All in a days work!  Soap for all occasions, fancy gifts, gardening and resisting! 

January and Fancy Soap!

Here’s the thing about the people having a Birthday on or near Christmas; everyone is partied out.  People need a break from all the celebrating!  They’ve eaten all the cake they wanted, had all the holiday cocktails parties they cared to attend and done all the shopping they could handle emotionally and financially, thank you very much!  This includes me of course, the soon to be just past New Years birthday girl!  

So what to do?  With everyone’s blessing I go shopping for me myself of course!  For the last 10 years I’ve been very passionate about making cold process soap.   One year I purchase colors or fragrances and additives.  Sometimes it is a new mold, a cutter or packaging and labels.  This year it was the most luxurious handmade soaps of all the way from the land of the manatee, Florida.

I asked Zahida of Handmade in Florida set aside a few of her soap treasures for me to be sent  after holidays crazy busy days.   

As I was out of town for Christmas I was thrilled to come home to a box of New Years JOY!  Opening that box was just like opening a toy chest to me.  Full of exotic aromas escaping like whispers.  I was so thrilled with everything absolutely everything was perfection!  A darling snow globe card!  A colorful package with gorgeous exotic ribbons and a lovely bag of sample soaps along with the full sized bars I wished for!    Oh what treasures.  Oh and there was candy!  Happy Holidays to me all THREE of them!    Photos below were not taken in natural light due to fog and rain we so desperately need in Northern California!   They are enhanced the best I know how.

 











 


 

 

   

 

  








 Zahida is an artisan on so many levels and in so many disciplines.  From design and execution of cold processed soap to packaging and labeling.   Then there is her photography top drawer.  She has a skilled eye to compliment her look and her style.  It is unmistakable.  She has refined her artistry to excellence!

The colors she develops are so balanced and well matched with each other, the design and with the fragrance.  Her nose for blending fragrance and essential oils is like no other.  Her scents are beautifully blended, unique and hold in her soaps and that is a real trick!   Zahida’s nose is developed and one would think she was born into a German fragrance dynasty or raised in a fragrance House in Paris. 

 

 Handmade in Florida offers soaps that are pure luxury in a bar, full of smallish bubbles that lead to the most velvet of lathers.  A sensual pleasure to use truly!

Thank you so much Zahida!  My shower and my bathing rituals are full of the joy of your velvet luxury soaps!  Beautiful each and every one!  I'm a happy and indulged girl to be sure!

 

You can find these lovely products here when the sale begins.  I don't have the next date yet but be sure to keep an eye out for it.    I know I   will right here !   Handmade in Florida on Facebook.

Soap Stamp

LOGO Stamps from Alicante - Espan'a

I was invited to be a participant in an international soap makers group and exchange this past spring.  It is thrilling when a group of artistic people ask you to be involved in their project!  To meet and visit and share ideas on line is one of the wonders of the internet world, making the world a smaller and friendlier place.  It's been a real pleasure.

My intention was to make one lovely soap for this project and stamp it with a new logo stamp.  I enjoy using the wooden logo stamps that I get from Spain and needed a new one.  Well as time went by I had the logo designed and was ready to order I somehow set it in abeyance and it got lost in the shuffle ;(    We know how that happens from time to time!

As time went along I kept making this and that soap not knowing which to send along for the project.  In the end I sent 2 of this and 3 of that all packaged according to whim.  The last of my soap project went off to Europe a mere week ago and my beautiful stamp arrived today!  Many thanks to Omar Lopez of PasitoaPasito  blog for another wonderful logo stamp!

Now that this beautiful stamp is here well the soaps are a little more cured than one would like to use for the stamping procedure.  However where there is a will there is a way!  I planed a sliver, shaved a thin piece of soap off of two recently made bars and  then worked some stamp magic on them.  Just exposing that minute amount of  the 2 week old soap was enough to let the stamp set the logo into the bar!  Who knew?  It worked --- yeah!  Here it is used on a dark and light colored soap!

Omar's soap stamps are professional and beautiful in their simplicity and ease of use.  Cleaning the stamp is a breeze.  He designs your stamp following your illustration/instructions and tweeks the design so that it is suitable for a soap stamp!  His work is precision, the project and shipping timeline are very reasonable and he sends the stamp with care and cleaning instructions.  I'm thrilled to share these photos with you and hope you will drop him a line if you need a logo soap stamp.

Here is my logo that Omar worked off of and simplified for the stamp.

 

Sum~Sum~Summer Time 2015

Oh it has been too long since my last post.  I wanted to share what I've been up to.  This soap is a test soap of my new soaping recipe.

