oz bottles of high quality sage eo at prices that beat my 2 main companies-CamdenGrey and Liberty!

I'm very happy to have found EOQA for the quality price and of course, location. Now if only "will call" were available! ;)

If you want quality essential oil and don't want to have a long wait for product should give them a look and definitely a call! Many thanks to Daniel for being there when I needed help! I look forward to doing more business with you in the future!

See you all in a couple of weeks and God bless!

Marla Riedling

Essential Oil Snafu

Hi everyone,  

I recently ordered from a company called wf-medical on Ebay. I'd ordered a time or two and thought they might be ok. Recently I used their clove bud essential oil, it was a huge disappointment! Normal clove bud eo will eat through plastic! You have to handle it with a lot of care because it is so strong and destructive. I found that out the hard way years ago when it got on my stick blender and ate the plastic.

Still works GREAT!!!!!

It also ate the table cloth and anything I spilled it on. That's why I now use a stainless steel bench to do anything that uses essential oils. This eo from wf-medical does nothing! The scent is barely there and it seems oily. All the products from this place are definitely "less than". So if you've thought about trying them, I recommend against it. The quality is not what it should be at all. I've asked if it is diluted but they won't answer. They will give me refund if I send it back though. Best advice-just don't order from them to start with! :)

It's best to stick to the companies that deliver quality! My go to company of choice is Camden-Grey Essential Oils, Inc. They have never let me down with their essential oils.  Many soapers use a company called Liberty Essential Oil Source, I have yet to try them but plan to in the future. I have a long list of companies to try! ;)  Always looking for the best price and quality! Yet I keep coming back to Camden-Grey....LOL!

What do the rest of you use for aromatherapy and the add in of essential oil to balms and soaps? What experiences have you had with the different companies? Feedback would be welcome!

Hope you're having a FANTASTIC Friday!

God Bless,

Marla Riedling

Dish soap that sudses and degreases: KOH, coconut oil and potato water

Hi all,

I've made several batches of liquid soaps but nothing like this one!

There was a post in the Soaper's Forum about using potato water for dish soap. Needless to say, I was fascinated! 

Using distilled water I boiled 5 potatoes in a 2 quart pan and kept the water once the potatoes were done. I weighed out a portion of the water and reverse engineered a recipe from the amount of potato water. The water was left in the fridge overnight so I started with cool water.

Recipe? KOH (Potassium Hydroxide-you can make it from clean ashes!), coconut oil and the potato water!  Simple right?

I brought it to trace, then cooked and stirred for about an hour. I then left it overnight to finish

 gelling and when tested was neutral-no zap. PH was only 8! I used a little EDTA in my dilution water to aid with soap scum but other than that only boiled distilled water was added.

Right off the bat just washing the crock pot was an amazing experience! 

Can you say flying bubbles? This soap even worked to get seriously greasy dishes and pans squeaky clean!

Absolutely awesome! Using a brush, a Dobie, sponge, or rag the suds are phenomenal! It works fantastic!

I left part of the soap unthickened to use in a foamer and the rest I added a very small amount of HEC to the soap, brought it to 170° and stick blended it. Perfect consistency. This is a keeper! This works as good as Dawn ever has and has no toxic chemicals.

I was concerned about it being drying to my hands but so far it hasn't been drying at all! I have some people trying it and so far they LOVE it too!

My thanks go out to the person in the soap forum who posted. I'll be making this for life! :-)

After Clarifying it's nearly clear!

I'm using it a foamer bottle as well as a thickened version in my regular dish soap bottle. Absolutely love it!

Have a great day and God bless you!

Marla
MJR Soaps

New lotions added

5 new goat milk lotions added to listing: Apple Orchard, Coconut Vanilla, Lavender, Mango, and Wisteria!

Mango Rim Soap for Soap Challenge

I've made several rim soaps and have been having fun with it! So when the Soap Challenge of the month was rim soaps I thought what the heck and signed up.

