Playing Catch Up

So many soaps have come and gone since I last wrote! My goodness! I have done 5 soaps since the last time I posted!  Time for some catch up!

On April 20th I made 2 soaps: one more Hemp Milk Soap batch to finish off the hemp milk, and a Pink Bubble Bum Bath Bar. I let the Hemp Milk gel this time and it turned out a very pretty beige, no odd circles, very soft and creamy, the Pink Bubble Gum Bars are very hard-almost crumbly! I used 2 different colors-one pink and one nearly orange. I'll be watching them to see if they change color as they cure.

Hemp Milk Bar

Pink Bubble Gum Bars

On the 26th I did three more soaps, a Dark Spice Soap,a Calendula Soap and a Home Made Ice Cream  Soap. I will be cutting them today! Here they are:

Dark Spice, Calendula and Home Made Ice Cream Loaves

Home-Made Ice Cream Soap

One of my favorite things as a child and young adult was when my mom made us ice cream! She used lots of lemon and vanilla extract so that is what is in my soap! It smells just like my child hood memories! It is a very white soap-it is also a goat milk and buttermilk soap. It was put straight into the refrigerator to keep it from gelling and losing the scent Should be a very creamy lathering soap when cured! I can hardly wait to try some out!

Dark Spice

The Dark Spice Soap is another version of my regular spice soap I wanted it to be a darker richer color so I used some cinnamon sugar instead of plain cinnamon. I'd say it succeeded quite well! The Dark Spice soap is a hot processed soap. Smells sooo good!

Calendula

The Calendula Soap is a soap I wanted to have on hand for skin problems that I'm sure will be coming soon. I sprinkled the top with some calendula petals and some yellow pearl dust to make it pretty but the oil in the soap has been infused with Calendula to really help the skin. With the spring and summer months come mosquitoes  ants, poison oak, ivy and sumac and the list goes on! It is the only bad thing about Kentucky! So I wanted a good skin itch relieving soap. I am also planning to make some Jewel Weed salve and maybe some Jewel Weed soap for the same reasons. I plan to make and fill several spray bottles with some natural pest repellents too! Do you have a good recipe you want to share? I have several but am not sure which one I want to use this year. Last year if was a mix of Citronella, Clove, Lemongrass, Rosemary, Tea Tree, Eucalyptus, witch hazel and water. I'm looking around to see if there are any out there I might like better! If you have a good recipe, post it! I'm always happy to share any recipe if asked! :)

Last night I came up with a humdinger of an idea for 2 soaps! I already have three more soaps planned but these new ones are going to take some time! They will be special UK soaps for the show in September. I was so excited thinking about them I had a very hard time going to sleep last night! Take care and talk to you soon!  Marla, MJR Soaps

DIY Texturizing Spray

Thought all you soapers might be into some natural hair texturizing spray so here is the recipe and what it looks like on my hair. I've used Mousse for years and wanted to stop but I like a crunchy hair style. A little experimenting and I got a good texture going! Just what I wanted! Try it and let me know how it works for you! Oh and by the way, I use my soaps for shampoo bars and finish with a water-vinegar rinse.

DIY Texturizing Spray

This is a very easy to make spray, and it literally costs about 1/50th of the store bought versions. It adds great texture and volume to hair without the harsh chemicals. If you make it yourself it gives you more options to customize it for your hair type to get the texture you want.

Ingredients:

1 cup of hot water (not boiling) or Chamomile Tea for blondes, any type of black tea for brunettes-I use Oolong mixed with Chai,  and raspberry or black berry for red heads. (If you use tea you will need to keep in the fridge or use a preservative, I use a teaspoon of Vodka)

2 tablespoons Epsom Salts (or more for extra texture)

1/2 tsp  Salt-Himalayan or Sea Salt (optional but adds stiffness)

1 teaspoon Aloe Vera Gel

1 teaspoon Vodka (preservative)

3-4 drops light weight oil-I use Argan Oil(I get mine from Swanson’s online) or a few drops of essential oils

Scents are optional: I use a ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract, but any type of extract you like will work, or use a spritz of your favorite cologne.

10 oz or larger Spray Bottle

To lighten the hair add 1 teaspoon lemon juice

To darken the hair add ½ teaspoon rosemary or black walnut extract

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a glass or bowl and transfer to your spray bottle (I use a funnel because I’m not good at pouring into a small opening) or put all the ingredients directly into your spray bottle and shake until the salts are dissolved.  Store in the fridge if using lemon juice or tea base, or at room temperature if you aren’t. This will last 3-4 months but if you use it every day like I do you’ll be making more next month! ;)

To Use:

Spray on damp hair and scrunch with a towel to dry for loose natural waves. Or use a blow dryer with diffuser. I used a blow dryer on mine. You can also spray on dry hair at the roots for volume without the waves. 

