Candy Continued

Whew! It's been a heckuva day. You know those little stars I posted earlier? In the molds?

Remember also what I said about soap, cleaning, keeping food and soap separate?

Thankfully, I taste tested one of those stars before using them in any capacity. When you are a soaper in the kitchen, you learn to do this quite often.

Well, I had thought that I hadn't used that mold for soap. Oh boy. Was I ever wrong. BLECH!! Oh, horrible little star! Why did you have to look so delicious?

As I pawed through my cupboards, I realised I also didn't have a nifty candy mold. Huh. Thought I did. Maybe I lent it out. Either way, I lined up my little cast of characters, all in a row - yummy middles waiting to be enrobed in chocolate:



We have salted caramel, chocolate cinnamon marzipan, anise marzipan, and peppermint marzipan. That's about all the dickens I felt getting up to for today.

Anyway, as I said, I didn't have a candy mold. Curious. So I decided to take a trip down to the nearest JoAnn and see what I could find.

I found nothing. They had some seasonal molds and cookie cutters, but nothing I wanted. So I picked up various craft supplies for starting on holiday gift-making, and went next door to the drugstore, since I needed some stuff there anyway.

And of course they had nothing. So I drove back up the hill to Fred Meyer - I've seen some Wilton stuff there.

NOTHING! They had nothing I needed! They had a couple Wilton molds, but they were far too big for chocolates. They had Easter cookie cutters. Sigh. But they had a few other things I needed for making a Christmas gift or two, so I gathered those up, and decided to buy a mini-muffin pan while I was there. I had an idea.

Also, I've always wanted to use these:




I wash my new pan, then line it.





So cute! I then melt a little milk chocolate and drip a bit into the bottoms of the cups - not even a quarter full. Then I drop a little ball of marzipan into each one.



I put a star shaped cookie cutter - new out of the box! Never used for soap! - onto some waxed paper and fill it with the leftover milk chocolate, just because. Mmm. Milky star.




Then, because I am reckless and have no refined tastes, I melt some of my 60% cocoa chips and cover the marzipan sitting in milk chocolate. I do it because gosh darn it, it feels good and I like chocolate!




I melt more milk chocolate, then drop a sticky sphere of caramel into it. I then cover that in more milk chocolate. I then stick the whole tray into the freezer for about five minutes - that caramel in particular just starts drooling away if I don't keep it cold.

Here is one of the two-toned candies:





Looks promising. CHOMP!





Not bad! Not the greatest, but not too darn bad! (Hey, that's what I'm all about, folks, unrefined, crude honesty. I'm a soaper, not a gourmand!) Now, what about that caramel stuff?





Oh, dear. Well, I don't about you, but I think this looks promising. CHOMP!





Oh, my. It is heaven in a mini-muffin cup. The caramel just drips out like a Caramilk bar. Oh! That's it! It's a caramilk cup! Except it's salty caramel. Who cares?! It's great!

So there you have it. Go forth and make your own good but not great candy! As long as you're having fun, it hardly matters.

CHOMP!

The OTHER Fun in the Kitchen

Yeah, you know what I'm getting at. That naughty thing we all so love, that powerful urge we try to resist, but just can't stop ourselves...

Baking. Or, as the case is today, candy making.

Mmm. Sweet, sweet, candy making.



I do sometimes like to take a little break from making soaps, clean up my area really well (while soap is clean, I don't like to add SOAPY flavour to my goodies!), and hit the pots.

You can see in the background last weeks finished project: jam and fruit butter! They all turned out so delicious. It was my first attempt and they turned out lovely. I will tie ribbons around these and give them out to family members at Christmastime.





Today I am attempting to make some lovely chocolates of assorted flavours. I have some anise oil, I have powdered cinnamon, coconut, coffee, green tea, scharffen berger cocoa, ground lavender, and some cookie cutters and ice cube molds. I also have a few handy bags of assorted Ghirardelli chips. I prefer Guittard, but Ghirardelli is still quite good. I really wanted to try the new Dagoba chocolate I saw recently at one of the nearby Town & Country Markets, but the one I stopped in at on the way home didn't have any.

I also grabbed a box of almond paste to make a marzipan. Mmmm.



I melted down some sugar to make a soft caramel. I slowly got it to a nice, rich amber colour, then added some heavy cream and sea salt. The mixture started bubbling up so quickly, I reached for my spoon and stupidly forgot to pull on an oven mitt. Folks, steam is hot and can burn. The entire side of my right hand is now stinging from that little mistake. I now return you to your regular grade 2 lessons.

