some of my soaps

Woodi · Sep 23, 2009

Now that summer, gardening and visitors are slowly withdrawing, getting ready to embrace the cold...will hopefully be getting back to more soapmaking. It's kind of lost the sheen for me, after 8 years of making and selling soap. There are days when I feel so 'ho-hum' about it, but other days when the enthusiasm returns - usually with the purchase of new oils, butters or scents.

Haven't shared many soap pics on this forum, so here are a few:

The top chick is made with rice bran oil, the other two are organic olive castille, which took months to harden.

playing with blue/green (using alkanet for the blue, which is unpredictable. The green floated to the top)

my fav way of doing lavender swirl, grinding buds in a coffee grinder with some purple oxide. I added some vanilla eo to the lavender eo, and the soap came out a nice pinkish, but later faded to caramel. This one sold very quickly.

I sometimes like to do a large bar and a mini. The larger bars need a crosspiece of wrapper, to prevent the label sliding off when a customer picks it up. I glue-stick the crosspiece to the wrapper.

Two kinds of unscented oatmeal (the darker one has honey in it):

Coffeecake fragrance with ground, used coffee grinds in it:

Woodi · Sep 23, 2009

and here was me selling at a spring studio tour. It was cold and wet this weekend, so I was bundled up in two tops plus a t-shirt.

I was given a generous-sized room in a potter's studio. The quilt is mine, (took me 4 years to make all those individual squares) to hide her mess of potting equipment. Next spring I will decorate the room better, perhaps with large posters of pretty soap - another winter project: making posters!

Those are the potter's round soap dishes on the stand (it's her stand). I sold $900 worth of soap in the 3 days, which was unusual for a spring show. Past years, only $300-$400.
I believe the difference lay in this tour's organization. They offered a gourmet lunch in one neighbour's house; and there were free classical music performances in another. This may have put shoppers in a more generous mood.

vivcarm · Sep 23, 2009

Those soaps look lovely, and I adore the visual effect with the blue green!

holly99 · Sep 23, 2009

Oh very nice! I particularly love the swirl in the lavender.

Gramma Judy · Sep 23, 2009

Very nice. Love the lavender one.

Milla · Sep 23, 2009

Wow, the blue and green ones are super cool! I love them! I love the rice bran and olive oil molded ones. Those would be perfect gifts for the sensitive skin people in my family. I have yet to make a 100% OO soap!