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Fragrance Selection
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Just for FUN!
I love to make soap. I love to try new techniques (with my own tried-and-true recipe, of course). This week, Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks held a soap maker's challenge. Here is my entry, #82! The challenge involved certain elements. This week, it was two "in-the-pot" swirls with a mica line to divide them. I decided to add the sunshine just for fun. I wanted my soap to look like a sunset. I used a water-bottle ice cube tray as the mold for the yellow. I used a Peacock Blue mica and an Apple Green mica for the ocean. They swirled in nicely. Then I carefully laid the sunshine embeds in and sprinkled orange mica over the whole thing. After that, I made sunset swirl using Corona Magenta Pink and Blaze Orange micas to create that pink/orange glow we so often enjoy with a setting sun. So that the soap would smell good, I added a small amount of Litsea Cubeba essential oil. That gave it a slight lemony scent. This soap is bright and refreshing. I have been soaping for nearly twenty years, yet this challenge was just that. A challenge! I have made nearly 20,000 bars of soap in my time, but have never done any in-the-pot swirls or any embeds (the yellow sunshine). I am thankful to Amy for making this FUN inspiration. I really had to think through what I was going to do. It took a great deal of planning. By the time I was done, my soap studio was a huge mess, but it was so much fun to make soap JUST FOR FUN! These bars are not for sale at this time. But keep your eyes open for challenging soaps like this to appear in our catalog in the future!
Soap makers like to have FUN, too! I love to make soap. I love to try new techniques (with my own tried-and-true recipe, of course). This week, Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks held a soap maker's challenge. My entry is #80! The challenge this week was to create a "mica swirl". I was just stumped for inspiration. Stumped! I had absolutely no idea which direction I was wanting to go with this one. And then I remembered that we have THREE weddings coming up next month in May 2013. Perfect! I decided to make this soap using meanings. The GOLD stands for virtue and wisdom. The NAVY BLUE represents integrity and stability. The fragrance was important for these wedding soaps as well. We wanted to choose a fragrance blend that had meaning. One of my daughters suggested looking up "cassia". We found several references in the Bible to cassia. The blend we chose actually came from Psalm 45. There, the psalmist describes what God calls the "OIL OF GLADNESS" using a beautiful blend of CASSIA and MYRRH. On a soap making level, the navy blue is hard color to attain. I am very pleased with how it came out. It actually looks brighter here in the picture than it does in real life. The fragrance is beautiful and gentle with a blend of cassia and myrrh. Be sure to check out Amy's blog post on making a mica swirl if this technique interests you. I made the navy blue soap and added the fragrance. We poured off about 1/2 of the soap into the prepared mold and sprinkled it with gold mica. Then, we gently (and I mean gently) spooned on the other 1/2 of the soap onto the mica covered soap. Then we took our prepared mica and swirled it into the top of the soap. We kept ooh-ing and ahh-ing as we were making this beautiful soap. I hope the couples receiving these soaps will blessed by these Psalm 45 wedding soaps. I am thankful to Amy for these FUN challenges. I really had to think through what I was going to do. I am happy with the end result. These bars are not for sale as they are for the upcoming weddings. But keep your eyes open for challenging soaps like this to appear in our catalog in the future!
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