So many fabulous photos were entered into our #BrambleTart Make it Month Contest that we decided to feature them all! This month’s sample fragrance oil was the delightfully sweet Cranberry Chutney, and it’s a wonderful holiday scent that pairs wells with other sweet fragrances. We received a variety of entries this month, ranging from intricate cold process designs to beautiful swirly melt and pour to some luscious looking bath bombs and a creamy lotion.
Archives for November 2013
Rainbow Squirty Swirls – The Most Popular Soap Ever?
We hope that everyone had a fantastic holiday yesterday — we sure did, and today we’ve got a very special cold process recipe for you. If Instagram ‘likes’ equal popularity, this Rainbow Squirty Swirls soap may be our most popular soap yet (see for yourself — more than 120 ‘likes,’ wow)! This tutorial uses the same technique as the Squirty Swirls recipe in the Soap Crafting book, and it’s an easy process that results in beautiful soap every time.
One thing to note about this recipe is that it can take 10 – 15 minutes to squirt all the soap into the mold, so it’s important to use a slow-moving recipe and a fragrance you know won’t accelerate trace. In this case, we used our new Amazon Lily & Rain Fragrance Oil, which performed beautifully and gave our rainbow soap a little tropical flair.
Happy Thanksgiving
Warmest wishes on this special day to your family from our family.
We enjoyed our delicious Thanksgiving dinner and are letting the food settle before dessert. In the meantime, we had fun reenacting the Thanksgiving story for the little ones.
Give your family extra hugs today and count your blessings; if your blessings include people, be sure to tell them how much they mean to you and how special they are. You are all part of my blessings. Thank you for all of your support and cheerleading this year as Bramble Berry and our family grew.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Baby Massage Oil Video
Really, this could be called ‘Human Massage Oil’ since it’s not just good for babies but boy oh boy, little babies do love it. =) In this Soap Queen Short, I show how to make a baby massage oil and then try it out on Lily. She loved it. If you don’t have a baby, this recipe is also a wonderful massage oil for anyone, especially those with sensitive skin. By the way, Lily nailed her part in this video on the first take – she’s a natural.
Note: The Bulgarian Lavender Essential Oil has been discontinued. The kit now includes Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil.
To make this recipe you will need:
- 4 oz Calendula-Infused Sweet Almond Oil
- 3 oz Argan Oil
- 1 oz Fractionated Coconut Oil
- 1 mL Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil
- 1 mL Roman Chamomile Essential Oil
- 1 Eight Ounce Bottle
To make the infused Calendula oil follow the instructions in this video or in this e-book and use:
- 1/4 cup Dried Calendula Petals
- 5 oz Sweet Almond Oil
Get everything you need to make this project added to your Bramble Berry shopping cart by clicking here.
2013 DIY Gift Giving Guide
Gift-giving season is here and we want you to be all stoked up with a variety of soapy, DIY presents. This gift guide has everything from gifts for the family and projects for the beginner and the advanced soaper. You don’t just have to make the gift yourself. If you have a crafty friend or family member, a DIY kit might be the perfect gift.
Why yes, this is Soap Queen wrapping paper. Purchase it here.
Sunday Night Spotlight: Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil
If you’re a dark chocolate fanatic like I am, you know that it’s almost impossible to avoid it over the holidays (or for that matter, anytime). With our Dark Rich Chocolate Fragrance Oil, you can indulge as much as you want without any of the calories!
This sweet scent is as realistic as they come. In a review of the fragrance, one soaper’s teenage son thought she was actually baking a chocolate cake! Sugary top notes with deep mocha and cocoa bottom notes give this fragrance excellent staying power in cold process soap. Because it’s such a luscious fragrance, it does discolor to a deep ebony brown.
Edit: We asked for it and you delivered! You suggested so many blends with this wonderful fragrance that we’re listing them below. You can read through the original thread on Facebook here.
- 1 part Dark Rich Chocolate, 1 part Energy Fragrance Oil, 1/4 part Patchouli Essential Oil.
- 1 part Dark Chocolate 1 part Coconut Cybilla Fragrance Oil
- 1 part Dark Chocolate 1 part Sun Ripened Raspberry Fragrance Oil.
