Soaptacular!

I had a soaptacular event recently and made a bunch of soap.  I like to cold-process oven-process my soap, which is why you see it in my oven. Putting the soap in the oven at 150-170F for 1-2 hrs and then leaving it in the oven overnight will speed up the curing process allowing the soap to harden quicker and be ready for use sooner. I always oven-process my soap as it helps to get a complete gel of the soap which tends to intensify the colorant.

Oven full of soap!

 This peppermint essential oil soap is colored a light blue. When the picture was taken the color had not fully developed yet. I sprinkled the top with some glitter and blue jojoba beads. Not only does this soap smell good, it gives you a little tingle in the shower...zing!

Peppermint EO soap.

 The Tea Tree Shampoo and Body Soap is one of my best sellers. This soap is made with tea tree essential oil and some luxurious oils that are known to be good for your hair.  I find that this soap makes my hair look and feel much thicker. I always have a bar of this in the shower....

Tea Tree Shampoo and Body Soap

 The always pretty geranium rose soap.  This soap is colored with a mixture of pink and red clay and a sprinkle of glitter on top. This was the first time I made it in a tray mold instead of a loaf. It came out okay, but the rose buds did not end up all being in the center of the bars. I really need to get this cutter from forcraftssake.com to make the cutting easier and straighter.  So many crooked bars...sigh. :(

Geranium Rose Soap

 Here are my Jasmine Salt bars. I had the geranium rose soap on top of this on in the oven and you can see where it discolored. I moved the rose soap and let this sit for a while more in the warm oven and the color did all turn a nice light pink. This Kelsie's mold is perfect for salt bars. It makes the sides so nice and smooth and you don't have to worry about cutting the bars.

Jasmine Salt Bars

Happy Valentine's Day!

As our gift to you, take 15% off of all orders placed at www.LadybugSoapworks.net on Valentine's Day (Feb 14th) when you use the coupon code VDay15.

 

Geranium Rose Soap

Brewing up a storm!

Pouring the malt into the kettle

 This weekend Dylan and I took a trip up to Nashua, NH and met my parents at IncrediBREW for Abe's Brewfest. IncrediBREW is a brewery and winery where customers can go to make their own beer, wine, and soda. There were 6 groups of people at the brewfest and we all made a different type of beer. In two weeks, we will go back to the brewery, bottle the beer, and all six groups will share what they made so that we can try an assortment of recipes. The equipment is more high-tech than what a home brewer would have access to, but it was a great way to learn about what goes into the beer brewing process. My parents (along with a number of my friends) have gotten the beer brewing bug recently and so they convinced Dylan and I to try it out.  Overall, it was an interesting experience but there was a lot of down time where we had to wait (luckily they gave us some snacks and a selection of beers to sample). I would recommend taking along a book or some good company to keep you entertained. We may be heading back in March for the St. Patty's Day brewfest.

The bottle filler

Subjective Reality Photography

Here is a teaser photo...pretty nice huh?

Dylan has opened an Etsy store featuring his photos from our travels. If you have enjoyed looking at the pictures of my soap, then you will love what you find in Dylan's store. Go check it out and let us know what you think!

Cubes of sugary goodness...

I have a bunch of melt and pour soap that has been sitting in my soap lab for quite a while. I had grand plans to make some pretty detailed soap, but alas I much prefer to make cold-process soap.  So this soap has just been waiting for me to get some motivation and make something with it. Finally, today was the day! I was browsing some of the Soap Queen's old blog posts and came across the sugar scrub cube tutorial from Naiad soap arts.  Since I have a ton of fragrance oils that are not used in my soap line, but I just NEEDED to have, I put some of them to use.

The pink cubes are watermelon scented, the yellow is coconut lemongrass, and the green is succulent pear. Dylan came into my soap lab after I was done and wanted to eat them...they do smell and look pretty tasty!


These cubes are quite easy to make. For each color I simply melted 2 oz of clear melt and pour soap. I then added 2 oz of jojoba oil and mixed well. Next I added between 2-4 drops of liquid colorant and about 20 drops of fragrance. The final step is to add 6 oz of regular refined sugar and mix really well and then pour into a mold. I used the square silicone mold from Brambleberry and it worked great. For more detailed instructions check out the blog post I mentioned above.