The whole mixture is quite soft, and now that it has cooled some, I have made a rather large and yummy ball of caramel. Check it out!




Closer! See how shiny! You can even see me pointing the camera in it:





The extra-sharp and super-nerdy among you might even recognise the rather abstract and distorted reflection of the "OMG Pwnies!" shirt I'm wearing.

I'm letting my chocolate shapes set up, then I think I will slice them and embed them into the tops of some filled candy.





I'll keep you posted...

It's Too Hot

Record highs, here in Seattle. It's too hot and sticky for me to even think about making soap. Anything that involves heat or even moving around too much. I'm planted in front of my fan until that mean, mean sun decides to go away! >:(

Thankfully, a nice cold bath is just the trick in this summer heat, and I keep a decent stock of Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soaps to soothe my tired muscles. And the scent is so calming and therapeutic!

I've recently obtained some dendritic salt to mix with my epsom salt recipes, and I wonder about making aromatherapy bath salts... the Japanese make an interesting menthol/lemon combo I'd like to try to formulate. I have menthol and lemon extracts - I should test it out and see just how "cooling" this formulation is!

Sugar Scrubs and Whipped Shea!

My camera. It's still broken. It's a sad thing. I do, however, have a DSi, which doesn't take the greatest pictures, but should get the point across:




First, brown sugar scrub. Why brown sugar scrub? It's exfoliating and skin softening. I like using sugar more than salt - mostly because I'm a bit clumsy and tend to get little papercuts or nicks and dings on my hands throughout a day's work. I am but a humble labourer, and my day job really roughs my hands up. How, people ask me, do I keep them ever-so-soft and hydrated? Oh, I've got all sorts of little secrets. ;) Here is one:

1 cup organic brown sugar
1/2 cup sweet almond oil
A few drops of Vitamin E
A couple of drips of Optiphen - a paraben-free preservative
Fragrance oil of your choice - I like using a bit of Pumpkin and Vanilla, and then I call the whole thing "Sugar & Spice Scrub" - mmmmm!

This one is so easy: mix all together and enjoy! I press the mix into 3oz jars - though the jars I like the most for this have been discontinued (shown in the picture), and I am switching out as of today to bigger, 8oz jars.

I wouldn't use this much more than once a week or so, it's quite a rigorous exfoliation. Give your hands a good scrub, then gently rinse with lukewarm water and pat dry with a clean towel. Let your hands rest for about ten minutes before topping off with a moisturizer.

Now, my next little secret, it's a bit more difficult, but really not that bad: Whipped Shea.

7 parts Shea Butter
2 parts Pistachio Butter
2 parts Jojoba Oil
A few drops Vitamin E
A few drops Liquid Silk
A few drops Glycerin
2 parts DryFlo (Modified Corn Starch)
A couple drops of Optiphen
Barely any fragrance oil

What you want to do with this stuff is to get it aerated. You'll need a good mixer - better if you have a whisk attachment. Put your butters and oils together in a metal bowl, blend them together, then put the bowl into the freezer for about five minutes. Take it out, then beat it for two minutes or so with the blender. Keep an eye on it, and make sure it all gets mixed well. Put the bowl back into the freezer for five more minutes. Take out and start beating it again, this time, drizzling the glycerin into the mix, the optiphen, and then slowly adding the DryFlo. The DryFlo helps cut back on the greasiness of the product. Keep in mind, this is a heavy moisturizer, so you're never going to quite get it to "lotion" consistency. That's not the point of this awesome stuff! You can add your fragrance oil at this point (or none, but I like to gently cover the nutty smell of the pistachio just a little bit, otherwise it has an "odd" smell). Once you've got all the ingredients in the bowl, start to really beat the stuff - turn up the speed a bit, and get it all. Six or seven minutes should get it all aerated nicely. Alright, you know what's coming: bung it back into the freezer again for five more minutes. Take it back out and whip it a little more. Two more minutes should finish it up.

Now you have a nice, fluffy bowl of moisturizer. I spoon it into 2oz white jars then finish it off with a little flourish - it almost looks edible. Ugh. Why do I make such delicious looking products? Anyway, just a little of this stuff goes a very long way. This is the moisturizer you want to use on your elbows, knees, knuckles, any rough spots. I find it better to use a little at the end of the day, or whenever you're ready to rest and relax. It's also a lovely moisturizer to spread thinly on your hands, pop on a pair of cotton gloves and go to bed.

