Pink Jasmine Treasury

My Jasmine Salt bars have been featured in an Etsy treasury. Check it out here and comment. If you are interested in picking up a jasmine salt bar you can get them at my Etsy store or website.

Ginger Souffle Salt Bars

A new addition to our soap line is the ginger souffle scented salt bar. Salt bars are one of our hottest selling items. They start out with a bit of a scrub, but after a couple of uses, they become smooth and hard like a river rock. They produce a creamy lotion-like lather that just feels great on the skin. You can pick up a bar of this fabulous soap at either www.ladybugsoapworks.com or at www.ladybugsoapworks.etsy.com. Enjoy!

Ginger Souffle Salt bars

All wrapped up!

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

As promised, more soap!

Here are the rest of the new soap pictures. I am sure I mention this a lot, but Dylan sure can take nice pictures of soap. Luckily all he "charges" me is for his regular shower/shampoo soap and the occasional shaving soap. Pretty good deal don't you think?

This first soap is my Sensitive skin bar. It is made with all kinds of oils that are great for sensitive skin. This bar feels so smooth in the shower, I just love to use it.

This soap hasn't actually changed in look, but we took some new photos anyways. This is Lavender Shea. It has a nice calming scent and smooth texture. If you look closely you can see the tops are brushed with a purple mica to give them some shimmer.

Up next is Jewelweed and Comfrey. It is made with olive oil infused with both of the herbs. Very nice bar of soap and these herbs are reputed for getting rid of the oils from a poison ivy bush.

This is my Jasmine Salt bar. Lovely scent and pretty color. The salt is a fine grain so it does not scratch. It makes a nice lotion-like lather.

Now to make some ginger souffle salt bars! Just need to decide how to make them look...any suggestions?

Check out my salt bar tutorial

Wholesale Supplies Plus recently blogged about Ladybug Soapworks. I provided a salt bar tutorial for them to use on their website. Check it out here. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Chocolate Variety Pack

I made up a yummy chocolate themed gift basket. I am going to list it in my store in a bit. I have included a chocolate covered nuts salt bar, a dark chocolate and coconut soap, a chocolate espresso shea soap, and a cocoalicious vegan lip balm.

Oops!

I thought I was going to save time and make a double batch of soap the other day and then split it to make two different types. Well for some reason I decided one type should be my Jasmine salt bars. The problem here is that I was making a regular soap recipe and not the recipe needed for salt bars! I couldn't figure out why the soap was so sweaty and soft. Usually salt bars are very hard...finally it occurred to me that I used the wrong recipe. So while these look really nice they are still soft enough that I can push my finger into it and make a dent and I made them about 2 weeks ago. Arrgh...what to do with all this soap now? I am going to give it a try in the shower this week, I am hoping that maybe it will be nice but who knows.

Soap and scrub

Just whipped up a batch of pumpkin soap, using real pumpkin, and a batch of jasmine salt bars. I changed up the salts in the salt bars to a fine grain from the medium grain and I think they look better. I am also working on a double batch of oatmeal, milk, and honey soap to replenish my stock and for a custom order that wants an entire loaf.

I have also been playing around with my pumpkin cream soap that I made a while ago. I finally got it to the thickness that I like. I want to make some of the cream soap into a scrub, so I have been testing out different ingredients. I tried raw sugar, sea salt, luffa, and jojoba beads. The sugar turned out fantastic. I scented it with brown sugar FO and it is really to die for. The salt seemed to "melt" into the soap and turned it very thick--too difficult to use. The luffa and jojoba beads would probably be good for a facial scrub, but they just didn't do too much for me. I may try out some exfoliating waxes, apricot kernal, aluminum oxide, or synscrub spheres. I think I will stick with the sugar for the body and test out some of the other options for the facial scrub.

I will try to get some photos of the new soap up tomorrow.
Hope you all were able to enjoy the beautiful day!

Recent creations

It seems that I have not posted pictures of all the new soaps I have made. So here are some soaps that I have made during the past month or so.

Frankincense and Myrrh Salt bars. The light green color comes from French green clay.
This one is my unscented Goat's milk soaps.

This soap was specifically designed for sensitive dry skin. It was made with neem oil, avocado oil, castor oil, evening primrose oil, sweet almond oil, flax seed oil, hemp oil, olive oil, palm oil, and mango butter. I also included Tea tree EO and Lavender EO. It smells a bit like neem oil, which I am hoping will go away with a bit more time, but it is still a very nice bar of soap.


A new shaving soap in a slightly larger size. The soap contains bentonite clay and a blend of Bay rum and patchouli.

Salt Bar Tutorial

I was recently asked by Joanna at Product body and The Soap Bar to write up a salt bar tutorial. For the pictures I made a Frankincense and Myrrh scented soap with French green clay. I am really loving how it came out. If you want to check out the tutorial it is now on The Soap Bar blog.

I also came across a blog about my Jasmine salt bars on E-tailer's Mall...thanks for checking out my store! :)

Chocolate Covered Nuts Salt Bar

I recently made this yummie scented batch of salt bars. This is a fragrance blend that I came up with and I am really pleased with how it came out. When this batch was fresh out of the mold and just cut it had a nice swirl pattern of brown (cocoa powder) and white, but as time passes it is turning more of a solid brown. The swirls may pop back out after it gets wet, but we will have to wait and see. I tried a sliver of it in the shower yesterday and it had a great lotion like lather.

Cut Salt Bars and Tutorial

Here are the long awaited pictures of the cut jasmine salt bars. The salts were dyed with FD&C red # 33, which turned the whole bar a pink color.


The recipe:
82.5% Coconut oil
12.5% Avocado oil
5% Castor oil
Medium Size Sea Salt equal to the weight of oils
15% Super Fat
20% water discount

1. Preheated the oven to 170*F.
2. Mix in the salt at soap trace and add any color or fragrance.
3. Either pour the soap into a wooden loaf mold or (better) into 4-5 oz sized individual molds.
4. Put into the oven and turned the oven off.
5. Soap that will need to be sliced should be removed from the oven after 1.5 hours and cut (otherwise they will be too hard to cut and will just crumble). If you make your soap in a divided or individual mold, then you can leave it in the oven overnight..

Jasmine Salt Bar

Well, when I dyed the salts they were a nice shade of purple/lavender. When I added the salts to my soap at trace the turned this very pretty pink color. I am not sure that the color is the best for jasmine scent but it will have to do. Once I poured the soap into the mold I covered it with saran wrap and the wooden lid and put it in the oven for 1 hour. I probably should have left it in there for another 10-30 minutes since it was still still too soft to cut. I had to let it sit for about 30 minutes before I could cut it. It appeared to be in the gel stage when I cut it and I noticed a small crack on the bottom of the log from overheating probably. Maybe next time I will allow my lye to cool a bit more before I mix it with the oils and hope that that will minimize overheating. Anyways, it appears to be turning a darker pink than is seen in the photo below. I actually just looked at a picture of jasmine flowers and while the flower itself is white the base of the flower is almost hot pink. So maybe this color works. ;)

Anyone else made salt bars? They are quite fun!