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Gambling Soapmakers

filed under Bramble Berry News, Soapy News, Uncategorized Tagged | posted by

Greetings from The Handcrafted Soapmaker’s Guild annual conference in Portland, Oregon! Myself (Kat), along with Anne-Marie, Amber (Bramble Berry marketing leader and display designer extraordinaire),  and the voice behind the phone from Bramble Berry’s amazing customer service, Courtney, all traveled the five-hour drive from Bellingham in a 15 passenger van. We set up on Tuesday morning and began seeing some familiar faces, particularly from Facebook. Let me just say, it is so wonderful meeting everyone in person and seeing just how friendly you all are and how passionate you are about your craft.

 

This is our display set up in the vendor hall, all designed by Amber and custom made for us at our mold making company with their giant CNC machine. We have a selection of fragrances by category for your sniffing pleasure, and some of our favorite projects and tools with instruction handouts and samples. We aren’t selling anything, but we are giving everything away in raffle drawings at the end of the event.

The talks so far have been nothing short of amazing. I really enjoyed Ruth Esteves‘ presentation on using alternative liquids for the lye solution in cold process soapmaking. Did you know it takes 2 hours to simmer off 90% of alcohol in beer or wine? And if you leave it uncapped overnight, you lose 30% just be evaporation! Also, the stench of using pretty much anything other than water in your soap is really bad, but if you freeze the liquid, it considerably reduces the smell. Fascinating!

Wednesday evening was Casino Night and everyone gambled for raffle tickets. It was SO much fun! Prizes for winning raffle numbers were from Bramble Berry and Wholesale Supplies Plus. Thursday evening was the Essential Wholesale special event with a live performance from March Fourth Marching Band that blew us all away. The high energy performance included dancers on stilts and outrageous outfits. I do believe I saw a pretty fantastic mustache as well.

Anne-Marie and I teach in a few hours and then tonight is the awards dinner. After that, we say our goodbyes to another amazing conference and head back up to Bellingham. It has flown by! Thanks to everyone who has made this a very successful and memorable event.

Personalized Mother’s Day Soap

filed under Melt and Pour Soap, Soap Art, Tips & Inspiration Tagged | posted by

No mommy can resist this awesome gift! With a little melt-and-pour soap base and some water soluble paper, you can make adorable personalized photo soap for Mother’s Day. I made these cuties for my sister with photos of her children.

What You Need:

1 sheet of water soluble paper

2 pounds of white soap base

8 oz clear soap base

Merlot Mica

Lavender Essential Oil

Silicone tray mold

Knife, scissors, printer (Inkjet or Laser)

Step 1: Print images on water soluble paper and cut them out. Arrange them in your tray mold before pouring soap, just to make sure you like the size of bars and that the images all fit perfectly.

Step 2: Pour 8 oz of clear melt-and-pour soap base in the tray mold, spray with rubbing alcohol and place the photos face down in the soap. Spray again with rubbing alcohol and let harden.

Step 3: Melt down two pounds of white soap base and scent with 8ml of Lavender essential oil. Make sure the soap is fairly cool (but still pourable!) when pouring a layer on top of the clear. You don’t want to pour hot soap or else it will melt through the clear and disrupt the pretty photo layout you set up. I like to add a cube of soap to my cup of melted soap to help cool it down faster. When that cube melts down, your soap should be the right temperature for pouring.

Spray the clear photo embed soap with rubbing alcohol and pour a layer of white on top. This white layer will really make the colors and detail in the photos pop. Always make your first background layer white for this reason.

Step 4: Split the melted soap into two containers and color one with a few mini scoops of merlot mica. Spray the white layer with rubbing alcohol and pour both the white and pink soap together to make a swirl for the rest of the bar. Let harden, unmold, and cut the bars with a knife.

Wrap in shrink wrap and share for Mother’s Day. Aren’t they sweet?

Tip of the Day!

filed under Coloring Your Soaps, Melt and Pour Soap, Tips & Inspiration posted by

To make the details in your melt-and-pour soap bars really POP, rub the surface of the hardened soap with some metallic mica. I love this Bubbles Soap Tray Mold, but didn’t want to spend the time filling each detail with colored soap and a dropper. Instead, I poured the entire tray with swirled soap colored in blue, purple and white. After unmolding, I used a paper towel and rubbed Heavy Metal Gold Mica over the surface to enhance the amazing details in the soap. Keep in mind, this technique is for show. The mica will wash off during use, but it sure stands out on your display!

For other mica rub examples, check out this post using micas to pop out detail in melt-and-pour soap. The results are incredible!

New Items at Otion!

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We are so excited to introduce some fantastic new fragrances, oils and and the long-awaited pink stick blender. Here are some brand new items you can find in store:

Perfect Pink Stick Blender: The cold process soapmakers must have tool! Trace is reached in just minutes. Also great for lotion making – the stainless steel shaft is easy to sterilize. Our Perfect Pink color goes just right with our Pink Soap Making Goggles.

  • Powerful 200-watt motor handles more blending tasks
  • Stick design reaches into pots, pitchers, and bowls to extend blending options
  • Ergonomically designed grip offers comfortable hold and more control while blending
  • Operates with a one-touch control for easy, one-handed blending
  • Dishwasher-safe blending shaft and beaker make cleanup effortless

Made by Cuisinart.

Pure Olive Oil  – Great for advanced recipes such as 6 – 12 color swirls because it allows more time to work with the batter vs. using Pomace Olive Oil. Pure Olive Oil is a blend of extra virgin and refined grade “A” olive oil. Olive oil gives a rich feel and helps to create a very hard bar once fully cured. Used in the making of Castile soap (both liquid and bar).
INCI: Olea Europaea (Olive) Fruit Oil

Lavender Green Tea Fragrance Oil: One of the winners from the Summer 2012 S.O.A.P. panel fragrance testing. Lavender Green Tea was frequently describes as being fresh and clean smelling, almost like a linen scent. It reminded one of our panelists of an Aveda blend with its natural lavender notes. Discolors to a slight yellow in Cold Process soap.

