No Dragons Were Injured In The Making Of This Soap

Several soaps I posted about earlier are now ready to go.  One of these is my new favorite, Dragon's Blood.

Created with a shea butter base, it has warming notes of amber, incense, Madagascar vanilla and patchouli, the Dragon's Blood Fragrance is lightened up with layers of romantic notes such as rose, jasmine and lilac. Top notes are the colorful, light touches of blood orange and grapefruit. If ever a fragrance made you want to go out and get a tattoo, this one is it.

The curing process has rendered it dark and earthy, just like you would expect.  Here it is in all its glory, available on both my website or on Etsy for $5.50.    

On a geeky side note, I investigated the actual Dragon Tree.  My travels brought me to the South Coast Botanic Gardens, located in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA.  An African native, the injured tree runs red with sap, (resin), from its wound.  The red resin was used in ancient times as varnish, medicine, incense, and dye.  So there you have it...  more than you ever wanted to know.

~Sandy

A Failed Batch!

I have started using a new type of oil in my soaps called Palm Kernel Oil.  It is solid at room temperature, therefore, needs to be heated up before I can mix it with other ingredients.  No biggie.  So I'm beginning to add all my pre-measured ingredients: liquid oil, solid oil and sodium hydroxide (lye), all together in a giant stainless pot. I start whizzing it around with my mixer and suddenly it seizes up... goes all curdled, like burnt milk, and thickens to the point of nearly stopping the mixer.  I'm freaking out because it's only moments before I'm going to have a solid 5 pound bar of soap stuck in a pot.

I quickly grab a spatula and pack it into the mold like putty... only to find that it completely liquifies back to normal within a minute or so.  I'm sure there's a good scientific reason for this, but at the moment I'm completely puzzled.

So now I have a mess of goo which is not properly mixed already in the mold.  What to do?  I can't pour it back, so I bring the stick blender to the mold and have another go at it.  Just as I start feeling like Smarty Pants,  my mixer sucks in the mold's paper liner and completely purees it into the soap mixture.

My paper soap loaf is now curing for a couple days before I can try extracting it.  Anybody want to try a bar?

Hand Milled Soap With Lavender Buds

I am just crazy about lavender!  My gardening pal gave me bunches of lovely dried lavender that was harvested out of her garden over the summer.  It's so fragrant!  I couldn't resist making this hand-milled soap.  It's almost ready to go and will be included on my website when I launch it later this month.