What I've been up to

I have to be honest, not much soaping has been going on in my house as of late, and I find it pretty frustrating! The reason is that I am going to be moving in 2 months and 1) I can't afford things like yummy scents and pretty colors, so any soap I make is going to be pretty boring, especially since I'm running out of oils! 2) I don't want to have to move a bunch of soap!

But I haven't forgotten about soap complete, instead I've been doing things like research - lots and lots of research. Researching lotion making, shampoo making, shampoo vs. bar soap and their effect on hair, packaging, how to make the packaging I want to work, coming up with different packaging ideas, working of labels - so I have been pretty busy over here! It's just very frustrating because I haven't been able to put any of my ideas into action... But I thought I could at least do a little show and tell.

For those who don't know, I'd like my brand to be "modern day apothecary" - but first I had to figure out what that meant to me! Basically, I took old-school apothecary and tried to add a little sophistication to it. It means sticking to natural colors. It means simple. 

So here is the soap label I came up with!

I am still having a terrible time coming up with a font! I don't really like the first one, I decided to include it simply for comparison. I'd like the scent to look handwritten, and I've chosen an old fashioned typewrite font for the general information, which I love! I am going to assign each scent of each product a "number" which I think adds to the "apothecary" feel. I chose a kraft paper background because I plan to use kraft boxes and don't want too much going on - but once I am able to get custom boxes printed I think I am going to go with a light natural linen look, like this:

But for now I think it may clash with the kraft boxes.

So, what says "modern day apothecary" to you? Which font most accurately portrays that description? I'd love any opinions!



Until next time...
Peace · Love · Soap

Unveiled Soapy Experiments + Belated Mother's Day Wishes

I am excited to announce that I can finally unveil my secret soapy experiment, a.k.a. Soap #7&8

Introducing: Vino, my wine soap [yep, I made soap out of wine!]

Some wine was harmed in the making of this soap

If soap is my raison d'être, then wine soap would be my raison d'savonner [that's me, just makin' up French words, my mother will be so proud..] It is the reason I learned how to make soap, and what finally pushed me to get over my irrational fear of lye.

I'm just going to do a quick rundown of how I achieved this as it's getting late and I want to watch an episode of Charmed before bed. First: choose your wine! I chose Cabernet as I understand it is a drier wine - the less sugar the better in wine soapy experiments! Then, you've got to cook out the alcohol, soap and alcohol are not very friendly with each other, as discussed in the beer soap post. The main difference between wine and beer soap is that beer has a less alcohol by volume, so it doesn't take quite as long to cook it out, and the beer doesn't reduce quite the same way wine does. For this experiment I used almost an entire bottle of wine, poured in a large sauté pan (that's the kind with the straight sides - the more surface area, the faster it will reduce) and let it simmer down to about 1-2oz, BIG difference! I wanted to try two different experiments, using ingredients I didn't care about wasting if the whole thing decided to [literally] blow up(the first is CRISCO based, the second Palm - since I want to avoid palm in my soap recipes, I wanted to use it up).

The soap on the left is Coastal Cabernet - I added 1Tb wine concentrate directly to the lye water (watch out, this will turn baby poop green and smell foul). I scented it with an ocean-y fragrance.

The soap on the right is Vino - I added 1Tb wine concentrate to ~1/2 the soap mixture at trace, then did a whisk "swirl." This soap is unscented as I was curious if the wine would impart any scent on the soap at all - it did not.

Of the two I love the look of Vino the best, the whisk gave it some pretty neat swirls in places (like the one in the first pic, just plain awesome!)

Two of each of these bars made their way to California as a Mother's Day present to my wonderful mommy! She loved them, of course :]

And of course my mother wouldn't actually USE the soap, but instead use it as bathroom decor

Notice how nicely it matches the counter!

So Happy Belated Mother's Day, Mom, you are my rock - you support me and my dreams, you keep me level headed, and I miss you every day!  [71 days, 18 hours, 46 minutes till I get to see you again!]