Honey Beeswax Fragrance Oil: One of 3 winning fragrances in our Summer S.O.A.P. fragrance testing group. Honey Beeswax is sultry and rich with notes of floral blossoms and almonds. Discolors to a dark brown, even went a little greenish for a few testers in cold process soap.

Pikake Flower Fragrance Oil: Pikake flowers are the traditional blossoms used for making Leis in Hawaii. This fragrance evokes that sweet welcome as you step off the plane and begin a relaxing, fun-filled vacation.

It reminded one of the testers of carnation flowers and another tester picked out the jasmine notes. Many noted that this was a deep floral as opposed to a light floral and it stuck in Cold Process soap nicely. Slight yellow discoloration in CP.

Springtime Private Class at Otion

filed under Cold Process Soap, Coloring Your Soaps, Lip Balms, Melt and Pour Soap, Soap Art, Tips & Inspiration Tagged | posted by

Candy and I spent Saturday afternoon in a private class, making a whole bin’s worth of soapy goodies. We started with the “Swirled Heart” technique in cold process.

Candy was a pro! She got the hang of it right away and did an excellent job bringing the skewer to the edge of the mold to pull it out, rather than right out of the center.

Candy made some great single bars with the same technique in these handy take-home lidded molds.

The swirled heart technique is SO much fun, and it’s one of those instant gratification swirls (my favorite). In keeping with the love theme,  we then worked on a melt-and-pour heart embed project.

We took a break from soap and made luscious lip balm from scratch. Check out this fun layered lip balm with Candy’s own custom color blend in the bottom layer.

Back to melt-and-pour! We also made this adorable jelly roll soap with two embedded rolls. Love!

We finished off the class with an adorable layered melt-and-pour loaf with bright, cheery colors.

Judging by this bin full of soapy projects, I’d say we had a pretty fun and productive class. Thank you Candy! I can’t wait to see your future projects.

~Kat

Downtown Bellingham Art Walk

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Otion is located in the hub of Bellingham’s art scene, with the largest art gallery in town just down the hall. Every first Friday of the month is the downtown Art Walk from 6pm to 9pm. It’s a special night for mingling with artists,  stopping in at local shops and restaurants that display new art for the month, listening to great live music, and now you can make soap! Kat, Otion’s manager, is also an artist and set some of her art up for the big event.

We had a ton of free samples of our luxurious handmade bar soap.

We were totally out by the end of the night!

Overall, we had a great time and introduced many newcomers to the Soap Bar. Hope to see you next month!

Mint Julep Vegan Lip Balm

filed under Bath & Body Tutorials, Lip Balms posted by

 

This last week Kat made some adorable layered mint julep lip balms from Brambleberry’s new Vegan Lip Balm Base.

This super easy lip balm project, in addition to tasting delicious (mint julep has always reminded me of summer), is layered with two fun colors, making the resulting lip balm uniquely cute and fun.

What you need:
4 oz Vegan Lip Balm Base
14 Daisy Lip Butter Pots
3 ml Mint Julep Flavor Oil
1 mini scoop Shamrock Mica
1 mini scoop Opalescent Green Mica
1 mini scoop Cappuccino Mica
3 droppers
3 mini scoops
2 heat resistant pitchers

First, melt down 4 ounces of Vegan Lip Balm Base and stir in 3 ml Mint Julep Flavor Oil. Separate base into two containers and color one portion with a mini scoop of cappuccino mica, and the other portion with one mini scoop each of opalescent green mica and shamrock green mica. Stir well and keep melted. Fill 1/3 of each daisy lip pot with a layer of brown lip balm.

Let the brown layer set up for a minute and then pour a layer of green. Leave the top green, or use a dropper to top off the pots with one more layer of brown. Let harden, cap, and enjoy!

Enormous Easter Bath Fizzies

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In addition to dying eggs this year, I’m making super colorful mondo bath fizzies for Easter! They are SO fun to make and even more exciting to use, plus the process is very kid-friendly, which makes it a great project to make with a group.

My mold of choice for the big bombs is the stainless steel bath bomb mold. It makes a whopping 7.5 ounce fizzy!

To make bath bombs, you need 1 part citric acid and 2 parts baking soda, witch hazel in a spritzer bottle, color (dried pigment or La Bomb colorant), fragrance 0.5 oz for 2 pounds, and a mold. In the example above, I used cellini blue mica, ocean blue jojoba beads, and Celestial Waters fragrance.

Once the baking soda and citric acid have been thoroughly mixed together and you have added color, spritz with witch hazel as you mix until it holds its shape when you squeeze the mixture.

To create the 3D bomb, fill both sides and compact it really well (the harder you compact it into the mold, the denser and longer-lasting the fizzy), then overfill both sides and push them together. Let them harden in the mold for ten minutes or so before setting it on the table to avoid getting flat spots. That’s it! Super easy and a really fun project for Easter.

Renovations Update: The Good and the Bad

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Renovations are winding down and we’ve had such a blast updated the store. One of the biggest changes that was made recently was tearing out the old flooring on the stairs and in the loft and bringing in some fresh, new carpet and vinyl.

Take a look a the stairs before…

… and after!

The floor upstairs before…

… and after!

With the good comes the bad. We had a disaster occur when two shelves of fragrances came crashing down. What a mess! Luckily, we were able to salvage a number of unharmed bottles, but still, this was definitely a tough day.

Still to come are new wooden signs for the various categories of products in the store. Stop by and see our fresh layout and new colors!