Next post: cuticle cream, and whipped lip gloss!

The Soap Queen teaches Candy Soap!

I am trying this out as I type this - my white base is setting in the round molds. I can't wait to see how they turn out - they are just adorable!



In the meantime, I'm checking out the farmer's market this weekend - I hope to have some adorable candy soaps to add to my stock! Anne Marie is my soaping hero - I found her Brambleberry website back when I was first beginning to look for more quality ingredients for my soaps. They carry the best stuff ever! From the day I got my first box of goodies from Brambleberry, I knew I had stumbled into something good. There's ALWAYS a free sample tucked inside! It was this practice that inspired me to do the same thing with my shipments - always include a free sample. And my invoice? Handwritten "thank you"s on every single one. I really do think that's pretty special.

When my business started to pick up, and I wanted to make sure everything I did was aboveboard, insured, and all that fun stuff, I stumbled across an extremely informative and helpful article all about it, which turned out to be written by: Anne Marie! Wow, I thought. She's super smart, too. I eventually started clicking every link on the Brambleberry page, and found invaluable resources on her blog, Soap Queen.

She's just amazing. I wish I could work at Brambleberry, alas; they're about two hours away from me. *dreamy sigh* To immerse myself in soap knowledge and products is the very idea of heaven to me.

Camera is broken!

I'm working hard on getting my camera fixed - what good is a soap blog without the pretty pictures?

In the meantime, I discovered something weird about soap. I first read about it while browsing Snopes, one of my favourite time-wasting-while-still-learning-something websites. Now, clicking the link will take you straight to the article, and it is worthy to note that the status of this urban legend is "undetermined". So what I am about to relate is purely anecdotal, and as we all know - say with me out loud, kids - the plural of anecdote is NOT DATA! With that in mind, this totally worked for me.

I have had problems with my legs cramping up at night - I just barely wake up, get in a good, long stretch - only to wake in sudden, horrible pain as I feel a muscle pull out of place. It takes every ounce of my strength not to scream loudly and startle my peacefully sleeping husband! And over the years, I've tried everything. Everything! My father told me to eat a banana before bed (potassium solution). Nope. I exercise regularly, and stretch before bedtime. ARGH! Still no. I increased my water intake. Nope, but I have to get up to pee more. Sometimes with a throbbing leg. And then, one day, I read the Snopes article.

I have lots of extra soap laying around - some failed experiments, some mutant shapes, some funky scents gone wrong, some layers not properly adhered and fallen apart. I have a huge basket full of these next to the bathroom door. My husband happily uses these - we've obviously never had to purchase soap for the past couple of years! It was from this basket that I decided to try an experiment.

I took a bar and put it at the end of the bed, down by my feet. Somewhere I wouldn't kick it too much. However, when I slipped into bed that first night, I kind of kicked for it, making sure it was still there. How was this supposed to work, anyway? Did I need to make contact with it? Should it be between my knees or something? Maybe I'm just supposed to ignore it? Eventually, I quit fussing over it and went to sleep. I woke up the first morning with no leg cramps and toes that smelled like sugared walnuts. A good start.

Now, usually, I get these cramps once or twice a week. It's terrible. But since I started sleeping with soap in my bedsheets, I haven't had a single cramp. I still kick around quite a bit (my husband thinks I've got restless leg syndrome, and I think it's just a fancy name for restless, period), but I no longer cramp up. It could be a placebo. A placebo stronger than a banana before bed.

But I like it. It works for me. My sheets smell nice.

But keep in mind, Vick's Vapo Rub on the bottom of my feet has eliminated my nighttime cough last time I had a cold, too. Perhaps my brain is easily placated. :)

Bath Therapy Oil "Beads"

As promised, here is how to make the Tubbles Bubbles Bath Therapy Oil Beads - whew! That's a mouthful.

Don't eat them. They'd taste gross.

Here is our cast of characters:



Pictured here is a double 00 capsule-filler tray (make sure your capsule size matches your tray size!), double 00 gelatin caps (looking faded, I just re-ordered some fresh new bags from a shop on Amazon, put a rush on it, and it was due to arrive five days ago - that's what I get for paying extra, I suppose), Grapeseed Oil (this is not my usual brand, this is my cooking brand, but the type I normally use is all beat up and the label is faded), Sweet Almond Oil, a pipette, toothpicks for adding the colourant, and - my secret weapon - Wilton's Candy Melt OIL BASED colourant!



