Soaping

I spent the time between Christmas and New Year refreshing my goat milk soap inventory. 

I have gotten a lot of my ideas from YouTube videos produced by Handmade in Florida. Her soaps are so beautiful they sell out in minutes. She does a release of new soaps a few times a year and I was lucky enough to get my hands on some. Okay, let's be honest, I set an alarm to be online right at the release time and still only managed to get my hands on 4 of the 6 kinds I wanted. 

Her soaps are wonderful! While I prefer some of my fragrances, I like the hardness of her bars, the packaging and the way she polishes and bevels them. 

 

Inspired, I sat at the kitchen table for several hours with a vegetable peeler and my soap cutter and cleaned up all my remaining 2015 bars. I am thrilled with how they look now. 

 

Then I began to play with my recipe to add more high quality oils and a higher percentage of butters to make a firmer bar. These have all kinds of good stuff in them- mango butter, shea butter, cocoa butter, apricot oil, rice bran oil, sweet almond oil, kaolin clay, and more. I love the feel of them already and can't wait to be able to try them out once they have cured. The two kinds above are Indonesian Teakwood and Purification with activated charcoal to draw out impurities. 

This is Beach. 

Winterberry

More Purification (without a swirl) and Cactus Flower

Not only that, my son and I had some success at making bath bombs. We are still tweaking the recipe but are sure enjoying the Research and Development process with these!

My other son got me started on a new website. It is about 90% complete now. When live, we will have soap sales available online! Here's a sneak preview.