- 1 part Dark Chocolate 1 part Black Raspberry Vanilla Fragrance Oil
- 1 part Dark Rich Chocolate 1 part Creamsicle Cybilla Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Chai Tea Cybilla
- Dark Rich Chocolate, Plumeria Fragrance Oil and Coconut Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Morrocan Mint Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Oatmeal Milk and Honey Cybilla
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Peppermint 2nd Distilled
- Dark Rich Chocolate, Turkish Mocha Fragrance Oil and Black Amber & Lavender Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Baby Rose Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate, Lavender 40/42 Essential Oil and Fresh Snow Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Cinnamon Leaf Essential Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Orange 10x Essential Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Amber Fragrance Oil
- Dark Rich Chocolate and Spearmint Essential Oil
Facebook Photo of the Week (November 15th ~ November 22nd)
Last Saturday we wrapped up our two-week-long Givember celebration with 24 DIY bath & body projects, and we hope you got a chance to participate in our specials and coupons. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter here so you can be notified of our next big promotion! This week we had a guest post tutorial on making beer soap from Swettis Beauty Blog and an adorable Jolly Jubliee melt & pour tutorial to get you in the holiday spirit. To finish up the week, we had a fabulous interview with Tanya, one of our favorite soapers from Baby Duck Soap Co. Be sure to check out her interview here.
Are you ready to see this week’s feature? It’s a soap pretty enough for the front of a Christmas card!
This week’s Facebook Photo comes to us from Jamie of the Okie Soap Shop. Her Country Christmas soap caught my eye because of its fun and festive glitter. I also love when soapers have an eye for photography and set-up design, and Jamie clearly does in this shot! Are you looking to learn more about photographing your soaps? Check out this blog post to learn more. Thank you Jamie for being a part of our soapmaking community, and we can’t wait to see what else you have in store.
Jamie’s Facebook Page: Okie Soap Shop
Jamie’s Blog: Soap Blog
Post pictures of your soap creations on the Facebook page each week for a chance to be featured on the Soap Queen blog and receive a sweet soapy package from Bramble Berry.
Soapy Social Media Roundup
Welcome to the second-to-last-week of November, everyone! I can hardly believe that next week is Thanksgiving, and I’ve got a ton of prep to do because this year I volunteered to host both Thanksgiving AND Christmas at our house (in retrospect, what was I thinking?!). Needless to say, it’s been a happily chaotic week.
As a side note, we’re still busy getting out orders from the Givember rush, and we appreciate your patience as we soldier on through this busy holiday time. We have a dedicated warehouse team that lovingly packs each order by hand, and they’re working ’round the clock to get your goodies shipped out. To tide you over, take a look at our favorite soapy social media items from the past two weeks.
Pins:
Clockwise:
- Such a great quote. Just more reinforcement that doing nice things for others is often times the best medicine for yourself too.
- These past few days we’ve been waking up to freezing temperatures which means winter weather has arrived (booo!). Cold winter air means chapped lips, and this Winter Clementine Lip Balm provides the perfect barrier against the chilly cold.
- My mouth is watering as I type this because these peanut butter fudge squares look too good to resist! I’m trying (very hard!) to cut sugar out of my diet, but I might make an exception for these treats!
- These are cute little thank you tags that you can easily whip up after the holiday gift-giving season ends. I often find that it’s the little things like these little tags are the things people appreciate most.
- As a contrast to those indulgent peanut butter fudge squares, these Sweet Potato Chocolate Chunk Cookies are probably more up my dietary alley!
- Why wrap presents in wrapping paper when you can turn the whole package into a confetti bomb?! These are four great ideas for spicing up holiday packaging.
Instagrams and Vines:
The warehouse has been so busy these past few weeks so we hired a few of our Givember Gingerbread Men to help us out. They are providing comic relief for the whole team.
Here is a quick look at how we made that super cool Mt. Mica Lava soap that came out in the newsletter yesterday. Subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss out on future awesome projects!
Tweets:
- If you tend to carry around all sorts of credit, debit and gift cards like I do, you might be interested in a new service called Coin. It allows you to combine all your cards into one super card! I pre-ordered mine last weekend 🙂
- I’m always looking for strategies to help keep me organized. Evernote is great, and Penultimate looks pretty interesting too.
