End of another year

We're coming to the end of another year, and much as I'd love to do a top 10 accomplishments of the year, well that ain't gonna happen. I'd get to maybe 3 items and then I'd run out of things to say. I do want to do one follow up of a previous post though: remember the one where I placed a bath fizzy within a soap? Not really, that's okay. Here's what happened.

It's bloody difficult to tell from this picture, but the fizzy of course dissolved first, leaving a perfect imprint behind on the soap. 

Looking at this, and some other pictures I've taken makes me realize I need to do a better job with my photos. I won't have any new soaps to show between now and the new year, so I wish you all a very Merry Christmas or whatever you celebrate and a prosperous and happy new year. I look forward to reading all your blog posts and sharing ideas and thoughts in 2015.

From one craft to another

I managed to make the 24 peace soaps for my friend and now it's on to the next thing.

From top left, clockwise: sugar cookies, chocolate pepper cookies, gingerbread cookies and chocolate melting kisses

There are more icebox cookies in the fridge waiting to be baked and the sugar and gingerbread cookies still need to be iced. Funny how these things always take way longer than I anticipate. 

Are you doing any baking for the holiday season? And if anyone wants to know, I'm eating all these cookies myself. ;)

Details, details

I love the details when making MP soaps. Well it's really a love hate relationship, I love the way it looks if it turns out.

This dove doesn't need a lot of detailing, but the parts that do, are very persnickety. I've changed the way I do details now, which is probably less efficient in some ways, but when I'm not in the mood to use the injector tool, makes sense. I just pour the detailed portion soap as close to the area as I can, and hope it doesn't overflow too much. I let it set and then use the scraper to clean it up. It was easier that way when I'm soaping in the kitchen because of the lack of workspace.

Taking pictures of a white object with a white background makes me realize I need better lighting.

Well on the bright side, craft fairs are over for another year, so I can take a break and spend time on other things, like staring at the insides of my eyelids on the weekends instead.

A great big thanks to my friends who helped me with the shows: Christina for carting my displays back and forth and helping with set up and take down, and to Teresa for helping with the last craft fair, making the kids smile by giving them "reindeer food" and talking up my soaps.

Are you running around for the holidays or taking it easy? Have a great week!

Getting into the spirit of the season

And time to show off the last of the moulds my friend gave me. This one is more Christmas-y, which is why I saved it until now. I really enjoyed doing the detail work on this, but as you can see in the last photo, trying to make the words stand out by colouring them didn't work out quite as planned.

Being geographically challenged, I'm not sure which way is up.

The green in the wording looks like Slimer from Ghostbusters  spewed out those words.

Are you prepared for craft fair season? Are you doing any craft fairs this year or attending any?

Have a great week!

Holy craft fairs Batman

I completed the second of four craft fairs so far, and can I just say for the record that I am completely in awe of those people who run a household, have a job and work fairs? As I told one lady, I'm happy that I got myself dressed this morning, I can't imagine trying to get myself AND several children dressed and out the door as Jennifer of The Basket Lady does (3 kids!) Then there's Kirinia of Kirina's Krafts who has a baby and works farmer's markets and craft fairs year round.

Happy to say, I sold some of the soaps that I hadn't sold in the past, like my pterodactyl in amber and 2 of 3 of my large LEGO, um, I mean building block, men. Like these ones.

Strange thing is, I didn't sell any of my Christmas themed soaps. Guess I'm not the only one not ready for Christmas yet.

Are you excited about Christmas or are the stores putting out Christmas decorations too soon in your opinion?

Up, up and away

That's what a launch is right? For anyone who didn't hear me squealing, jumping up and down for joy, my website is up and running. I hired a fantabulous web designer to re-vamp my website and I wasn't the least surprised that she did an amazing job.

She did as I requested, that is getting it ready for the craft fairs. Here's a few things that I had made in preparation for the fairs and these both sold. So now I have to go make some more.

Hope you have a great week.

Getting ready for fairs

For those of you who got a sneak peek of this last week, my apologies. I didn't scheduled properly and I had wanted to make one more cat to show off, but somehow the time just slipped by before I could make anymore. So without further ado…

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So I don't have time to think of new soaps to make, but rather, I'm reinventing the ones I already have.

This is a popular one for all those cat lovers out there. In the past, I did the cat in grey, but this year, I thought I'd take advantage of my ADD side and try some different colours. All scented with sandalwood vanilla for a more adult soap.

This one's my favourite, although he almost looks skull-ish. (Is that even a word???)

But I love how his pink ears stick out

The nose doesn't look quite right on this one.