All the other colours I have in my arsenal are glycerin or straight up water based. They don't mix with oil. Since Wilton's stuff is safe to consume (it's for candy!), and you only use the most teensy of droplets to colour a whole batch, this has been the perfect solution. I had a vision when I first started making these of brightly-coloured, pill-shaped bath oil beads. Of course, I had at first wanted to make those kind you see in every bath gift basket at the drug store, or the kind you buy that are all pearly and spherical. Looking into it, it seemed an expensive investment. Still, I didn't think that should leave those of us who love to handcraft our goodies out of the loop. The double 00 caplets are quite inexpensive, and you get a lot. The capsule filler tray can make 50 caps at a time, and it's very easy to use!

First off, grab yourself a handful of about 50 gel caps, uncap them, and set the longer half into the capsule filler tray. This device is so ridiculously simple to use - but I've still screwed up using it by placing the tray upside down. Heh. Still, I didn't lose anything, as upon removing the top tray, they all stood obediently at attention - I just had to watch that my butterfingers didn't move them around too much while I capped them off the hard way. Also, and this is IMPORTANT: Make sure there is no water in or around your capsule filler! If you washed it recently, let it dry FULLY before adding the gel caps. The tiniest driplet of water will give you little mutant gel caps - or they will just outright dissolve or be mushy and unstable. I've had little wee dewdrops on my filler before, and came out with really warty oil beads. They were kind of hilarious. My husband happily used them. An occasional one or two mixed in with a regular batch won't offend anyone, I'm sure, but still. You'd mostly end up with unusable beads.

Using a small plastic bowl, I throw in approximately 2 tbsp of grapeseed oil, and 1 tbsp of sweet almond oil. Add the fragrance of your choice. I like to add a colour that corresponds with the fragrance I've used, but do your own thing. Go ahead and weird people out with that bright lime green that smells like a strawberry if you feel like it. [Bob Ross]It's your own world.[/Bob]

To add the colourant - this is oil based, it is strong. I use a toothpick to dip into the colourant, then slowly and carefully add to my little puddle of oil mix. You might even find the drop on the end is too much as you stir - keep a handful of toothpicks so you can pull out the colour-soaked one if you have to. Keep some folded-up paper towel handy and land your used toothpicks on them. This stuff tints up very quickly! Look at these:



Note the two shades of pink - one light, one dark. The dark one was the same colourant used to make the lighter pink - it was closer to two toothpick drips instead of one. The lighter shade was obtained by just barely letting a full drip get into the oil mix. (The blue, for your reference, is just one drip).

Now, once you've got your oil, fragrance, and colour mixed into your container, use a pipette to load up and squirt into the individual capsules in the capsule filler. You'll be able to see how much is needed, and you'll get a feel for it as you go. Don't worry if you spill any - you'll need to wipe everything up at the end, anyway.

After you've filled them all, drop down the top level of the filler, exposing the top rims of the gel caps just filled. Cap them all off with the caps you removed earlier; you'll feel and/or hear the little click that means the cap is on nice and tight.

I lay the finished ones on a clean, dry towel, and when I'm done removing them all from the capsule filler, I give them a very gentle rub down to make sure they're not too greasy on the outside. They will still be a little bit, but you can minimize it greatly by taking this extra step.

Package them up and you're ready to go! I like to combine two to three different scent/colour combos for prettiness and aromatherapy. Go ahead! Try it out! It's great fun, and they make great gifts!

You Can't Tell Me It's Not Art.

I love what I do. I love creating colour combinations, scent combinations - sometimes I could just stare and stare.



I'm an aromatiste. I am a fragrance composer. I am an aromatherapy virtuoso!

You can't tell me it's not art.



You can't.



I'll show you how to make my Tubbles Bubbles Bath Therapy Oil Beads in my next post.

In the Seattle Rain, Nature Inspires.

Lately I've been trying to formulate soaps that have been inspired by the colours of nature. Having a lot of free time on my hands at my 9-5 job (rain means no one is buying house paint), I've been stocking aisles and staring out the windows at the downpour. I am fascinated by how vibrant and lush the trees look in a downpour in the middle of the day - against a gloomy backdrop, those trees just looked amazing. Since I conveniently work at a paint store by day (mad soapstress by night!), I began pulling out colour chips to match what I was seeing, and I brought them home and started using my colour matching skills to tint up soap, rather than paint.