- If cats could soap, I’m sure this little guy would be soaping up a storm!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone, and try to stay warm!
Charcoal and Rose Clay Spa Bar
I’ve been so absorbed with cold process recipes because of the Soap Crafting book I thought it would be nice to change things up and get back to melt & pour soap. In this episode of Soap Queen TV, I make an incredibly luxurious soap which I named the Spa Bar. For the base I used our Shea melt & pour soap and then I used Activated Charcoal and Rose Clay for their purifying and cleansing properties – plus they look gorgeous together. To scent the bars I used Sandalwood, Rose Absolute, and Red Brazilian Mandarin Essential Oils for a natural finish to this tiny spa in a bar of soap project.
To make this soap you will need:
- 56 ounces Shea Melt & Pour soap
- 1/2 teaspoon Activated Charcoal
- 1 tablespoon Rose Clay
- 0.4 oz. Red Brazilian Mandarin
- 6 mL Sandalwood Essential Oil
- 6 mL Rose Absolute
- 12 Cavity Rectangle Mold
Click Here to add everything you need to make spa bars to your Bramble Berry shopping cart!
Talking with Tanya of Baby Duck Soap Co.
Ever since Tanya Rasley included some adorable samples of her lip balm in her April Soap Swap package, we’ve been hooked on her beautiful soaps and high-quality products. Tanya owns and operates Baby Duck Soap Co., and she offers a wide variety of cold process soaps, body butters, lip balms and sugar scrubs. Since then, I found her on Instagram and love to see her happy soap and family photos frequently. Read on to learn more about one inspirational small businesswoman.
Jolly Jubilee Embeds Soap Tutorial
If you plan on giving soapy presents for the holidays, we highly recommend ordering all your supplies now to ensure you get everything on time! To help you brainstorm fun holiday crafts, we gave our Valentine’s Day Embedded Hearts tutorial a jolly little twist. The technique is similar, but for this project we’re giving you a free PDF template so you can create your own tree and snowflake embeds from scratch. Not only that, this project uses two fantastic fragrances — Woodland Elves and Sleigh Ride – for a quintessential holiday scent.
Guest Tutorial: Marbled Beer Soap
Anne-Marie note: Elham sent me a baby care package months ago with a wonderful bar of beer soap. I couldn’t get over how nice it was in the shower with luxurious, soft lather that felt silky on the skin and rinsed away cleanly. She has graciously agreed to do a tutorial on this wonderful soap. Thank you Elham!
Hi, I’m Elham from SkinChakra® and I am so excited to be here for a guest post.
I have been a cosmetic chemist for almost half of my life, and I’ve had my own line of hand-crafted soap and skin care products for the past two years (in addition to my consulting activities in the cosmetic industry). I live in Bavaria in Germany, and so I have had the opportunity to experiment with countless beer soap variations. I am surrounded by small, handcrafted breweries, and I consider myself a specialist in beer soap. Not surprisingly, beer soap is one of my best selling products!
Goodbye Givember- 24 DIY Project Links
Givember 2013 has come to a close (sob). Throughout the past two weeks, we offered six days of deals and coupons (include a surprise free shipping offer!) on our social media outposts, shown you 24 Christmas-related tutorials and (hopefully) managed to get you in the crafty spirit. This Givember has been a huge success, and it’s all thanks to YOU! I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your continued support of Bramble Berry, and I’m looking forward to many more Givembers. And for those of you that ordered at Bramble Berry, thank you (!); we are working through your orders as quickly as we can without sacrificing quality.
Kiss Kiss
“Brothers and sisters are as close as hands and feet.” — Vietnamese Proverb
This week has been such a whirlwind. Chris and the kids got hit pretty hard last week (so, like 13 days ago) with horrific colds. Just when I thought everyone was on the mend, Chris got taken out, hard, by some sort of what I like to affectionately refer to as the ‘Whatcom County Creeping Crud‘ or WCCC. It’s sort of all the pain of the flu without the actual real-deal flu-ness. He stayed home a few days from work but thankfully, he’s on the mend now but we are all looking forward to having a very low key weekend before Thanksgiving happens in just a couple weeks (yes, we’re hosting!).