Cold Process!

It has finally begun. You might recall that I mentioned my (former) acupressure guy TJ, in a previous post. He was kind enough to introduce me to his girlfriend Talia, who is also interested in soap making. After months of emails and anticipation, we all finally met up on Sunday for our first batch of cold process soap.

I was having too much fun to remember to take lots of pictures of the first batch, but here are a couple pictures I did manage to get:

Testing the temperature of the lye solution.

Melted oils mixed with lye solution to trace, oatmeal added and poured into our makeshift mold to saponify and cure.

Oregon Soap Company

The Oregon Soap Company was the most expensive of the 4 soapers' booths I checked out at the Portland Saturday Market. Prices for a 3.75 oz bar of their certified organic soap START at $7. Ouch!

I checked out their website, though, and was pleased to read about their commitment to fighting climate change through sustainable business practices. Their pledge to plant one tree for every 10 bars of soap they sell means they do much better than just offsetting their carbon emissions - they do it several times over.

And their soap? Pricey, yes, but a great treat to use in the shower. I bought a bar of the Forest soap (pictured above), which has a very mild yet consistent lather and gently exfoliates with oatmeal and bran. This particular bar has a great unisex scent, which makes it a great treat for your favorite (male or female) tree hugger.

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: