Black Raspberry Vanilla Cupcake Soap

Third times the charm?  Well maybe, the soap was certainly easy to pipe this time, but I can't say that they look as nice as I would have liked. The color was meant to be darker purple and not a light pink. The "frosting" also looks a little soft to me, but I made sure to keep the points lower so that they do not look like pink Christmas trees! Once again I used a circle hole piping tip instead of the flower-like tip. I am not sure yet which look I prefer?  What is your opinion?

Black Raspberry Vanilla Soap Cupcakes

Christmas scented solid sugar scrubs

Solid sugar scrubs are all the rave right now. While I have made them in the past (see old post here), I thought I would try out some new molds I found at Marshall's.  These molds are larger than what I have used in the past and I did not cut them down into smaller pieces. When I go into the shower, I like to have a decent sized block of scrub that I can break a piece off of and then scrub away. These seem like the perfect size. They fit well in my hand and will last for quite a few showers. You can also find these molds at Amazon*.

Iced gingerbread, spiced orange, and sugared cranberries scented solid scrubs.

I followed the same recipe as in this post for the spiced orange and sugared cranberries solid scrubs, but I modified the recipe a bit for the iced gingerbread. I love to use some courser sugar in brown scrubs, so half of the sugar is demerara sugar and the other half is regular white sugar.

All nice and wrapped!

*This is an affiliate link and it costs you nothing extra. I do get a small payment if you purchase through this link.

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?

Geranium Rose Soap

I just put some Geranium Rose soap in the oven. It will be listed in my stores in a couple of weeks, just in time to pick some up for Valentines day!

Yummy Apple Pie

I have some apple pie scented soap in my oven! I like to put all my soap into the oven at 170F for 2 hours and then leave it in the oven overnight. It helps force my soap into gel stage and speeds up the curing process. I have been meaning to soap this scent for few weeks since I sold out of my stock, but procrastination got the best of me. Good thing this scent sells year round for me.

Garage Sale

I have a bunch of fragrance oils that I have decided not to use in my product lines, so i am offering them up to you at a discount off the retailers price. Check them out and let me know if you would like any of them.

Every effort will be made to ship the package out within 24 hours after payment is received. All orders that come in during this time will be handled in the order they were received and product will be filled accordingly.

Shipping is from 06457 and I require Paypal payment.

For Sale
The Soap Goat Soap Shop
Amaretto on the rocks 7-8 oz amber glass $10

Wholesale Supplies Plus
Mango 2 oz amber glass $4
Caribbean Coconut 2 oz amber glass $4
Berries & Cream-16 oz amber glass $16
Sexy Little Thing 2 oz amber glass $5

Brambleberry
Island Coconut 4 oz amber glass $7
Ocean Rain 4 oz amber glass $9
Ginger Pear 8 oz amber glass $11
Smokey Patchouli 16 oz amber glass $26
Dark Rich Chocolate 4 oz amber glass $9
Sugared Walnut 4 oz amber glass $8
Plumeria 2oz amber glass $4
Pecan Praline 8oz amber glass $11

Lebermuth
Coconut 1 oz amber glass $1.50
Coconut Beach 1 oz amber glass $1.50

Candlemaker’s store
Coconut cream 1 oz plastic container $1.50

Tony’s Fragrance
Coconut 1 oz amber glass $1.50
Buttercream 16 oz amber glass $8.00

From Nature with Love
Enchanted Forest 4oz amber glass $9

Simple Soothings
Cherry Almond 8oz amber glass $7

Unknown Supplier
Sugar Cookie 4oz PETE container $4

Thanks for looking!

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.

New creations

Well, these are actually a month or so old and I just never got around to posting the pictures. So here we go with some soap porn for you all. The first one is gingerbread soap...it smells delicious! It turned a nice creamy brown color from the fragrance oil. This next soap is a new batch of one of my regulars, Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap. I decided to leave out the titanium dioxide so that the soap would be a bit more "natural". It turned out well, it is darker than previously as expected, but I am still debating if I should put the titanium dioxide back into the recipe.
This pretty little soap is scented with geranium rose and colored with pink clay. I think this will make a great soap for Valentine's Day gifts.
This last soap is scented with bayberry and colored with ultramarine blue. This is a nice holiday/winter scent.

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!

Coming soon to Ladybug Soapworks!

Lots and lots of soap pictures for you all lately! I hope you love looking at them as much as I do! I can never get enough of nice soap pictures. This soap is my lemon poppy seed. It has some shea butter in it (as do almost all the soaps shown in the last few days). I put some calendula in the lye solution to try and tease out some yellow color. I strained out most of the calendula petals, but I left a few which look like pieces of lemon peel. This soap is scented with pink sugar. I really like the way the top turned out. It is colored with titanium dioxide and i let it get very thick before I spread it on top of the pink/brown part of the soap. I sprinkles a bit of sugar and glitter on the top of the soap. The other part of the soap again gave me issues with color. I keep having trouble getting the pink/red colors I want. I now have some pink clay, so I think I will use that in the future for the colorant.
This soap is scented with sandalwood. I colored the top with titanium dioxide and then did a swirl with heavy gold mica. If you look you can see the mica turned from gold to green. No clue why that happened. The mica was from Brambleberry...anyone else experience this before? Dylan used this soap this week and he told me that he actually felt moved to let me know how much he enjoyed the look, feel, and scent of this soap. That is a pretty rare thing...I think the salt soaps was the last time he felt the need to praise me. haha
This last soap is vanilla scented. I let the soap discolor naturally because I like the brown. The top has sugar and glittler sprinkles. All of these soaps will soon be liste on my Etsy site and my main website (which is still a work in progress).

More Soap Porn

Another teaser of soaps that will soon be listed on at my store. This first one is a chamomile soap. It is made with some chamomile infused oils, chamomile EO, and a bit of ground chamomile for texture. This soap is called chocolate espresso. I colored the bottom with cocoa powder and the top with titanium dioxide. I love this photo...part of my payment to Dylan for his photo skills was that delicious espresso I made for the picture. We got a nice espresso machine about a year ago and have since turned into coffee snobs.
On the theme of taste hot drinks...this soap is scented with green tea and cucumber. (Okay okay...I would probably never drink a cucumber tea, but it smells amazing with green tea!) The green swirls are made with my favorite colorant, french green clay. I also sprinkled the top with some clay, spirulina powder, and sparkles for a little pizazz.
This beautify soap looks a lot like the chocolate espresso, but it is lavender vanilla. The color is not quite what I was going for, but I think it looks nice anyways. I had been hoping for more of a lavender color instead of the brownish purple I got. Ah well...it smells great.

Lots of new soap...

I have been super busy lately, so I have not had a chance to upload photos of my new soap. All these lovely pictures were take my my partner, Dylan Maxwell Reilly. I will be posting a bunch more over the next few days. This first soap is a shampoo bar that is loaded with luxurious ingredients. It was made partially from olive oil that was infused with a bunch of Indian Ayurvedic herbs that have been touted to prevent and stop balding, gray hair, and it is supposed make your hair thick and very healthy. I am not sure if it really can stop balding or gray hair since neither of them are a problem for me, but it certainly makes my hair thick and shiney. I have some guy friends that are testing it out for the gray/balding issue. These herbs have been used for over a thousand years, so I would not be surprised if they do work. Too bad I can't actually market the product as a gray/balding prevention without breaking the law.


This is the same shampoo as above, but in a more manly shape for my friend, Will, that will not rub a ladybug in his hair. haha
This is part of a Bayrum shaving soap that I had to rebatch because only some of it poured nicely into my pvc pipe mild. You can see the soap that poured nicely and did not have to be rebatched here.
This soap is scented with black raspberry vanilla, which is now my favorite scent! The purple swirl was made with alkanet root powder.

New Soap

Well no luck getting Dylan to take pictures, so instead you will have to check out my bad photography skills. I have a few more new soaps that the pictures are just way too bad so I will have to hold off on them. All of these soaps are made with a newer recipe I have been using that has olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, castor oil, and shea butter. I really love the silk lather that the shea butter provides.

The first soap below is scented with pink sugar. Unfortunately, the FO had and orange tint to it and it turned my soap a funky could instead of pink. So, I am trying to come up with another name for the soap...any suggestions?
This soap is scented with green tea and cucumber FO and the green comes from French green clay. I sprinkled some sparkles and spirulina powder on top.
This is my sandalwood soap. I colored a portion of the soap white with titanium dioxide and another portion with heavy gold mica. Too bad the mica turned green. I still like the look though.

Chamomile soap made with chamomile tea and chamomile infused oil. I also sprinkled a bit of ground chamomile in the soap and on top.
Lemon Poppy Seed Soap. I tinted the lye solution with calendula petals and at trace mixed in poppy seeds and a lemon FO.

Vacation!

I am leaving for Costa rica on Wednesday!!! I am so excited. I will attempt to blog while there, but we are going to some very remote places so I may not have access to a computer or internet.

Hopefully, I can get Dylan to take pictures of the many soaps I have curing on the rack before we leave. Last weekend I made a chamomile soap, green tea and cucumber soap, pink sugar soap, sandalwood soap, and some soy mocha cafe candles. So that is at least 10 picture that are due. I really like how all these soaps have come out. The scents are all great too. I think I will be keep them as permanent scents in my line. I will probably start making my Halloween/Thanksgiving soaps when I get back. I am planning right now to make the following scented soaps pumpkin pie, cranberry, caramel apple, apple pie, and brown sugar.

Tomorrow I am going to try to make nag champa soap, neroli soap, white tea and ginger soap, and coconut lime verbena soap.

Productive Weekend!

After having spent all day Saturday at a renaissance fair that Dylan's kung-fu demo team performs in, I was feeling the need to make LOTS of soap. So, Sunday I made 5 batches of CP, rebatched some shampoo soap that was soft, and made a batch of cream soap. It was a lot of fun! For the cold process soap I made them all with a blend of shea butter, olive oil, castor oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. For scents I made a vanilla, lavender vanilla, black raspberry vanilla, lemon poppyseed, and chocolate espresso. They all smell marvelous. The cream soap contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, stearic acid, palm oil, and glycerin. For additives I included hydrolyzed silk protein, hydrovance, panthenol, kaolin clay, and calendula petals. The calendula petals provide a light yellow color which should look very nice once the glistening sheen develops in the soap. I will post picture of all the new soap soon!

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.

Liquid Soap

I finally got the courage to dilute my liquid soap paste and while I thought I was being modest with the amount of water I added to dilute, it turned out a little too watery. In one of the yahoo groups I am a member of people have been discussing ways to thicken liquid soap. One method was using Hydroxethyl Cellulose (HEC). So since I don't have HEC and it reminded me of Pre-neutralized carbomer I tried using the PNC that I had on hand. Well it worked okay, but it seems like the PNC "crystals" just sink to the bottom of the container. It does make the soap thicker, but it is not pretty. Compare the two photos: the top one was from yesterday and the bottom from today...see the separation? :( I do like the color though and I scented it bubblegum!

Soy Wax Candles

Here is a picture of the 3 candles I made this weekend. the pink one is scented a cinnamon spice, the blue is blackberry, and the yellow is banana. I really love the look of soy wax and it is so much nicer to work with than paraffin wax. Now if only I can figure out how to get the banana candle out of the mold. I am wondering if I need to use the pillar type wax for that type of mold. Anyone know the difference between pillar and container wax?

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.

Mango Hair Conditioner

I have been lurking in some courses being given by the yahoo group southern soapers classes for the past 3 weeks. I finally received my class kit from southern soapers and made a hair conditioner as taught in one of the classes. I really love how silky the conditioner feels and how silky it leaves my hair. I did not add any additives to the conditioner besides preservative and FO but I will likely add some proteins and other goodies in future batches. I just love the Mango FO that southern soapers put in my kit. It leaves my hair smelling of mangoes ALL day long...yum!