The original

Are you a cat person? I like these ones because they don't shed.
                                 

Soap swap!

The very sweet Michelle of Blog of a Soap Pixie asked me a while back if I'd be interested in a soap swap. Of course I jumped at the idea, I mean who wouldn't right?

Thank you to Michelle of course, Carrie Garvin of Under the Willow Soaps, Elizabeth of Whiskey Creek Soap and Natalie of Koinonia

Special thanks to my wonderful sister who not only took in all those goodies above and shipped them to me, but also gave me this awesome makeup kit. I think she said it was for my upcoming craft fairs, but I don't know if I want to share!

Happy Hallowe'en

Oldies but goodies and bonus, you don't have to read my ramblings.

Diamond are...

A girl's best friend, forever, and not featured at all in this post.

Second of the moulds from my birthday, I bring you the gem collection. My friend, upon giving me my moulds had said she was excited to see what I would come up with. Well the bamboo one was easy, it allowed me to do detail work which is fun and looks good. For gems though, what do you do?

Well I did it a little differently for each one (kinda feels like the Three Bears, except none of these are just right).

To give it some contrast and for fun, I tried marbling. Of course, I forgot, do you pour the clear and then the opaque, or is it the other way round? I poured clear first and although I didn't think much of the effects at first, under the camera, it looked better than I originally thought.

Thought I'd ry and get creative with the back as well, but it looks like an Easter egg gone wrong.

The next was a straight forward one colour, no nonsense one.

That of course is kinda boring. I mean it's not like it's a real ruby and would be worth a gazillion dollars or anything so time to make things sparkle.

Adding glitter to this last one made it look kinda celestial, which is cool by me. And that made me think, so how would it look in another context? 

All gems are scented with BB's Bordeaux Blend (to stick with the grown up theme). I would love to hear suggestions on how to make these soaps more outstanding.

Have a great week!

Good things come in three's

So the saying goes. I don't know about that, but I do know that it's a good thing that many moulds come in threes because that's about how many attempts I need to get it right.

A very sweet friend had bought me some moulds for my birthday. Here's the first of them.

I made them all slightly different, trying to figure out what's the best colouring to use. I know I want more of a beige background. All are scented with Green Garden by Brambleberry

I like the oatmeal bits in this, I think it adds to the textured look. A happy accident really.

This one, the stems were done in green, and then I thought I'd darken it with some black.

I like this one the least. I don't think I gave enough contrast.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on which one you like, or if you have other ideas for colours and scents.

Have a great week.

If it's Fall, It must be hockey season

As the weather turns cool (or downright snowy in some parts of Canada. That's right Alberta, I'm looking at you. I know you had snow a few weeks back), Canadians' thoughts start turning to hockey. Actually, I don't know when Canadians don't talk about hockey, even in the summer; who's looking to get traded, who's playing golf on which course, who's designing their 5th uniform in 3 years.

Truth be known, and I shouldn't say this too loudly, but I'm not a hockey fanatic. That in a hockey crazed province like this is the sort of thing that can get a person ostracized for life. It's like walking into a church and proclaiming you don't believe in god. Not the best thing to do to enhance one's social life.

But I can play or soap hockey with the best of them.

This is my second attempt, but it'll take one more try to get it just right. 

A little overzealous, didn't let the green cool down enough before pouring.

Here's to the start of another fight, I mean, hockey season. ;) Oh, and thanks to JELL-O for the mould.

Are you a hockey fanatic or is your favourite sport winding down?

You Can't Get Wine from a Cow

I have some great ideas for soaps, or at least I think so. But when I try and get the idea from my brain into an actual soap, it's like someone wanting to paint a replica of the Mona Lisa and ending up with a stick figure.

I found a cute mould at the thrift store while shopping with my sister (I think I mentioned that before, but I'm old and forgetful, so you'll have to bear with me) which I keep wanting to use as a wine bottle. My idea this time was to make champagne complete with bubbles and of course use the champagne FO. Oh such a great idea in my mind, the circles would be 3-D, they'd be floating in the background of the bottle like it'd been just popped. Cue to reality.

The "bubbles"were made using an ice cube mould and turned out bigger than I was hoping. No matter, they can still be bubbly. The bottle however, still looks like a freakin' milk bottle. I even added glittery mica to evoke a festive scene, but even glitter couldn't save this soap.

But it smells darn good!

So from now on, I think this mould will be saved for making soaps with goat's milk and maybe I'll learn to make some bath cookies to go with it.

On the bright side, a dear friend gave me three new moulds for my birthday, so I'll have some hopefully wonderful new soaps to show in the coming weeks.