The outside of rim I forgot to take pictures! I will film it next time. The rim is black, white, orange,and pink. It was poured from the corner, spun and then skewered. The inside has some orange and Mango Fragrance oil. Using a Pringles can cut to 6" with the top taped on with electrical tape:

This is after I unmolded the soap:

The soap is a single layer on parchment paper on a cookie pan. It was in the oven for 2 hours and I think it got too hot! Since I don't CPOP anything's possible. I put it in the freezer overnight and in the morning put it between 2 sheets of freezer paper, rolled it using a rolling pin and put it in the Pringles can. I pressed the seams together the best I could and made the inside soap.

The Rim was made with shortening, coconut, almond and castor oil. (I don't keep palm oil on hand which is why I used shortening) We were told not to use the other butters however Olga Bashkina has absolutely gorgeous rim soaps and uses lots of butters!  My inside recipe was Coconut, Olive, Almond, Cocoa Butter and Castor oils. I added mango fragrance (NG) to the inside and the soap smells wonderful!

Here are photos of the cut soaps:

Lots of vibrant color! Hopefully these will sell at the craft fair I'm going to in April.

It was a fun challenge as I don't do round soaps! It's been 5 years since I made my grandchildren round bubble gum soaps. Many thanks to Amy Waldron and Tatsiana Serko for this months challenge!

Hope you give it a try! I'm going back to rectangular rims! I'm doing one for the 4th of July that should be a blast!

God bless!

Marla Riedling
MJR Soaps

Pastel Rectangle Rim-Easter Baskets!

A second try at the rectangle rim-it was fun anyway! I'll get better at it if I keep on trying! ;)

They smell like bubblegum and have some hidden eggs here and there! I thought the kids might enjoy these anyway!

Take care and God bless!

Marla Riedling
MJR Soaps

Rectangular Rim 4 Leaf Clover Video

Here's the video of making my first rim soap. Enjoy!

Marla Riedling
MJR Soaps

Holiday Lip Balms

Flavors I went with

 Making Christmas Fun!

2015 Christmas I wanted to do something fun and different for my family. I've already given them just about everything I make...so I started thinking about their favorite flavors. My brother loves coffee and pistachio nuts, my older sister loves chocolate, coconut, and red licorice, my younger sister loves peanut butter, and chocolate. My parents got rum, coffee, chocolate, coconut, caramel, pistachio. My kids like a range of things. I already had chocolate and caramel. So this is the list I came up with: coconut, bubblegum, marshmallow, bourbon, red licorice, sparkling wine, coffee, pralines and cream, pistachio, peanut butter, and butter rum. In the end I had some dribs left of all the flavors so I got creative and mixed them together. Remember making a suicide as a kid? Or a kamikazi, Hurricane or whatever your family called it! Soda machines were brand new to us as kids and when we were allowed to go and get our own drinks we would mix all the flavors together. Why? Because we could and because it was the cool thing. Sometimes it tasted AWFUL!!!! Nowadays the kids take those soda dispensers for granted. They pretty much just get one flavor. Boring! :)

Putting 60 lip balms together....

Normally I would just rubber band the number of balms I was doing but this time I wanted to get them all done so I could get them shipped out. So my husband drilled some plexiglass and put white electrical tape over a tiny portion so the tubes wouldn't fall out.

custom made lip balm holder!

I got out my stainless steel cups as I thought they would work fantastic to do so many flavors!

Sam's Club has these 1 dozen for under $5.00! Stainless steel cups!

They fit just perfect in my crockpot! I added some distilled water to the bottom and turned on the heat to low. Next I put my lip balm together. Once the ingredients were all melted together I began. I dipped out enough balm to fill a cup and added each flavoring to the cups. The crockpot and water kept the balm fluid. I used a different pipette for each flavor and filled up 6 of each flavor. Then at the end I mixed what was left together and made my own "suicide" version of balm.

The custom tray did a very nice job for me! Thank you Marty! <3

Labeling was crazy!

Making a custom label for each of the different kinds was a challenge but I got it done! All in all it was a fun project! My family got them and thought they were really neat!