The first experiment gave me these:

,

I love them! In person, people are wowing over the colours. The scent is unisex and quite fresh - I used linden, grass, and tomato leaf, of all things, and just a tiny couple of driplets of mahogany - to give it that woody scent. Mmmmmmm! It smells so wonderful!

I then tried to duplicate the colours in the purple plum trees. With the first layer, I decided to try out an oil-based colourant for a change, to see if it was more vibrant. However, I hadn't mixed it well enough and there were itty-bitty globules in there - not too distracting to most eyes, but they were to mine! To hide them, I mixed in some pearl mica. Ooooh. The next layer I left untinted, but used only pearl mica. OOOOooooOOOH! To the final layer, I mixed the colorant in properly to the fragrance oils first - like I should have done in the first place to avoid those droplets. Well, I'd been going for black, as a contrast to the purple and white. But then I mixed in a little pearl mica. OOOOOOoooOOOOOooooOOOH! Neat! It looked like some kind of melted alloy before I poured it into the soap base. When I did pour it all in, the "black" turned out to be more of a deep, dark purple - which is just as good, considering the colour combos. The scents I used in this one were plum, blackberry, and a touch of mahogany again. Holy cow. It smells DELICIOUS and spicy!

The coolest part about this soap, I think, is how it cured down - it looks like marble:



Dahlink, you look marbleish!

Okay. Moving on and away from the bad puns...

The final one I tried (so far) is one I call Seaberry Jellyfish. I have two of the same style rounded molds, one smaller than the other. Into the small one, I poured a mix of clear glycerin, tinted pink, drizzled with opaque glycerin, also tinted pink. These were both scented with Strawberry and Raspberry. Thing is, I think I used too much opaque - next time I do this one, I want it to look a little more marbled. Once this small, pink loaf cured, I melted down some more clear glycerin and tinted it with about 6oz of FD & C blue, and scented it with Ocean Rain and Blueberry. I poured a little of it into the larger mold, then let it set up for a little under an hour. Then I got impatient and threw it in the freezer for a few minutes. When I pulled it out, I worried about it being too solid - I didn't want there to be a noticeable "seam" when I poured the rest of the soap around it. It was still slightly smooshy in the middle, and I presed my knuckles into it, trying to push in a little dent for the rounded top of the smaller loaf - to prevent it from moving around. What ultimately happened was that my knuckles made little mini-dents in the soap. When I pressed my pink loaf gently into the blue "ditch" I made (all generously sprayed with rubbing alcohol - never forget the alcohol!), after I'd filled in the top and sides with the remaining electric blue mixture, it didn't get into those little dents my knuckles had made. In the final product, you can see in some of the jellyfish have a little blue "bubble" - I think it looks much cooler that way!

I crinkle cut them to artistically symbolise the jellyfish legs. I think they're kinda cute!:



Other nature/colour ideas I'm working on are Hummingbird, Alpenglow, Paua Shell, Warm Fuzzy Kitten, and Midnight Moon.

But I also love making soaps based on sweets - those are probably still my favourite!



Remember to look everywhere for inspiration!

Watermelon Slice Soaps!

Today, I show you how you can make your own Watermelon Slices! Yay!



I love these things.

You'll need a large (or small) rounded rectangle loaf mold, clear glycerin base, opaque glycerin base (find your choice of bases here), Watermelon Fragrance, I like to add just a touch of Strawberry Fragrance to my formula, your chosen colourants (I use FD & C colourants, however, there are large varieties of colourants available for you to use - some folks don't like the FD & C because they are messy, but I use pipettes that I wash out and reuse and have very little trouble), isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) in a small spray bottle (like this one), and some black sesame seeds.



Also, use some cheapie tupperware-type containers for mixing your scents, etc. You will need three for this project. They should be fairly decent size, you have some room to mix gently. Get a set of something like these in assorted sizes, and dedicate them ONLY for soapmaking. (If you try to use them for cooking after using them for soaping - BLECH! The voice of experience, people!) Alternately, old butter tubs, yogurt containers, etc, is a great way to reuse. Just be sure they are completely clean before starting your project.


First, let's start with the clear base glycerin. You'll need to melt ~1.75 - 2lbs of base to start. Melt it down in your preferred method - I have a soap pot, which I like because once it's melted down, I flick the switch to low and keep the cover on, and then I always have melted base, ready for use. Mine came with a ladle, so, bonus. However, if you're quite careful, you can melt your soap in a reusable tub in the microwave. The trick is not to overheat it - when it overheats, it stinks and doesn't seem to hold the scent as well. I go in short increments, like melting chocolate chips, if I need to use the microwave method.