Do you ever have ideas that just never turn out the way you think?

A Little Late

My idea was to make bath fizzies in the shape of bottles, you know, for wedding favours. Well as always I'm behind when it comes to things, but I decided to make them anyway. I scented it with Champagne FO from Brambleberry and thought since it's champagne, I'm not going to colour them. Maybe I should've coloured them green like a champagne bottle, or pink for that champagne-y colour. That can be next time.

Doesn't look like much here, but in a coloured cellophane bag, it might look kinda nice.

Of course the recipe makes a ton and a half of bath fizzies, so the next one made is for, ta da, Hallowe'en! Or for the start of The Walking Dead series, I don't know.

And sticking to the fall theme, the last fizzies for today is 

Happy first day of fall everyone!

One Step Closer to Fall

I'd love to tell you that I did this on purpose, that the cool mornings and earlier sunsets had me thinking about fall and what's great about it. Truth is, I was looking for something completely unrelated and found a bag of apple tea that we'd bought in Istanbul quite a few years ago. Still smells kinda nice, but there's not that nice apple-y flavour to it. I've heard of people using tea in soaps, so I thought I'd give it a try. (By the way, settle in, you're going to hear all the gory details).

Oh I had such great visions of how this soap was going to look like; a clear layer studded with apple tea nestled in among two white layers so you could see the tea. I'd do up a nice fluffy top and sprinkle more tea bits to contrast against the whiteness and provide more exfoliating. I'd scent it with strawberry FO because strawberries and apples are a lovely blend. Who was I kidding? I've been spending way too much time on Facebook obviously staring at Maria Angeles Galan Thayer's page and thinking I could channel her.

I was trying to figure out how to make apples, and decided I'd use the heart moulds and put little leaves on top to make it look like apples. All it does it look like strawberries without seeds. The leaves themselves were enough to make me pull my hair out.

Next problem, the bits of apple tea were supposed to float in the clear layer, not colour it a dark brown. The only thing that worked in my favour was remembering what others had said about pouring subsequent layers much later - rough up the dried layer with a fork and spray liberally with rubbing alcohol. So at least my layers stayed together.

Making a fluffy top has never been my forte, and it wasn't until I tried putting in the first couple of embeds that I realized the soap was a little hard to push them in. I ended up losing one or both leaves off each "apple". I had to use a spoon to make an indentation into the soap to get the embeds in.

This soap was supposed to be called "Apple Crisp" or "Autumn Clean" or something like that, but I'm thinking of changing that to "How to Start Drinking if You Aren't Already." Truth in advertising after all.

In the loaf mould. Looks like synchronized swimmers getting ready to dive.

See how some have leaves and some don't? And they're kinda angled. Hmm, maybe they've been dipping into the schnapps.

Cut products, one with leaves, one without.

The end result? Looks like white cake with a chocolate layer (mmmm, chocolate), which would be great if that was the goal I was going for.

Hope you all have a lovely week ahead and enjoy the final days of summer. I know I will.

Slow Transition

It's getting cooler in the mornings now, the sun isn't up as early, so I'm having a harder time getting up in the mornings. That said, the days are still nice and sunny, so I'm still able to wear shorts to work. What does that have to do with the soap I've made for this week? Absolutely nothing, but you know me, I tend to ramble.

I'm calling this one Fall on the Beach. Once again, I had a brain fart while making this and in my infinite wisdom, used the low sweat MP for the clear layer. This of course, made for a more cloudy appearance than I had originally wanted, but it does make for a more fall like appearance. Scented with Morning Rain FO.

I figure lots of starfish lose a limb, why not this one.

But you can see from the profile that I did have good intentions to make a sand and sky line.

As an added bonus, here's one I was going to call Rocky Road Bar. I think I should've cut the embeds up smaller, or put it into a bigger soap because right now, it looks more like the Horta.

Have a great week!

I'm Dreaming of a

Getaway to some tropical island.

While my sister was visiting, we hit the thrift stores as we always do. I managed to find two bags with 3 moulds each for $2.99. Score! This flower is one of the moulds in there, and I put it on a mini muffin silicone mould I had bought for half price. Don't you love a good deal?

I was going to do a swirl effect with the flower, but it didn't work out the way I planned so I went with it and poured a soft pink on the bottom and then topped the rest of the mould with the remaining oatmeal infused white base.

Hindsight being 20/20, I should've scented this one with something flowery. Well there's always next time right? Maybe something jasmine-y or the white ginger and amber cybilla FO, what do you think?

Maybe I can run fishing wire through about 6 of these and make a soap lei.