The only problem I had was my printer kept messing up the labels! I must have cleaned the rollers 10 times!

In the end I figured my family could handle a few blue lines! 

The first 2 batches of balms I did were great! Silky smooth and yummy! The third batch I changed to white chocolate and was a bit grainy for some reason. The balm still worked great and tasted fine but feels a little grainy when applying! Oh well! It was a fun project and not one I do for customers unless specially asked. I would probably forego the chocolate and just use butters and flavoring.

Chocolate Mint Lip Balms:

Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Beeswax, Dark Chocolate Wafers, Cocoa Butter, Babassu Oil, T-50 E, Peppermint Oil

25 Lip Balm Recipe:

25 Lip Balm Tubes (Rustic Escentuals has really good deals on lip balm tubes and flavorings.)

47 gr Organic Coconut Oil

26 gr Beeswax

25 gr Dark Chocolate Wafers

23 gr Cocoa Butter

20 gr Babassu Oil (or any butter you like!)

1   ml Peppermint Oil

5 drops T 50 E

Melt the beeswax first then add the remaining ingredients. Some people use the microwave, I am anti-microwave. I used a small crock pot which is easily wiped out afterward. This is something that a porcelain pan would work excellent for too. 

Use a pipette or pour very carefully into your tubes. Leave sit until completely cooled or put it in the refrigerator if you're in a hurry! ;)

These have a very mild peppermint-chocolate taste which disappears fairly quickly but the balm stays on and keeps working for a good long time!

Labeling is your choice. I tried every label online labels recommended. For me I like the 

2.125" x 2.125" OL1102LP ones the best. If you have trouble with labels not sticking and rubbing alcohol doesn't work, denatured alcohol will take off any residue left from the manufacturer. Once I realized my tubes didn't want to take an adhesive, I cleaned each batch of tubes before I started the work of filling them. Hopefully you won't have that problem!

My tubes came from the distributor containerandpackaging.com. A great place to get nearly any kind of bottle or container! My guess is they were made in China just like most things are nowadays...oh well!

As for my white chocolate lip balms, if I do them again I will use Ghirardelli white chocolate and not the wafers. I think that's what made the 3rd batch grainy. The recipe was the same I just switched white wafers for the dark. 

So there you have it! Lip balms for holiday or anytime gifts! Incredibly easy and fun to do! I'm amazed when I see how much they charge for those things in the store! I think I'll stick with my handcrafted ones instead. Less money, and I know what went into it.

God bless you guys! Take care until next time!

Marla Riedling

MJR Soaps

UPDATE: I did make more and used Ghirardelli White Chocolate and it worked fantastic! I think the problem was the white wafers I used the first time. It wasn't real chocolate!

Making a Rimmed soap

I've seen several round rimmed soaps that I thought were really neat. I decided to give it shot only for my rectangular molds.

First I poured the outside:

After letting it harden I cut it to fit my mold, then cut off a 3.5 inch piece for the top. (I will post a video soon!) I then peeled it off the paper and placed it decoration side down in the mold and pressed it down. I let that harden overnight.

Next I made a soap for the inside. As far as measurements go, I took 20% of a normal batch of soap for the outside rim and 75% of a batch for the inside. I had plenty left over and made cute soap balls that will go in some future soap. 

For scent I used 4 Leaf Clover which I really like! It is such a nice clean scent, fresh and invigorating! (From http://www.naturesgardencandles.com/ )

Here is the finished product:

 I intend to try another one soon! It was fun and challenging too! Thanks to Tastsiana Serko

and Jelena for the cool idea! Their rimmed soaps are gorgeous!

I'll keep at it until mine are just as pretty rectangles! :)

Hope your 2016 is going great so far! God bless!

Marla Riedling

MJR Soaps

Chocolate anyone?

I wanted to make these last year and never got around to it. This year I did! Made with real chocolate in the dark half. Just for fun. Smells like brownies! Nice hand soap except I want to lick my hands! Lol!

Fun Soaps

Making a soap I always keep in stock and decided to add some Love toppers to them!