~Anne-Marie
PS – Federal Trade Commissioners who might be reading my diary, I paid full retail for the Talika eyelash growth set. It’s not a free sample.
Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
PS – Federal Trade Commissioners who might be reading my diary, I paid full retail for the Talika eyelash growth set. It’s not a free sample.
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
Filed Under: Soaks & Scrubs
This year we are focusing on other types of projects and techniques including Cold Process Soapmaking, Lotions, Scrubs and so much more so stay tuned!
Soap Queen TV – Massage Candles from Soap Queen on Vimeo.
Massage candles are a wonderfully luxurious treat to make for yourself or that special someone. A massage candle is a blend of skin safe waxes, oils and essential oils that melt at a low temperature, perfect for a warm and soothing massage.
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
I’ve been back in the States going on 2 days now and am just getting back into the swing of things with jet lag and the fun accumulation of snail mail and work projects that built up while I was away.
We were sad to leave the history-rich city of London but thrilled when we retuned home to Seattle to find that the weather in Washington state was warmer and more clear than in London (How is that possible? We typically have terrible weather in Washington state!).
I was delighted to see everyone at Bramble Berry and was especially thrilled that the 24-hour-turnaround goal had been kept for all of our orders that shipped while I was gone (yay!). A special thanks to Amber for doing such an incredible job with putting her spin on the blog and keeping everyone entertained with her screen printing and mad baking skills. She’s quite a whiz.
Look for a new SoapQueen.TV video tomorrow! Sign up to receive the latest video news at SoapQueen.TV if you want to be the very first to be notified. Also in Bramble Berry news, we sent out a newsletter yesterday. If you didn’t get it and you’re a subscriber, let me know. There was an exclusive recipe in it for subscribers.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
I hope you’ve enjoyed my posts while I’ve been babysitting the Soap Queen blog. Anne-Marie is safe at home and happily recovering from the long flight while desperately trying to adjust to our time zone. She’s at work today and looking forward to resuming blogging this week but in the meantime….
Anne-Marie and I are huge consumers of Blogs. I say ‘consume’ rather than read because reading sounds so passive and we get so excited it feels like we’re gorging ourselves at an all you can eat buffet for inspiration, projects, and pretty things to look at. We both have numerous blogs that we read everyday and the emails flying back and forth sharing favorite posts is a bit extreme at times. I thought it would be fun to share a few of my current favorites with you.
My Tartlette: Beautiful photography and dainty dessert recipes. I’m excited to try her macaron recipe.
ii-ne-kore: Interesting, unusual and random with a focus on Japanese design.
Oh Hello Friend: An inspiration blog with lovely pictures of stuff…I just love looking at stuff.
Paper Crave: All about paper from cute project ideas to adorable letter press cards to neat origami creations.
Something’s Hiding in Here: I just love their style and their loft apartment – so cool!
Tipnut: They always have great, succinct round-ups of useful projects and ideas from all over the net.
Twig and Thistle: Another gorgeous design blog with a heavy leaning towards pretty paper things.
Chocolate and Zucchini: This cute blog satisfies the francophile in me. Her photos are gorgeous and I love trying out her recipes.
Decor8: Design blog based out of Germany that I love for the photos and colors.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
The Saudi Aramco company prides itself on being a “Little America” so they allow women to work with men and women can drive. When we got to our second destination of the day (three flights on the private jets – it wasn’t much of a hardship), the Aramco men greeting our plane INSISTED the women take off our abayas. Since we typically have understood that we will very much offend the locals and be under possibility of imprisonment if we are caught out in public
without our head coverings and abaya coverings, we were quite hesitant but the Saudi Aramco men wanted us to understand that they are ‘different’ at Saudi Aramco and welcomed us to wear our western-style garb. Even then, several of the women still left theirs on.
Filed Under: Cold Process Soap
Hi Everyone! Please welcome Erin from Naiad Soap Arts who generously offered to help me out while Anne-Marie is away. Erin’s soap craftsmanship is mind boggling, not to mention beautiful. She created this amazing tutorial just for Soap Queen, enjoy! ~Amber
Soap recipe for 6 cupcakes:
7.5 oz. Coconut oil 76 degree
7.5 oz. Palm Oil
6.25 oz. Olive Oil Pomace
2.5 oz. Castor Oil
1.25 oz. Shea Butter
7 oz. of distilled water
3.5 oz. of Sodium Hydroxide
1 oz. Cream Cheese Frosting Fragrance Oil
1 oz. Strawberry Fragrance Oil
we will be soaping at 100 degrees
There is a little extra soap incase you want to add more frosting than I did!
