Portland!

I spent last weekend exploring Portland, Oregon with a couple of girlfriends. My dad moved up there last summer, so between the great deal I found on my Southwest flight and crashing at my dad's apartment, we had a wonderful recession-appropriate weekend getaway! To make up for the relative cheapness of the trip, I insisted on spending the bulk of the afternoon on Saturday exploring the Saturday Market.


I LOVE CRAFT MARKETS and this one was no exception! There were a lot of amazing artists and some incredibly unique wares being sold, but I was most interested in (surprise!) the SOAP. My market buddies thought I was crazy for spending so much time and money on something that I already have - in obsessive quantities - at home. But hey, it's market research, right? ;)

So, in lieu of my own new creations, I thought I'd devote a couple blogs this week to describing some of the soaps from the Portland Saturday Market that were worthy of my cash.

Soaps by the sea

I was recently asked by a friend who sits on the board of directors for her mother's literacy foundation to donate some soapy goodies to be auctioned off at her foundation's annual fund raising dinner coming up this summer. The theme of the event is "By the Sea" and, while it's certainly not required for the donations be theme-specific, I thought it would be a fun project to aim for.

That was the inspiration for the soaps I made last weekend:

For the first batch, I was aiming for the color to fade from light blue at the top to dark blue at the bottom, like the color of the horizon when the sky blends into the ocean. I ended up with darker hues than I had originally intended, but this way I suppose it reminds me of the colors of the ocean itself, as the light filters out at greater depths. The white lines are the waves.

I kind of like how the waves ended up sticking out of the mold on one side, adding texture. (Bonus feature: turn them upside-down after use to allow the water to drain and prevent the entire bottom of the soap from getting mushy! :P ) So far I'm the only one who likes that feature, though. What does everyone else think?

Anyway, for my second attempt at ocean/wave soaps I decided to use the tube approach:

This technique didn't allow me to get that nice color fade I was going for in the first batch, but I like how they came out anyway!

All the wave bars are scented with a combination of ocean and sea breeze fragrance oils, making these great unisex soaps.

I'm on Etsy!

I finally got around to setting up shop on Etsy. For those of you not yet familiar with this website, prepare for hours of lost productivity! The entire site is dedicated to folks like me who are looking to sell their handmade wares online. No matter what the occasion, this has quickly become my favorite place for handmade and unique gifts. I highly recommend taking some time to explore all this amazing online community has to offer.

It will probably take me a while to finish stocking my Etsy shop, but I am open for business! If you're looking to purchase some of my handmade soaps or you're kind enough to spread the word, you can find me here:

soaploft.etsy.com

Honey Lemon Eucalyptus Lip Balm

After the success of my geranium lavender lip balm, I've been looking forward to more adventures in lip balms. Now that I have my new lip balm tubes, I just need to find some free time for playing around with new recipes!

I did manage to steal some time last weekend before heading down to Salinas for Easter. I wanted to bring soap and lip balm samples down for my hosts but the geranium lavender lip balms are pretty feminine, so I decided to create a more gender neutral lip balm for the occasion.

Ben and Jenny are the biggest consumers of Emergen-C vitamin supplements I know but when you've got a cute little germ incubator (aka, toddler) running around, even vitamins can't hold off the occasional sore throat, cough or sniffles. With that in mind, I decided to create a lip balm that would provide an extra little aromatherapy boost to help with these syptoms.

Because I was in a hurry to get down there, I ended up using the same base I'd used for the geranium lavender lip balm (I already had some made up). I added a bit of honey to the base to sweeten it and went with a combination of lemon and eucalyptus essential oils, a well-known combination for fighting sore throats. (Of course this combination is usually ingested via cough drops or tea, so I'm not sure it'll really help that much as a lip balm and no, I don't recommend eating the lip balms to get the full effect.)

I've been using this lip balm for the past few days and I've decided that it needs some work. I think I'll try a different base next time and I'll definitely add a higher concentration of essential oils because the first batch was a bit weak.

Spring Holidays Part Two: Sunny's first Easter egg hunt!