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Making Tiger Striped Soap Balls

A soap I made in January is finally hard enough to
shave, it was one of those soaps that was starting to set too fast so I added water to slow it down. It has taken a while to cure out the excess water. At long last they seem fairly solid. There was a huge pile of shavings because I had problems getting it out of the mold-it was too soft, and had to cut it in the mold. Pieces were crooked and messy. I used a hand planer I borrowed from my husbands tools. Maybe I should buy a soap shaver for the future! ;)

Altogether I made 59 little striped soap balls! They will be cute embeds! 

       Today is Marty's (my husband) birthday! We will head in to Louisville to run some errands and this evening will meet up with the kids and have dinner at Texas Roadhouse-we get free appetizers for our birthday so always end up going twice in April! I like their wonderful steaks, seasoned just right and usually cooked to perfection. Have a great day, I know mine will be, I'll be with my best friend and we always have a great time together. :)

More Hemp Milk

Since I have this Hemp Milk I figure I better get to making soap! I don't know how long it lasts once it's open. I made 2 loaves of Hemp Milk Soap and used Hemp Oil in it as well. I wanted to see how it would look. It turned out very pretty! A light yellow in color. My camera isn't doing it justice:

I sculpted the tops and it looks very elegant. It has several essential oils for healthy skin and smells like a forest! Fresh and invigorating.

I also rebatched the original Hemp Milk Soap.
It will probably lighten up some as it cures. It is a very pretty light brown and smells like Grapefruit Ginger, very nice. Rebatching takes the PH down further for a milder soap. I have to make one more Hemp Milk Soap, it will be back to the pure white of the first batch:

Original non-gelled Hemp Milk Soap

I rebatched it because it had circles in every bar where it had started to gel. Unattractive. I will try again in the future to do an ungelled batch, I will have to keep it even colder than this time. and maybe put ice packs around it in the refridgerator! That's a lot of hassle to keep a bar white. This bar below was allowed to gel and is a beautiful white! It has both goat milk and buttermilk in it. I don't mind rebatching though, it always makes the soap milder with a lower PH. I get closer to 7 all the time! :)

I still plan to do my Cotton Candy Swirl, Peppermint Swirl and Bubble Gum Swirls but I need a few ingredients so that got sidelined for now while I wait for my order to come in. While I wait I will probably do some Flax Milk Soap.

Isn't it amazing all the neat milks there are out there? I drink Almond Milk and have made every type of nut into milks. My favorite is raw cashew nut milk, it is amazingly rich and satisfying! It has good oils in it and although a bit higher in calories it is just a very delicious nut milk! I grind them in a coffee grinder, then put it into a blender with water and ice. You can add sweeteners, salt or thickeners but I just drink it plain. Try it sometime, you just might like it! Ta ta for now! Talk to you soon.

Pictures of 4 Soaps after Cut

At long last we got the soap cut. Here are a few pictures:

Mantra Swirl, LillyPad, Maple Cornbread & Lemongrass

Lemongrass

Lime Margarita Lily Pad Swirl

Maple Cornbread

Pastel Primary Mantra Swirl

 Each soap was made with nearly the same oils, 2 had added Shea Butter, yet each one looks, feels and smells very different from the rest! The purple in the Lily Pad soap somehow went to invisible or brown. Not sure how that happened, usually whatever color I use with iron oxides it stays that color. I was very surprised to see this! The Maple Cornbread has some ash on the top but it looks great on it! Like flour was sprinkled on it. I like it and think I'll let it stay. The embeds in the lemon grass soap worked out nicely, I could have used more of them but I didn't want to overwhelm the bar so only did half with Rose Soap and Spring Rain Soap. The Mantra Swirl Soap is very soft, it may take a while to harden, not sure why. All in all they turned out great, I hadn't tried goats milk and buttermilk as a combo before so wasn't sure what to expect.

I'm doing a few other things at present but plan to get back to making more soap soon. I'm planning a cotton candy swirl, peppermint swirl and a bubblegum swirl using frosting creations flavor mixes. The Wilton Yellow Pearl Dust did a great job coloring the lemon soap I made previously and the Wilton Goldenrod Color Dust did a nice job on the Mantra Swirl. It kept the color both times. Yellow is a color I haven't found a good source for on iron oxide so I got inventive! The frosting creations flavor mixes contain Yellow 5 Lake, Red 40 Lake, and Blue 2 Lake food colorants in them, we'll see if they can hold up to a full gel! Until next time have a wonderful day!