If not, have a small plastic container ready for extra soap!
Other supplies:
• Round Cupcake Silicone Mold
• 6 paper cupcake liners
• Flamingo Pink High PH Lab Color
• Iridescent Glitter
• Disposable Cake Decorating bag
• Plastic Star Cake Decorating Tip or stainless steel decorating tip
• Stick Blender
• scale
1) Get everything out and within easy reach. Line the cupcake mold with paper liners, cut the tip of the plastic disposable decorating bag so that the plastic star tip fits in it, weigh out your 1 oz of fragrance oils and set aside ( I like to save empty fragrance oil bottles for this), double check that you have all of your supplies ready.
5) In your 2 cup glass measuring glass weigh out your water, set aside. In your 2 cup glass or plastic measuring cup weigh out sodium hydroxide. VERY IMPORTANT: in a well ventilated area mix the sodium hydroxide into the water (never the other way around). Be sure not to inhale any of the fumes as they are toxic. Stir with your plastic spoon until the solution is clear and all of the sodium hydroxide is dissolved – about 2 minutes. Set aside with your thermometer and wait for the temp to reach 100 degrees. Start with ice water to expedite this part!
6) Once the sodium hydroxide is just above 100 degrees, take the temperature of your oils and make sure they are also at 100 degrees. If it is too hot pop the container in an ice water bath and if it is too cool pop in the microwave for just a few seconds at a time. NOTE: temperatures can be within 5 degrees of each other.Slowly mix the sodium hydroxide solution into the oils while mixing with the same plastic spoon you used to mix the sodium hydroxide solution. Finish off by mixing with your stick blender until you achieve a light trace (looks like thin pudding). This took me about 1 minute.
7) Separate out 18 oz. of soap into your 4 cup glass measuring cup, add 1 oz of Cream Cheese Frosting FO, stir well, pour into your cupcake mold, and tap on the counter to level out soap. Set aside.
8) To the remaining soap add your 1 oz of Strawberry FO, and 40 drops of Flamingo Pink labcolor or until you get a pink that you like. The soap should be getting pretty thick at this point. Stir with your whisk until the soap is very thick and can hold shape.
9) Fill your disposable decorating bag with the strawberry pink soap. Make sure you hold the decorating tip securely in the bottom and keep it in place until the bag is full of soap. Twist the top or secure with a twist tie.
10) Begin piping frosting onto the tops of your cupcakes in a circular motion, building up tapered layers as you go. Repeat with all six cupcake soaps. I used a small star tip to get a tight ridge on the frosting but a larger tip will make for the big fluffy frosting look you have probably seen!
12) Place a box over the top of the mold, tall enough for clearance for the soap frosting. Cover with a blanket and let sit undisturbed for 24 hours. After 24 hours your cupcakes should be very firm and easily removed from the mold. You can peel the paper at this point or keep it on. Let them cure for 4 weeks in a cool, dry place!
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Filed Under: Home Crafts
-Debbie, Soapylove
Filed Under: Soap Queen Cuisine
While Anne-Marie is in Saudi Arabia I am guest blogging on Soap Queen – thanks for stopping by!
I always enjoy Anne-Marie’s cooking adventures and thought I’d share one of my favorite recipes with you. Recently, thanks to my co-worker Norm, I have fallen in love with making pasta. Norm lent me his hand crank pasta machine in the fall and I rolled away on it for months. And then for Christmas, I got the pasta attachment for my stand mixer as well as some other cool accessories. My ‘cranking arm’ has been much happier ever since. If you aren’t lucky enough to have the fun kitchen gadgets I have – don’t worry. You can make pasta with nothing more than a rolling pin, a sharp knife, and some elbow grease.
Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until it starts to come together into a ball. Sprinkle in a little extra water if it seems too dry.
Gather the dough on a floured surface and knead it a little to incorporate any of the stray bits. Form it into a nice ball and place in the fridge for at least an hour. You could even leave it in the fridge over night and conquer the rest of the pasta the next day (I’ve definitely done that before).
Here’s my set-up for rolling the pasta. There’s my blue mixer with the pasta attachment hanging off the front, a floured tray for laying the pasta on as I work with it, and a pasta drying rack.