When throughly melted (stir gently and ensure there are no solid chunks lurking in there), pour into a plastic tub, or, if it's already in a tub, add your colour and fragrance. I need about 2oz of FD & C Red 40 to get it the red I like - go by feel. As someone who does paint matches for a living, my recommendation is ALWAYS to start on the lighter end, then add colourant to the point you are happy with. You can always add colour, but you can't take it away! This, happily, isn't an exact science, and as long as you get it to look reasonably red, who's going to care? ;)

When adding fragrance, I use the same rule of thumb: start slowly, add to your preference. It's going to smell strong right out of the bottle; it will tone down as the soap sets. I like to add about three capfuls of watermelon and a half a cap of strawberry - your measurements will be different, depending on how you measure them out. Now, throw in a very scant handful of those black sesame seeds, and gently stir!




You'll notice at first that the seeds keep floating to the top. Be patient, let your mix cool a little tiny bit. Stir every now and then to keep a skin from forming. You don't want to throw it in the fridge to hurry it up - that skin will form and pull, adding weird chunks to your soap. You just want it to cool slightly - as the soap cools it will thicken up enough to suspend those sesame seeds a little better. Now, we're ready to pour a little into the mold.

A word to the wise: these molds often need some sort of support on either side to keep it from tipping. I tend to prop one end against my bread box and put something heavy, like my bottle of olive oil (though in this picture, I think I was using my cornstarch tin), on the other side to hold it steady as I pour and it sets.

Now, just pour a little in:



Spray that layer with some isopropyl alcohol to get rid of any bubbles or foaminess. Let that layer set up a little bit - it will set up faster than the stuff left in your tub because there's less of it. Keep gently stirring the stuff in your tub to keep a skin from forming. It shouldn't take longer than about five minutes or so, and then give the layer in the mold a spritz with the rubbing alcohol and pour the rest of your mixture in - or until the mold is a little over 3/4 full. What I'm doing with this is attempting to keep all those seeds from floating to the top, making it look more like a natural dispersion of seeds.

I'll grant you this batch, I hurried a bit, and so it didn't work perfectly. It still looked very nice!

If, after reaching the 3/4 mark on the mold, you still have some leftover mix, I like to use smaller molds, like my cute little maneki neko molds, to make guest-sized soaps. Yay, watermelon lucky kitty!



Now, unfortunately, my camera crapped out on me and as I was working fairly quickly with other soaps, I didn't get it back again until the finished product. Bear with me.

Once your red, seeded layer has set up (usually about an hour, hour and a half) - it won't be ready to unmold, and may still feel warm and a little soft to the touch - that's perfect. I like the layer to be not-quite set up when I add the next layer.

Melt about 1/4 pound of opaque base soap. Gently stir, check for lumps, let it cool off about five minutes, stirring occasionally, as always, to avoid it forming a skin. I don't add any colour or fragrance to this layer - there's really no need. Spritz your red layer with rubbing alcohol (this provides adhesion between the layers - don't be shy when using it! Spritz away!), then pour your white base on top of it. When I did this batch, I didn't allow the white base to cool quite enough, and it remelted a bit of the red base - and a few seeds released and made their way to the surface of the white base. Oops. See them here:



Now, your white layer won't take as long to set up as the red layer - there's less of it. About 1/2 hour, 45 minutes, touch it and see how it feels. If it does set up a little more, there's no need to panic. Your next layer should still attach just fine - I just like to have my lower layer a touch softer and springier, as I have less adhesion troubles this way. (If you've seen my neopolitan slices from the previous post, and take a close look at the pink and white layers, you'll see where I left the pink layer to set for too long, and had adhesion issues - the layers just break off.)

Melt a little bit more than 1/4 of CLEAR base now, or however much you think you need by eyeballing how much space you have left in your mold. Melt it, tint it green (I use ~1.5 oz FD & C Blue No. 1, and ~1 oz FD & C Yellow No. 5), add a little more fragrance (you don't need as much this time, as you have much less base to add to - I use about a capful of watermelon and forgo the strawberry altogether at this stage), stir gently to cool, spritz your white layer with rubbing alcohol, then pour on your green "rind" layer. Fill to the top of your mold, being careful not to spill over - no big deal if you do, but you'll have a little trimming to do later! Spritz out the bubbles or foam with your alcohol, and let the whole thing set, undisturbed, for about 24 hours. These are deeper molds, make large soaps, and so need a longer time to set.