Until next time,
Peace·Love·Soap

The Laundry Experiment - Episode 1

Hello everybody!  Since today is my Sunday I'm having a lazy day. I woke up around 9, made some coffee, caught up on some shows I've been neglecting, made a smoothie... made another smoothie, and here I am! Let me just put it out there very quickly that I LOVE homemade smoothies! I make mine with lots of fruit, always a banana, yogurt, soy milk, splash of OJ, and mostly always something green - today was spirulina! Okay, so I actually had some left over from a soap project, but that doesn't make it any less food! It's delicious, and no, it doesn't taste "green"!

Moving on to the topic at hand, this is going to be the first in at least a two part series on the wonders of laundry! I actually started this whole experiment a week or two ago, but I just finished the first part of it. Today, I made my own laundry soap! Didn't think it could be done - well then you should really think a little more outside the box, shame on you! Is this old news? Well, just sit quietly and enjoy the pretty pictures.

I can't actually call this laundry detergent as it has no actually detergents in it, but it is ridiculously simple to make and pretty fracking cheap, too! Perfect for frugal crafties like myself who want to save all of their money for their various crafty [i.e. soapy] endeavors! It only includes three whole ingredients, all of which can probably be found at your local Walmart - soap [imagine that], washing soda, and borax! That's it!

What, you need more information? Okay, well you may be wondering "what the frack is washing soda?" only probably not those exact words... Well, to put it simply it is a chemical salt of carbonic acid, or sodium carbonate. Sound a bit familiar? That's because baking soda is also known as sodium bicarbonate - did you know that the only difference between baking soda and washing soda is water and carbon dioxide? Did you know you can make your own washing soda out of baking soda? This is especially convenient if you live someplace where you don't have access to washing soda locally - just do a quick Google search - there are many recipes and tutorials of the process!

You may also be wondering "what kind of soap am I supposed to use for my laundry?" Why, handmade, of course! I made a soap of 50% coconut and 50% lard [the cheap-o stuff at Walmart] and did a 0% superfat. This made a very hard bar that I could cut AND grate within hours. Of course, you don't have to use handmade soap, just make sure it does not have any free oils [isn't superfatted, that is] and isn't a synthetic heavily perfumed detergent bar. Fels Naptha is a great soap to use in a laundry soap.

Ingredients

1. 2 parts ground soap
2. 1 part borax
3. 1 part washing soda

Directions

• 1. Grate your soap! You can use a homemade bar like me [if that's what you do] or a laundry bar soap like Fels Naptha [located in the detergent aisle, it was right next to the borax and washing soda at my local Walmart]. After your soap is grated you'll want to leave it out for a few days until it is nice and crispy dry. What do I mean by crispy dry? If you break apart a piece of grated soap it should snap - hard and dry! 

• 2. Grind your soap - I used my Magic Bullet - it's just soap, it'll wash right off :] [btw, I do NOT recommend using appliances used for food with ANYTHING that may have harsh chemicals or soap that has active lye, my soap had cured for a week and passed the "zap" test before I used my bullet to grind it up]   

The soap did not really grind up to a powder consistency, but more along the lines of soap "beads"

•  3. Mix! For the amount of soap I had grated and dried, I used 1 c. ground soap, 1/2 c. washing soda, and 1/2 c. borax.

Like the little scooper? I got it at Cost Plus, it's 1/4 c. and has marks every Tb.

 And you're done! Use 2Tb for a normal size load up to 1/4 cup for large or highly soiled loads. Don't be afraid to customize it! Use scented homemade soap, or add essential oils into the powdered mix, add some OxiClean or powdered color-safe bleach. That's what I love about crafting, you can change it up to suit your needs! It's just that simple to make your own all natural laundry soap for a fraction of what it would cost you to buy a detergent. My research tells me this is safe for all types of machines, but if you have a brand new expensive he washer, I would advise you at the very least check out this FAQ about homemade laundry soap, there's a lot of great information.

Now, you may be wondering "great, now that I have an all-natural laundry soap, what about fabric softeners?" Unfortunately, that's an entirely different blog post ;] so stay tuned!

Until next time...
Peace · Love · Soap