Archives for June 2010
Join me on Martha Stewart Radio Today!
I was so inspired by Martha’s Craft of the Day. I printed out her retro Father’s Day clip-art labels on water soluble paper and embedded them in melt and pour soap for these super cute and custom Daddy-O-Soaps! Check out Martha’s clip art here and learn how to embed water soluble paper in soap here.
Five Days of Father’s Day: Shaving Soap
It’s day three of Father’s Day Week. Today’s project is homemade shaving soap enhanced with Vitamin E Oil and Kaolin Clay. The soap has a smooth, thick lather and a refreshing fragrance, Kentish Rain. Pair it with an old fashioned shaving brush and say good bye to Dad’s 5 o’clock shadow!
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The best part about this project is that the soap is made right in the mug that you’re going to give Dad, leaving you with virtually no clean up.
Shaving Soap Instructions: Melt 3 ounces of Shaving Soap in the microwave (30 seconds will do the trick). Once the soap is melted, mix in 1/2 teaspoon of Kaolin Clay, 1/8 teaspoon of Vitamin E Oil and 1/2 ml of Kentish Rain. It will look clumpy at first which is perfectly normal, just keep mixing until smooth. Give it a spritz with rubbing alcohol to get rid of air bubbles and let the soap cool in the mug until solid.
Ready to make this soap? Click here to have everything you need added to your Bramble Berry cart.
On Martha Stewart Radio, Tomorrow, Wednesday
I’ll be on Martha Stewart Radio tomorrow, Wednesday, at 10 a.m. PST/1 p.m. EST to chat Father’s Day projects and soap. If you have any soapy questions, I’m taking calls live. The call in number is 1-866-675-6675.
Five Days of Father’s Day: Golf Ball soap
(yields 3 golf ball soaps)
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Have you ever used our Flexy Fast Molding Putty? Check out the Soap Queen TV video tutorial HERE for basic instructions, tips and tricks.
ONE: Use the single serving of Flexy Fast Molding Putty to mold 3 golf balls. Leave a little opening at the top of the golf ball so you’ll be able to pop out the soap. Once the putty has hardened and is ready to handle (this can take about 20 minutes), release the golf balls from the molds.
TWO: Melt 4.5 ounces of white soap base in the microwave and mix in 2 ml of Sweetgrass Fragrance Oil. Pour the soap into each mold and let cool.
THREE: Once the soap has cooled, release the soap from the mold. Pair these with the Golfer Soap and you have a soapy golf ensemble that’s sure to be a hole in one!
Ready to try it? Get everything you need at Bramble Berry right here.
Five Days of Father’s Day: Golfer Soap
ONE:Melt 1 ounce of white soap base in a microwave safe container. Use a syringe to fill in the border and outline of the golfer. If you accidentally “color outside the lines”, no problem. Once the soap dries, use the mini spatula tool to clean the edges. NOTE: The Golfer Soap Mold has been discontinued. It has been replaced with the 12 Cavity Rectangle Silicone Mold.
TWO: Melt 14 ounces of clear soap base and mix in 1/2 ounce of Grass Stain Fragrance Oil. Add 10-15 drops of Liquid Green colorantand mix well.
THREE: Once the melted soap has cooled to about 120-130 degrees, spritz the white soap in the mold with rubbing alcohol and pour the second green layer. Spritz with rubbing alcohol to get rid of any pesky air bubbles. Let the soap set-up for 4-6 hours before unmolding.
Ready to get started? Add everything you need to your Bramble Berry shopping cart by clicking here.
FREE Soap Mold!
You read it right, get a free soap mold from Bramble Berry! Choose from one of these seven exclusive ELF mold designs; oval massage, tractor, peace sign, slim broad rectangle, slim oval, slim short rectangle, or slim square. See all of your choices here.
To use the coupon you must make a minimum purchase of $25. Just add your items and the free mold you would like to your shopping cart, then enter the coupon code in the coupon field and voilà- the price of the mold will be deducted from your total. Head over to Bramble Berry now, offer ends Friday, June 18th.
Five Days of Father’s Day: Army Soap
5 small mugs and spoons
1 large microwave safe container
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TWO: Separate the soap into 4 small containers (or mugs) and mix in your colorants. Make 4 separate soap colors using Liquid Green, Liquid Black, Liquid Brown and a combination of Liquid Green and Liquid Black for a darker green color (1 part to 1 part). Mix each colorant well with a spoon
FOUR: Once all four colors are randomly dispersed and cover the bottom of the mold, it’s time to pour in the rest of the colored soap. You can make distinct layers for each color or do what I did and pour them in all at once creating a camouflaged swirl effect. Let the soap cool for 4-6 hours before popping the soap out of the mold.
