Peppermint & Eucalyptus Soap

So fresh and green! Here's the recipe:

30% coconut oil
30% olive oil
30% lard
10% avocado oil

Superfat with 10% olive oil

Colored with alfalfa powder.

Scented with Peppermint and Eucalyptus essential oils.

I used the lye calculator from thesage.com.

Carrot and Citrus Natural Soap

Natural Carrot and Citrus Soap

 

Why carrot in a face soap? Carrots have beta-carotene and are packed with vitamins and antioxidants that are great for aging skin. Here's my recipe:

 

30% carrot-infused olive oil (see explanation below)

20% coconut oil

20% palm oil

10% shea butter

10% grapeseed oil

10% sweet almond oil

 

Scented with litsea and orange essential oils, .5 ounce per pound of oils

Colored with dehydrated carrot powder, 1 Tbs. per pound of oils

 

To make carrot-infused olive oil, simply place a few carrots in your food processer and chop into tiny pieces, or you can grate. Place in a crockpot. Cover the carrot with olive oil. I used about 20 ounces for two large carrots. Put your crockpot on the warm setting and leave overnight. Use a coffee filter and colander to strain the oil from the carrot and keep in the fridge until ready to use. The oil will be a slight orange color.

 

You could also make your own dehydrated carrot powder. Slice your carrots super thin, place in the oven on a dehydrator rack for several hours, until the carrots are crispy and completely dry. Pulverize into a powder with your food processor.

 

The beautiful creamy orange color from this soap comes from the slightly orange carrot-infused olive oil and the carrot powder.

 

 

Lovely Lavender and Lemon Natural Soap Recipe (Cold Process)

My two loves come together in this recipe:  lavender and lemon! I have basic cold process soap making directions in a previous blog post (2011, I think) so I won't go through the basic soap making steps here. For the first time, I tried the "pot swirl" method and was pretty pleased with it, only I need to make a couple adjustments for next time.

Here's the recipe:

Coconut oil - 27%
Palm oil - 23%
Olive oil - 20%
Sweet almond oil - 14%
Castor oil - 8%
Cocoa butter - 8%

For my mold, I need 50 ounces weight of oils so I used:

Coconut oil - 13.5 oz wt
Palm oil - 11.5 oz wt
Olive oil - 10 oz wt
Sweet almond oil - 7 oz wt
Castor oil - 4 oz wt
Cocoa butter - 4 oz wt

For the lye water, I used 15 fluid ounces of water and 6.97 oz wt of lye.

Now for the fun part! After your lye water and oils have cooled to a workable temperature (between 100 and 120 degrees F), combine the lye water and oils. Stir them by hand, then give them a quick pulse or two from the stick blender. Quickly add your essential oils or fragrance oils and blend them in. (I used equal parts Lavender EO and Litsea EO. I'm really pleased with this combination!) For the size of my batch, I used a total of two ounces wt of EO).

Pour part of the mixture (I poured about 1/3 of the mixture) into a glass measuring bowl. Hopefully the mixture is nice and thin still! Add alkanet root powder for the purple coloring and mix by hand, and give it another quick stick blend. To the main mixture, add lemon peel powder for a natural yellow color.

Now we have two parts of soap mixture; yellow in the main pot and purple in the measuring bowl. Now for the "in the pot" swirl technique:  Imagine your main pot is a clock. Hold the purple mixture high above the main pot and pour part of it in at 12 o'clock. Hold it at a slightly lower level and pour at 3 o'clock. Even lower at 6 o'clock and right at the surface at 9 o'clock. Pour the last bit right in the middle of the clock. Take your spatula and "connect the dots" one time. The high pours allow for the color to reach the bottom of the pot, then the low pours put the coloring towards the surface, so it should distribute somewhat evenly throughout the pot.

Now simply pour it in the mold!

This batch came to trace really quickly so I had to work fast! I may have stick blended it too much, so I recommend minimal use of the stick blender. Cocoa butter may have also contributed. Higher soap temps may also lead to early tracing. I've also read that increasing the amount of water can help slow down tracing. There are so many factors in each batch of soap, it's hard to pinpoint the exact cause of early tracing.

Even so, I think the batch turned out beautiful. I just cut it up and overall I'm pleased with the swirls. I love the little specks of lemon peel powder for the coloring.

Holiday burlap banners

Here's just a few more banners I did before Christmas. I can't wait to make some Valentine and Spring banners. Will keep you posted!

Barnwood "faith" frames

 

 

I found these old barnwood frames in an antique store and instantly thought they might look great with my "faith" verse stencils! I love how they turned out! These were donated to an auction and they sold for more than double what I paid! Very satisfying feeling!