I'm preparing for a festival the end of July so it has been busy here.  The Mother's Day Spring Bloom event at Lucero Olive Oils was such fun.  we were invited to do Berry Festival and a festival for Labor Day Holidays at Lake Almanor so those berry flavored lip balms and scented soaps and scrubs are a priority thismonth!

"aPINK Philosophy" is the name of this soap.  It is still in the mold and waiting a few days into the cure before I cut it.  The fragrance is a white floral of citrus jasmine rose and musk very delicate and clean.

Made with skin loving Avocado and Hemp seed oil with cocoa butter and coconut milk it is finished off with a touch of silk and premium fragrance.  We have an elegant bar of luxury soap!  Full of lovely velvet lather and fluffy bubbles and leaving the skin feeling clean and pampered.  Dusted with a touch of cosmetic glitter it is a sparkler.


I hope we get to see you at one of these events this summer!  Stay cool.

SOAP&WATERLILY

 Logo designed by Natalie Dalton - Dalton Design Studio

A new line of soap is born "SOAP&WATERLILY" the first  soap to anoint our vegan line.  Presenting you with a vegan spa bar ~~ Spa Pink Sea Salt Bar ~~   which was created in celebration!  This gentle vegan soap is full of skin loving properties of outstanding Castor and Coconut oils and includes fine grain Hawaiian Sea Salt. With a feminine fragrance of an essential oil combination including lemon, orange, rose absolute and a whispering touch of ylang ylang.  

 

SOAP&WATERLILY     A Made in California Soap and you can

visit the shop here

 

Natalie Dalton of Dalton Design Studio is a gifted and patient graphic artist. Natalie created this design for me and guided me thru the process. She is easy to work with and I highly recommend her skills.  She is an etsy participant and her design shop is located  made this design  here .

Certifications

It has been too long since I have done a post and that is unfortunate.  Here is a current soap made for the pedicure and it is called Pink Footsie Soap!  The embedded loofah softens when wet and is such a wonderful scrubber for those calloused areas heels and elbows!  A wonderful and natural defoliant!

As a professionally trained soapmaker I'm interested in certifications. Having seen several posted of late I thought I'd share mine also!  I earned my saponification certification at Nova Studios Point Richmond in  2008 and my certificate is in storage! Soapers of fame Ruth Esteves and Lori Nova are top notch soap makers and they were my instructors.  It was an honor and I know call me privileged I am!

As a 6 year member of the HSCG they started certifying soap makers after I had my certificate of completion.   When my search began I found these certificate in a safe place and thought I'd scan them and put them onto the important papers thumb drive.  So here they are.....

  
Hope to see you at the HSCG Conference in 2016 in the east coast sunshine state of Florida.   Will you be going to Florida in 2016 or Indiana in 2015?   The 2015 HSCG Conference is being held in the mid American state of Indiana.  I am thinking of attending the very first Canadian Conference with a friend in 2015!

I wanted to share my Youtube from the way back just for fun  here .  I listen to music when I soap because I can't talk and make soap at the same time.

Are you a collector?

Oh yes I'm a collector!  Are you a collector?  I collect empty glass jars, bowls and magazine photos.  Today  much of my morning was spent cleaning up after a soaping marathon.  As I was cleaning empty bottles I was mumbling under my breath about this particular one!   It has a darling dropper type top and I wanted to save this for other uses like putting some left over infused oil into it!

It is the clean up that is the problem.  Who wants dirty torn or used labels on the items they are trying to re-use, up cycle or put into the recycle bin?   I don't enjoy struggling to get labels off it is a waste of time yet I don't want to donate any given item to land fill before it's useful life has passed.   I have often lamented if I ever was in a retail or supply business I would definitely use lables that were reasonably removable!

 

A struggle and time consuming but I try.

When ever I clean an amber glass bottle from BrambleBerry I think I must write to Anne-Marie and thank her so much for labeling her fragrance bottles with easily removable labels.  Pop the bottle into some warm soapy water and well the old labels just float off and well   1.  you get to clean and save them and   2. you get to use them again!  What a concept! 

They just float right off like magic!

 

 I save pages from gardening magazines, cooking magazines and yes women's magazines.  Ideas, colors and techniques abound.  As space is a concern these are regularly vetted so only the best or most colorful survive.

Here is a photo of a page from Dwell Mag.    This kitchen counter it was so beautiful!  Of course you know the colors drew me in.  Yes for a m and p project one day!  I have two down and one to go for this soap project, a  rainy day project!

 

Happy May Day, Happy Mother's Day and enjoy all the blooming going on!