Ready to try this project? Click here to add everything you need to your Bramble Berry cart. (Don’t worry, you’ll have a chance to add or delete items from your cart before you finalize your order)
Where’s the Lye?
Soapmakers often get asked about the use of lye in their soap. The fact is that lye is indeed used to make soap. While in many minds, “lye soap” brings up images of grandmas and washboards and red, red hands, anyone who has used handmade soap knows that it is quite mild and moisturizing. Sound like a contradiction? Well, the truth is that the lye was there, but now it’s gone. Is it magic? Sort of. It’s chemistry!
Why lye, anyway?
Soap, by definition, is the result of a chemical reaction between some kind of oil (like olive oil, coconut oil or cocoa butter) and lye. Lye is a solution made with either sodium hydroxide (to make bar soap) or potassium hydroxide (to make liquid soap). The reaction is called saponification. That’s it. Beautiful in its simplicity, no? The other stuff (colors, fragrance, flower petals) adds to the enjoyment of your shower or bath, but is really unnecessary if you just want something that will clean.
Lye can be added by the soapmaker, like I do when making our cold process soap, or it could have been added in a manufacturing facility. In fact, some soapmakers use a soap base that can be melted and then colored and scented. In that case, the soapmaker doesn’t have to handle the lye, but it was still part of the process in becoming soap at the factory before the soapmaker got it.
No lye? No soap. Period.
Where’s the lye?
“But hold on,” you might say, “the soap I buy at the store doesn’t have lye.” It may seem that way, depending on how the soap is labeled. Some ingredient labels list things like “sodium palmate”. This is the chemical name for the result of mixing palm oil and sodium hydroxide – oil and lye again! That bar of soap was made by blending in some already-made palm oil soap. The lye that went into making the sodium palmate was used up by the time it went into the soap, so it doesn’t have to be listed on the ingredient label. Or maybe the label lists “saponified olive oil”. Now that you know what saponification means, you can understand that saponified oils are oils that have been reacted with lye at some point, even if the label doesn’t actually say “sodium hydroxide”.
Another very common reason that a soap label may not list sodium hydroxide is that it’s not soap. Surprised? Many bars in the market today are really solid detergents. Read the labels carefully and you’ll see that they are called “body bars” or “beauty bars” since they can’t call themselves “soap” because they aren’t made with oils and lye.
How can lye soap feel so good on the skin?
If lye is used to make soap, why is handmade soap so gentle? The trick is that the lye gets used up during saponification. That’s right. The chemical reaction transforms the oil and lye into (Ta-da!) soap and glycerin. The soap cleans your skin (but not so much that all the oils are stripped off ) and the glycerin is a humectant. That means that it attracts moisture from the air and onto your skin, helping it stay moisturized and supple. And unlike Grandma, modern handmade soapmakers are able to formulate their soap using high-quality, beneficial oils and just enough lye to get a mild, conditioning bar that still gives a lovely lather.
So have no fear! Use handmade soap and enjoy all the benefits that it brings. Because the magic of chemistry has turned those oils and lye into something completely different and lovely: some of the best soap you can use on your skin!
Delivering Happiness … in a Shoe Box
Thank you Hachette Book Group for including me in their blogger outreach for Tony Hsieh’s new book, ‘Delivering Happiness.’ (affiliate link) You’ll have to forgive the lack of gorgeous photo but I’m on the road this week and don’t have all the office tools at my disposal. I have an extra book to give away to one lucky Soap Queen reader too! Giveaway details down at the bottom of the review.
I’m a huge fan of Zappos and Tony Hsieh. I’m a happy customer of Zappos. I’ve long admired what they’ve done with their company culture and often wondered aloud to my staff how they could do free shipping and free returns back and forth and stay in business. This book answers a lot of those questions and then some.
If you’re looking for a practical advice, a 1,2,3 step book, this probably isn’t the book for you. If you’re looking for an inspirational, rollicking business experience that reads like an old friend telling stories, this is the book for you.
The book covers starts with Tony’s childhood. He was entrepreneurial from the start and had supportive, loving parents. His parents also had incredibly high standards with a relentless drive of excellence on behalf of their children. Tony told a funny story about how he was forced to practice his musical instruments for four hours a day during the summer. He thwarted his parents plans by putting on a recording of himself and then went and read magazines. He took his entrepreneurial bent mixed with his decidedly out of the box thinking and had quite the college career. Get the book just to learn how he passed his Bible college class. It’s a great idea. For me, the ‘How Tony Became Tony’ portion of the book is the most interesting.
The story about Tony’s post college years – how he grew LinkExchange, turned down buyout offers and eventually sold the company for a cool $265 million reads a bit like a fairytale. It doesn’t go into tons of depth about how the company was built but then again, the book is primarily focused on building Zappos so this part of the book is more like the interlude before the action.
The Zappos story part of the book reads easily and Tony spends the bulk of the time talking about the importance of culture – the key, he believes, to why Amazon eventually purchased Zappos for $1.2 billion dollars. Reading the book made me really hone in on the importance of not only defining your values as a company but making it into a whimsical game, with fun prizes and community building activities. Tony threw raves but you can probably take that down a notch for your organization.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is starting a business, who owns a business or is caught in the doldrums of life and wants an primer for how to think outside the box. You can get your copy of the book at your local bookstore or online at Amazon.
GIVEAWAY! The generous people at Hachette Book Group sent me an extra copy to give away to my blog readers (yay! and thank you!). To “enter” to win, tell me how YOU delivered happiness to someone else in the last month. I’ll randomly draw someone next Tuesday so you have five days to enter. Ready. Set. Go! Deliver Happiness!
Easy 4th of July Star Soap
ONE:Melt 4 ounces of white melt and pour soap base, stir in your favorite fragrance oil. Fill each star cavity. Let cool and unmold.
Variation:Add Liquid Red or Liquid Blue to 4 ounces clear soap base with a splash of glitter if you want to embed colored stars.
TWO: Melt 16 ounce of clear soap base in the microwave. Add a tiny bit of liquid blue colorant to get a clear effect (for more info on the “bluing” technique see this Soap Queen TV video). Do not add fragrance at this time.
THREE: Pour a 1/8” thick layer of the clear soap into each cavity of the Slim Square and spritz with rubbing alcohol.
FOUR: Spritz the thin clear layer of soap and soap stars with rubbing alcohol. Then pour another thin layer of clear soap into each cavity and place your stars into the melted soap. Make sure that your soap is around 125 degrees to avoid melting the soap stars.
FIVE: To the remaining melted clear soap base, add your favorite fragrance oil and either red or blue colorant (and glitter if you’re feeling sassy). Mix well.
Note: The Heavy Duty Slim Square Mold has been discontinued and substituted with out 12 Bar Square Silicone Mold
SIX:Spritz the cooled layer of soap with the stars and pour your final colored background layer. Spritz again with rubbing alcohol to get rid of any air bubbles. Let the soaps cool, pop them out of the mold and celebrate the 4th of July with your friends and family.
Ready to try making your own? Get everything you need added to your Bramble Berry shopping cart here. Don’t worry, you can always delete items or change quantities before you check out.
Don’t miss out on past summer projects a blog posts like Graduation Scrolls, Pinwheels, Parfait Soaps, Summer Lip Balm, Soothing After Sun Oil, Summer Flip Flops, Bug-Be Gone Candle, Summer Break Soap for Kids, Kumquat Blends, After Sun Lotion, After Sun Spritzer
Luxurious Liquid Soap for just $1.24? You bet!
Cuteness Alert: New Soap Molds!
iPhone Soapmaking App Update
I can’t believe I forgot to tell you that we updated the iPhone Soapmaking App last month – we added a NOTES section to the iPhone App. The App allows you to formulate soapmaking recipes on the go, wherever you are. There are over 60 oils with superfatting ranges up to 20%. The App also figures out the amount of liquids for your recipe. You can email recipes, save recipes and make it larger or smaller without reworking everything. And, for our soaping friends across the pond? It works in grams as well as ounces. If you already own the App, the download will happen for you automatically. If you don’t have it yet and want to have this handy tool, click HERE for more information or to buy it from iTunes. With over 500 downloads and over 4 stars, you’ll be in good company. Here are some reviews directly from iTunes:
Notes section is great
SUPER SOAP APP!!!
You can buy the App HERE.
Apps at AppStoreHQ