No Soaping Today!

What an exciting weekend it was for me! No soap this weekend. Instead I got to watch my son in law race in the Papa John's 10 Miler Race on Saturday. This is my daughter Sierra, my son in law Sean and on the right my husband Marty. I never knew how crazy and exciting a race could be! Over 6200 people were in this race! Sean came in at 107th in 67 minutes! That's hoofing it in my opinion! I can barely run a mile, I could walk 10 but never run 10.

Later that afternoon we went traisping around a flea market and did some shopping here and there. My feet were tired but lucky for me they took me our to dinner for my birthday at the Texas Roadhouse. We ate some steak and had a great time! Then we went back to their place (we were visiting Louisville, KY) and had some angel food cake and vanilla ice cream.Played Sorry and Liars Dice then headed for bed.

We had planned to go home the next day but my daughter wanted us to stay, so we stayed! Watched the University of Louisville Cardinal basketball team win the final four. The kids were so excited they called Sean's parents who were at the game and asked them to get tickets! They left for Atlanta, Georgia to watch the championship game set for Monday night at 9:30 pm. What an incredible game it was! Michigan played an awesome game but Louisville played an even better one! Congratulations to the U of L Cards! University of Louisville is Sean and Sierra's school so they are very proud alumni!

I'm still in Louisville, watching their cute little dogs: Moxie and Dottie. Havanese cutie pies! Sean and

Dottie and Moxie

Sierra will be back tonight and I will get to head on back to Leitchfield.

I had a terrific birthday and I send many thanks out to Sierra & Sean Killeen for a great weekend and birthday! Also thanks to Sierra and Megan Riedling for giving me the money to buy the Soap Maker's software! It will take me a bit to get it set up but it should be awesome when it's all set!

I'm a very blessed lady of 54 years old, and very thankful to have such a wonderful family! I'm also thankful to have such a considerate husband who is willing to share me when someone had a need for a puppy sitter, ;)

Sugar Scrub & Bath Fizzies

Yesterday I sat and made bags, I have a huge package of scrap book paper that I won't be using and I thought it would be fun to make bags. I made little tiny ones just for my soaps and a little bigger ones for lots more soap! It was fun and really made me use my mind with dimensions and sizing. Here is a picture of some

of the bags:

The small ones are perfect for a bar of soap!

Today I've been up to other shenanigans, I've been making Acne Sugar Scrub! I put all my dry ingredients in my large mixing bowl. Using the dough hooks, I mixed the sugar, baking soda and herbs real well. I sterilized all the things I would be using with 100 proof, 50% alcohol.

I never touch isopropyl alcohol, it is bad for the body! If you've read The Cure for All Diseases by Hulda Clark then you already know this. The only things I use for sterilizing are food grade peroxide and the strongest vodka or grain alcohol I can find or citric acid. Sometimes a combination of vodka and citric acid. You can use these in place of the so called "sanitizers" out on the market.

Even bleach isn't bleach anymore. There are only 2 food safe bleaches out there! Bright and Clorox Germicidal-and both are difficult to find. Isopropyl alcohol is an irritant of the skin and eyes, OSHA states that problems occur within 3 minutes of exposure! It can cause dizziness, narcosis-with nausea and low blood pressure, OSHA reports that bradycardia, a slowing of the heartbeat, has been observed after oral ingestion of isopropyl alcohol solutions of 25 ml to 100 ml of water. These findings were noted in "Proctor and Hughes' Chemical Hazards of the Workplace" by Hathaway and Proctor. When absorbed through the skin, isopropyl alcohol can lead to extreme difficulties in breathing and eventual coma or death. OSHA reports that skin contact is common when children are treated with isopropyl alcohol sponge baths to treat fever, resulting in cases of serious poisoning.

Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/123197-health-risks-using-isopropyl-alcohol/#ixzz2PX7M8ILU

According to "The Cure for All Cancers-by Hulda Clark "cancer patients (100%) have both isopropyl alcohol and the intestinal fluke in their livers. The solvent, isopropyl alcohol, is responsible for letting the fluke establish itself in the liver. In order to get cancer, you must have both the parasite and isopropyl
alcohol in your body." (Page 1) "BUT SOMETHING SPECIAL HAPPENS TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE ISOPROPYL ALCOHOL IN THEIR BODIES.The liver is unable to trap and kill these tiny fluke stages. These baby-stages are actually allowed to make their home in the liver and other tissues. It is as if the immune system has no power to kill them. The flukes begin to multiply in people with isopropyl alcohol in their bodies! The miracidia (hatchlings) start to make little balls inside themselves, called redia4. But each redia (ball) is alive! It pops itself out of the miracidia and begins to reproduce itself. 40 redia can each make 40 more redia! And all of this out of one egg! This parasite is laying eggs and producing millions of redia
right in your body! In your cervix or lungs, wherever your cancer is growing! These redia are swept along in your blood, landing in whatever tissue lets them in. Smokers' lungs, breasts with benign lumps, prostate glands full of heavy metals are examples of tissues that give the redia their landing permits5." (page 5)

So to make a long story short-don't use isopropyl alcohol or any other chemical solvent if you can find a natural alternative! It's best to be health minded and not do ourselves harm in the crusade to "kill germs". If you genuinely feel the need to use an antibacterial solution use water mixed with vodka or grain alcohol in a spritz bottle or make up some disposable towelettes from benzene free paper towels.

Anyway, on with the sugar scrub.....

Next I added all the oils (Argan, Sesame, Shea butter and essential oils, Vitamin E-50 and ginseng) and the Jeecide-a preservative to prevent mold and nasty things from growing. This one doesn't have as many side effects as some I've seen and it's used at a very small 1-2% ratio. A necessary evil to keep a different evil at bay-sigh, wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to be so careful at such a microscopic level?


















I continued mixing and enjoyed the scents of all the herbs and  essential oils as they blended...then I portioned them out into sterilized containers. My skin is looking forward to a good scrub! ;) It has a beautiful smell and color.

Next up, bath fizzies! I have some strawberry-kiwi koolaid, baking soda and cornstarch to put together!

I'm using a simple recipe from Arm & Hammer. Baking soda, strawberry-kiwi koolaide, Argan oil, cornstarch and a few drips of water. The picture isn't showing how pretty pink it is unfortunately. It smells wonderful! MMMMMMMMMM!

I used little cups from the dollar tree. Now to let them dry and I get to have a nice bath with a wonderful strawberry-kiwi scent....What a fun little project!

Meanwhile back at the soap shop....my husband is working hard on making me a wire cutter! I still have 3 loaves of soap to cut and I have five new ideas for some soaps to try...I can hardly wait!!! God bless!

***Update** I used a few of these-holy cow did it make my skin soft! Wow! Good choice on oils and scents!

Bagging and Tagging

Well hello again! I have been swamped trying to get things done. No time to blog for a few days. I have not cut my last three soaps yet. My husband is building me a new wire cutter! Very exciting! I'll be able to cut a whole loaf all at once! Yippee!

I have been making little bags and tagging and bagging soap, getting it boxed and ready for the craft shows coming.

 
I have 26 kinds of soap but only about 16 are cured and ready. I will need to get busy and make some more soap to get the inventory up before busy season makes it all "poof" and disappear! ;) (
The last four on the list are Goat Milk & Buttermilk soaps.)

Here's what I have at present:

1. Skin soap
2. Spring Rain (Blue embeds)
3. Charcoal Pomegranate
4. Orange Mango
5. Chocolate Coconut Swirl
6. Almond Goat Milk soap
7. Amyris Clove
8. Acne Skin Soap
9. Goat Milk Lavender Bar
10. Kelp Soap Exfoliating Bar CP (2-20-13)
11. New Skin soap HP 2-25-13
12. Black Cherry Swirl CP (2-25-13)
13. Rose Bath Bar CP (3-1-13)
14. Spice Bar HP 3-1-13
15. Caramel Latté Goat Milk CP (3-1-13)
16. Apple Cinnamon Goat Milk CP (3-15-13)
17. Plumeria & Violet Blue Poppy Seed CP (3-15-13)
18. Lemon Bars HP 3-21-13
19. Juniper Myrrh HP 3-21-13
20. Peacock Swirl CP-3-24-13
21. Hemp Milk CP-3-24-13
22. Strawberry Cheesecake (salt bar) CP-3-24-13
23. Lemongrass Milk Soap CP (3-28-2013)
24. Maple Cornbread Soap CP (3-28-2013)
25. Lime Margarita Lily Pad Soap CP (3-28-2013)
26. Pasta Primaries Mantra Swirl CP (3-28-2013)          

It's a good start but I have a ways to go! I will need a bigger inventory before September and as I sell it, it's going down! Time to get cracking! Have a great day!