Go torment your cats.



Maybe that's just me. Either way, go do something else. Or make more, smaller soaps!

Ah, finally, 24 hours later (my, but that was fast!) - turn your mold upside down and gently press it out to release. If you have trouble with the release, set the entire mold in the freezer for 5 or 10 minutes, and it should release with no trouble.

Hooray! You should now have a lovely loaf of watermelon soap! Cut into slices about an inch thick, and enjoy!



With patience (read: the patience of a SAINT), you can use this layering technique to make Rainbow Soap, as well.



However, I won't promise that it won't kill you.

Selling on Etsy

Ah, Etsy! I could just spend hours and hours at Etsy. Heck, I have. All the handmade goods... so many amazing finds there.

The first thing you should know about selling anything - anything at all - is you might as well register for a business license and a federal tax ID number. It doesn't matter if you're a hobbyist, or hoping to sell huge volumes, just register. Look into your local state Department of Licensing to find out what you need to do. Be smart; keep it legal. Fees for licenses are usually small - if any at all. Etsy itself doesn't have a policy on having a business license to sell, but it's more of an honour-system: you do need to follow your state laws. Read into them. It's so much better for you in the long run if you just CYA!

When it comes to taxes, it's going to vary from state to state. I found several good wesbites that helped me out - I'm in one of the weird states for taxes, WA - but I'm going to make it a point to give the IRS a call at the beginning of my vacation next week to make sure I'm clear on some things. There is never any harm in doing this; they're very willing to help you out at the beginning of your venture - wouldn't you rather deal with them right now and have them answer those pressing questions than next year around this time? That's right. Give them a call if it all seems overwhelming.

For myself, from the way I understand it, as long as my stuff is going out of state, I'm good - but if anyone in my own state buys from me, I need to be sure it's being taxed properly. Here's a handy calculator link, for those of you living in WA state. As I said, I'll be calling for any clarification. It also never hurts to ask folks you know who are local business owners themselves - they will have a wealth of tax information!

Is that boring enough for you? Geeeeez, let's get to some fun stuff!

Hooray! You have items you can sell! What to do? Sign up for an account at Etsy! Make sure to get a lot of cool pictures of your merchandise - you'll need to show it off if you want people to buy it. I first started out with pictures that had bad lighting, poor quality shots... bleh.

Everything looked yellow. My soaps aren't yellow! Unless they are lemon... but I digress. I think I have improved since those first dark, yellowy pictures - I hope! The way I fancied up my listings was... well, pretty cheap. It was under $10, all said and done. I bought a couple of Reveal lightbulbs for my old, cheap, existing lamp. When I go to take a picture, I have the lamp - shade off - near my soap. This helped eliminate the yellow-y tone to my pictures that the "soft" kitchen lighting was casting on my soap.
Another concern for me was uneven or boring backgrounds. Yawn, soap on my kitchen counter. Yawn, soap on a piece of white paper. So, off I trudged back to JoAnn Fabrics, who, far as I can tell, doesn't even sell soap making supplies at any of my nearby stores (they do still sell some stuff online, though) to browse through their scrapbooking paper selection. They had individual 12" x 12" paper for 25-50 cents apiece. Sold! I bought a variety of designs, took my stack home, and started taking pictures of my soaps by setting them on the designed paper on top of my dryer, pointing the Reveal bulb at them, and snapping the pic:



No, they're not works of photographic genius, but they sure look a whole lot better than: Yay. Soap. On cardboard. YAWN.

Okay, so now you have your supercool, snazzy pictures. People will want to buy these babies! Sign up for Etsy, and start by adding an item. It will walk you through each and every step, no worries here. Make sure you can think of a brief description for each item. As an aspiring writer... I HAVE THE HARDEST TIME WITH THAT PART! I feel really funny trying to convince people to buy my stuff. Usually, I'm a much better writer when I want to explain things, or describe a feeling, a thought, an experience. But to sell things? I'm much better on my feet and in person. I can rocket a sales pitch that would rock your world! But to type it out? And leave out all the jargon and the back and forth and the talk about the weather and the how's your wife and kids? Sigh. But maybe that's just me. :D

So anyway, Etsy will walk you through the entire process, you'll come to a page where you can tag your item with keywords (so folks can find your cool stuff), upload your photos (make sure they're not too small - I tend not to resize mine at all, so people can get a good gander at the full size image, and they seem not to have a problem with too large - but too small means stretched and grainy and it just won't look good), set your prices, list how many you have in stock, all that good stuff.