I hopped on down to Salinas for a quick Easter visit with my Monterey "family" this past weekend. Ben and Jenny are two of my closest friends from grad school. In addition to their 19-month-old daughter Sunny, their family includes Lucky the dog, Lilly and Minako the cats, and hamsters, though I've stopped keeping track of their names or how many of them there are. Also there was George, Ben's coworker and another honorary family member, and a surprise new addition to the family. As usual, it was a full house and an excellent visit with wonderful friends.

Sunday morning they totally spoiled me by letting me sleep in, so that I woke up to the smell of the amazing feast they were preparing. After brunch we dyed eggs and hid them in the yard for Sunny's very first Easter egg hunt - a very amusing event! I'm not sure how many of you have witnessed a 17-month-old hunting for Easter eggs, but it goes something like this:

Spring Holidays Part One - "Gefilte fish is still gross"

Happy Easter/Passover/Spring!

I've been having a wonderful but busy week. Last Wednesday night I celebrated the first night of Passover with my friend Julie and a very nice group of her friends as she led us in a Seder. It was my first Seder in several years and the first time I recall ever being responsible for asking the Four Questions (it's generally the responsibility of the youngest person and I have a younger brother so I was generally safe).

It turned out that out of the 9 of us there, Julie and I were the only two Jews, so luckily there was no pressure to embarrass myself trying to read the questions in Hebrew. It was a lovely gathering and the Jews and "gentiles" all participated, even going so far as to try the gefilte fish. I convinced myself to try it as well, since I've spent the past several years convincing those around me to avoid it. Tastes can change, right? Wrong. As Julie's friend Sarah said, it still "tastes like something my cat would like". Thankfully, the rest of the meal was delicious :)

Thanks for including me, Julie!

Soap Geek

I already took a photo of my giant soap brick last week, but I felt it appropriate to thoroughly commemorate my first bulk order by introducing Soap around the apartment.

Soap, meet Projector. Projector, meet Soap.

Soap, meet videos.




Soap, meet Kitty Litter.




Meet couch. Meet Bailey.



Welcome.

Coming Soon...

Any requests?

Mica happy

Along with my giant soap block/salt lick, I received my new sample pack of colorful micas on Monday. Last night I finally got around to sorting through them and I mixed them all in bottles with some glycerine so that they're easier to work with later.

I can't wait to start playing around with them! Keep your eye out for some fun new colorful projects next week...

Tweet Tweet

Quick note to let y'all know that I have given in to Twitter madness. You can now find me there as rebeccaloft.

Join the conversation!

I'll still be posting here when I have time, but Twitter and Facebook are the best places to find me for some quick internet stalking tidbits (if you're into that kinda thing).

Giant soap brick arrival

Last weekend I had a fabulous visit with my old roomie from Peru (Chloe) who got into Berkeley for law school and came out from Philly for the admitted student event. Unfortunately, it seems that my hometown university put together a pretty crappy event, so I did my best to convince her to come out to Cali anyway! Keeping my fingers crossed that she is unable to resist the appeal of BOALT and moves out here in the fall despite the disorganized admit event. It's always nice to have more good friends who are local, since I'm so bad about keeping in touch with my East Coast buds :)

I have a couple new projects to share in the next day or two, but aside from having had a fairly busy weekend, I've been a bit low on soap this past week since I had to wait for the new month (and new budget) to order more supplies. Last week, I finally decided to take the plunge and ordered bulk soap base for the first time. It arrived yesterday in a single giant 25-lb. block and my housemate thinks it looks like a giant salt lick.


In addition to at least 25 more pounds worth of melt and pour soaping, I'm getting really excited to try cold and hot process soap making. I'm taking a workshop at the Nova Studio in Point Richmond next month to learn the basics and I can't wait! In the meantime, my acupressure guy put me in touch with a friend of his who is also interested in soap making. I think we're gonna be "lab partners" and meet up next weekend to make our first batch.

Anyway, I'm off to play with my new micas and lip balm flavor oils. Oh yeah, and I guess I should try to get some work done as well... :)

Plaid attempt

These soaps were inspired by Soapy Love's plaid soaps, which were featured in the Soap Queen blog last month. I was waiting on an order of my favorite soap base so I had to combine what I had left with a lesser quality base. The resulting product isn't really much of a "plaid" and you can really see the flaws in the second soap base I used (it's kind of cloudy and lumpy looking) but they get the job done and I used fresh cotton fragrance oil, so at least they smell nice!