Divide the dough into 4 pieces. Place the pasta machine on the widest setting and pass the pasta through. Fold it over and pass it through a few more times until it’s smooth and pliable. Then start to turn down the thickness and pass the pasta sheets through until it’s as thin as you like. If your pasta feels a little sticky at this point, just brush some flour on it before passing it through the rollers.Once your have all of your pasta rolled to the thickness you like, it’s time to cut!
I have a spaghetti cutting attachment that I used on this batch. Once your pasta is cut you can immediately cook it and eat it – just make sure you don’t over cook it. Fresh pasta doesn’t take long! If you want to store it place it in a plastic container with a seal top using LOTS of flour between the layers. You want it swimming in flour to make sure it doesn’t stick together. Although it will keep for a week or two, I recommended eating it within a few days. Because otherwise, what’s the point of making fresh pasta if it isn’t fresh when you eat it?
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
It’s Amber here again, filling in while Anne-Marie is globe trotting. Checkout the new little clock widget I found to show us what time it is in Saudi Arabia (over on the right).
As I mentioned yesterday, we recently purchased a Yudu screen-printing system here at Bramble Berry. So I thought it would be fun to share my experience printing with it. If you are looking for a way to make your tags and labels for your soap and other products stand-out, I think screenprinting is a great way to do it.
The benefits of screenprinting are that it is inexpensive after you have purchased your equipment (and even that can be pretty cheap), you can print on a variety of surfaces (fabric, paper, etc) and aren’t limited by what can go through a copy machine. The downside is that it’s pretty labor intensive, but if you have the time, it’s the cool way to go!
You can find basic instructions for the Yudu here. In addition to the Yudu system, you will need a deep utility sink with a sprayer attachment (or you can use a garden hose outside or go to a car wash and use their pressure washer) and somewhere to hang or lay your pieces while they dry.
Here, I am working on the Soap Queen aprons and T-shirts. First I’m rinsing out the emulsion in the sink, next I’m printing the first color (the yellow hair) and finally I’m showing Anne-Marie how it will look when I get the next screen printed over the top. It’s a multi-step process that would be a huge blog post on it’s own. But if anyone is interested in a step-by-step Yudu tutorial, just let me know.
Here’s a great video tutorial I found that you might try if you aren’t sure if screen printing is for you. The technique uses supplies you probably have on hand.
And to close, I’ll leave you with a few inspiring screen printed cards from Etsy. Can you just imaging what cute tags or wrappers you could make for soap with this technique?
The first example is from JPress Designs, the center example is by magicjelly, and the adorably leggy package is by Reuse First.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
The time has come! Anne-Marie is off in Saudi Arabia and I am now in charge of the Blog in her absence. Anne-Marie will be back next week but in the mean time, my co-workers and I have numerous ideas for what we’d like to share with you!
But my first order of business is to enlist your help in getting me a new toy.
I was very successful in convincing Anne-Marie that we absolutely needed a YUDU screen printing machine. I made some T-shirts and an apron for the new Soap Queen TV videos – I’ll share more about that with you tomorrow. So I think I’m on a roll!
I am dying to get my hands on this new Letterpress machine from QuicKutz. Anne-Marie and I both share a love for all things letterpress (some past posts on her letterpress loves are here, here, and here). So I’m guessing it won’t be too hard to convince her of the “absolute necessity” of this new gadget – but I’d appreciate any help I can get! So, leave a comment about how excited you are to see my letterpress creations for Soap Queen and Bramble Berry.
My love of letterpress started with my study of Book Arts. I was lucky enough to take bookbinding and letterpress classes in college from Elsi Vassdal Ellis. Above is an example of her work.
After I graduated I took a workshop at Stern & Faye Printers. Each person in the class made their own ‘calling cards’ using the antique type in their collection. Above is a letterpress collage created by Chris Stern, who sadly passed away in 2006.
Sometime soon I hope to take a workshop from a local print shop, Bison Letterpress. Pretty much anytime I notice a cool poster or business card around Bellingham, it turns out it was made by them. Checkout the gorgeous soap labels and boxes they created above.
As you can see my (minimal) letterpress experience is sure to make my creations with the Quickutz Letterpress machine an absolute success and I most definitely deserve one! I’m sure you’ll agree and I’m crossing my fingers that Anne-Marie will, too.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Greetings from London’s Heathrow Airport where my husband and I have just toured the airport, via multiple buses, for the last three hours. The giant tour was unintentional. We have a 7 hour layover and had heard of a ‘Yotel’ – a short stay sleeping pod – in Terminal 4. We chased the rumor down, with the aid of the Yotel website and several kindly (but misinformed) airport employees, only to find that we had to leave passport control to get to the sleeping pods and that it might take up to 3 hours to get back to our gate. So, no Yotel for us.