Click Finish and - eep! - there it is! Your first item up for sale! Lather, rinse, repeat. You'll be an old pro in no time. Once you've got some items up for sale and a little backstock, purchase a showcase slot - that's at the very bottom, left hand corner under "Promote" when you're signed in - it's about $7 to book under your category, and it increases your visibility.

Etsy has an awesome community and forums where you can get help for just about anything you need. The people are quite friendly and helpful in my experiences thus far.

So get out there! It's not too difficult - it does take a bit of time to do it all legal and kosher - but it's so worth it.

Start off small.

I first began making soap on a whim, while perusing my local JoAnn Fabrics, I saw a chunk of soap base and some assorted soap scents in a display at the very back of the store. Already a fairly crafty person, I enjoyed knitting, sewing, painting, sculpting with clay... but had never quite found a medium that came out the way I really wanted it to. I can only knit in squares or rectangles, and still don't know how to purl properly. I make an awful lot of scarves and potholders, and the occasional simple hat. My sewing looks like something a kindergartener would bring home. I love to paint, but often felt I was the only one who liked my art. Sigh. And so I see this brick of soap base, and some scents, and think... well, for $15 I can try it, and it, too, will be exiled to the back of my crafting closet, or squirreled away amongst the beads and sequins in my drawer, tucked between the tigertail wire and my hot glue sticks. I bought a flimsy mold, a green apple scent, and a block of olive oil glycerin soap base and brought it home. I took out an old battered pot and began melting squares of base on the oven.

It was relaxing, watching the glycerin melt into a puddle on my stove as I stirred absent-mindedly. I kept a close eye on it, and when it was just melted, I pulled it off the burner and added some scent. Hmm. It smelled kind of nice. I realised then that I needed some colour. I grabbed my food colouring and added a couple of drops of green to it. Ooooh, it tinted up quickly! I poured it into the waiting molds with little trouble. I cleaned the pot and wandered into the living room to play on my computer for a while.

About an hour later, I peeked back into the kitchen. There they were, four soaps, setting up very nicely in the molds. So green! They smelled like apples. I got impatient. I tried to unmold them quickly. I had to see them! The first one came out okay; the next one had a funny dent on the top from where I had pushed it out too hard. But I had success! I was amazed! For the first time ever, something had come out exactly as I had envisioned it!

I carefully bagged them up and brought them in to show my then-manager at the store I worked at. I got many oooohs and ahhhs from my co-workers, and was allowed to set the soap at the sink in the bathroom. What an honour! I wondered what else I could do.

After exhausting all the scents I could find at JoAnn, and adding herbs to my mixes willy-nilly, all to great review from friends, family, and co-workers, I decided it might be time to look into a cheaper soap base; the stuff at JoAnn was only 2 pounds of base for nearly $10. I was addicted, and it was starting to eat into my pockets. I started looking online.

I found, possibly the very best place ever - Brambleberry! I could get much more soap base, many more varieties, in bulk for sooooo much less! Hooray! And they had amazing scents - these scents go much further than the little bottles from JoAnn. I began getting my molds, bases, scents, etc from them. And up, up, up went the quality of my soaps! And suddenly it was more than friends and family who were interested.

I lucked out in that I had VERY supportive friends - a guy who was in marketing before I met him and who LOVED my product (THANKS JULES!), and ANOTHER rockin' dude I worked with (and still do, currently) who is a graphic designer - and he made my logo for free. One day, John, I will pay you very handsomely for your work! I am working on putting together a contest to name the penguin - there will be a gift basket as the main prize, and runner-up prizes, too. :)

It's been two and a half years since that first bar of green apple soap - with base that hardened up and scent that fled after about a month - and I'm now licensed and a member of the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild.

So welcome, one and all, to my humble blog! My name is Stasia, and I am the Sole Proprietor of Tubbles Bubbles Co, and I will show you how to make soaps and other fun bath and beauty items for yourself, with little tips and tricks that I've picked up along the way.

I LOOOOOOVE love love glycerin soap!

I love to be clean, I love new scents, and I love experimenting and combining things in unique and fun ways to create something new. I like to play with colours and textures, and adding new herbs or micas to see what will happen.

Soap! Welcome to all those who love soap, want to make soap, or those who would just like to be inspired!