We fly through the night tonight to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and arrive at 4 a.m. By that time, we will have flown through two different nights in two different time zones (Washington State night and London night). We are already flagging a bit but are still in high spirits. Though I am not wearing my abaya yet, I will be sporting the fashionable garb before I step off the plane in Jeddah.
I am looking forward to the learning and education that the Entrepreneur’s Organization has planned for us and hoping to be able to blog from my trip but if not, you’re in good hands with Amber who will be supervising and writing the blog while I am gone. As for me, I’ll have the sleepless-night-on-plane thing down pretty well by the time we land.
Filed Under: Cold Process Soap
This advanced cold process recipe is for the patient soapmakers our there. But I promise your patience will be rewarded with a beautiful and detailed bar of handmade soap. This recipe is divided into 3 stages and is actually a combination of 3 separate recipes. So take a deep breath, grab your ingredients and let’s make some Valentine’s Day Soap!
The entire recipe fits two 2 lb. molds or one 4lb mold. You may have some extra soap left over too so have another little mold on hand (check out some of our heart molds).
Baby Rose fragrance oil tends to accelerate trace, so this recipe is specifically formulated to reach trace slowly. For this reason it’s important to prepare layers one and two in separate batches rather than making one big batch and splitting it (which is what you’ve see me do in the past).
Safety First! If you’ve never made cold process we highly recommend reading this blog post and watching this DVD or reading this book. Please do not make Cold Process Soap for the first time with just this blog post.
STEP ONE:Make the recipe for the cut-out hearts by combining and heating your oils, mixing in your lye water followed by the Burgundy Oxide. After reaching trace, pour 1/4″-1/2″ of soap into the Flexible Brownie Tray. Let sit for 24-48 hours or until the soap is firm enough to remove from the mold. Use a cookie cutter or craft knife to cut 9-10 heart shapes and smooth the edges with your finger if needed.Set hearts aside.
STEP TWO:Line your wooden mold(s) and have an extra mold or storage container on hand. We used freezer paper with the shiny side up (towards the soap) so it peels off easily. Learn to line your mold here.
STEP THREE: To start the second recipe, sprinkle the lye over the water in a heat safe container. Stir well taking care not to inhale any fumes. Set aside and allow to cool until the water is clear with no bits of lye in the bottom.
STEP FOUR:Measure out 2 ounces of olive oil in a head safe container. Measure out 1.8 ounces of Baby Rose Fragrance Oil.Set aside but keep with in arms reach. We’re going to add these both at the very end.
STEP FIVE: In a microwave safe container that will hold at least 2 pounds, melt the Coconut Oil and Palm Oil (making sure to mix the palm oil well). Add the remaining 16 oz. Olive Oil and mix well.
STEP SIX: Mix the Pink Oxide with a tiny bit of Olive Oil to work out any clumps and set aside. Keep your diluted Fuchsia LabColor close at hand too.
STEP SEVEN: (Are your goggles and gloves on? Keep ’em on!) Slowly add the lye water to the oil mixture. Gently mix using a stick blender in short bursts. Add the Pink Oxide mixture and Fuscia Labcolor and blend until fully incorporated. What you see for color is what you will get so if the color is not dark enough, add more Fuscia Labcolor until it is your idea of a perfect pink color.
STEP EIGHT: Heat up the 2 oz. of Olive Oil for 45 seconds in the microwave. Add your fragrance oil to this warmed up olive oil. Add the fragrance and oil mixture and stir with a spoon. Then gently use your stick blender to give it one or two bursts. Baby Rose accelerates trace even with the extra gentle addition method and careful stick blending so be prepared to pour quickly.
STEP NINE: Once trace is reached (which will happens fast), spoon the soap into the mold filling it only half way and tamping it down on the table to get rid of any air bubbles.
STEP TEN: For the third recipe, repeat steps 3-9 using the Super Pearly White Mica as your colorant.
STEP ELEVEN: Place the heart cut-outs at even intervals through out the soap, leaving the tips of the hearts peeking out of the top. The spacing depends on how wide you want your soap slices to be.
STEP TWELVE: Insulate and allow to set-up for a few days before cutting.
Cutting the Soap: Remove the soap log(s) from the mold. Using a sharp non-serrated knife slice the soap so there is one heart on the front of each slice. You may need to trim the bars a little to clean up the hearts.