The Arty Soaper

Appetising, healthy breakfast

Posted by Titanium Wild , 23 April 2011 8:12:00 pm

Homemade Organic Granola Recipe
I cannot wait to try this out!

Intoxication

Posted by Titanium Wild , 9 April 2011 8:32:00 pm

I'd had an absolutely rubbish night's sleep the previous evening, and made up an aromatherapy blend for myself consisting of vetivert, lemongrass and clary sage. It was a very 'heavy' blend, but it did the job beautifully!
I woke up the next morning feeling inspired, and this...

...is what I came up with.
Using Redbush tea as my liquid, with added coconut cream(my most favourite ingredient....for now anyway!), and tussah silk, and charcoal plus cocoa powders for the swirls, I am in LOVE!
For the purposes of soaping, I added a touch of benzoin to the blend, and upped the lemongrass a little as, as most soapers know, citrus oils tend to fade really quickly, and I wanted to hang onto it for as long as possible.
I very nearly repeated my previous mistake of forgetting to add my essential oils, but just before I split the batter to add colour I remembered, and into the mix they went. All I can say at this point is that I then had to move very quickly. I'm not sure which of the essential oils was the offender, but one of them will have a smacked bottom next time I use it...I just need to work out the guilty party.

Despite having to move like greased lightening, I got the batter into the mould, and styled as I wanted, so all in all it was a successful batch.

Hooray, my soapy mojo is back ;-)

Someone Like You

Posted by Titanium Wild , 7 April 2011 11:05:00 am

Aside from making soap, and occasionally picking up a pain brush, one of my other loves in life is music. It will always be a regret that haunts me that I never had the balls to follow my dream and take up singing as a career. I'm not saying I'd have been any good at it, but there's so much you can say with a song, so much emotion you can convey with a piano and a pure, unadulterated voice.
For me, this song here, by Adele, is everything a song should be. It's beautiful, it's pure, and it's not bolstered by any fancy tricks. It doesn't need any bolstering. It simply is.

Enjoy.

I am officially stoopid!

Posted by Titanium Wild , 4 April 2011 11:09:00 am

I'd been meaning to make this particular soap for a while now, and had settled on a new look for it. So, I get all my ingredients weighed out, put together my essential oil blend of lavender, cedarwood, black pepper and clary sage, and set about putting it all together. Some tussah silk went into my lye water, coconut cream went into my oils and things were looking good.
The soap batter came to trace quite quickly(probably due to the cocoa butter I had included this time) and so I set aside a small portion of the batter to colour(I used a tiny amount of cocoa powder and some alkanet infused olive oil), added some soap chunks I'd cut up from another batch to the main portion, and proceeded to  mix them in.

I then placed half of the main portion into the mould( a cute little Really Useful Box I'd bought in town over the weekend), poured a smidge of the coloured portion ontop of that, than added the rest of the batter, followed by a swirled layer of the remaining coloured soap.
As well as the chunks I'd cut up previously, I'd also made up some soap curls using a potato peeler.





So they were placed at specific intervals on the top of the soap. It looked great.
BUT, what I'd forgotten to do, and swore profusely at myself for, was add the dam essential oils!!
One was most definitely NOT amused.
At all.
I didn't want to ruin my visual masterpiece(pfft), so had no other option but to leave it scent-sually nekkid.
Damn. Blast. Buggeration.

*and breath*

I wrapped my nekkid soap up and popped it into the airing cupboard to encourage it to gel. The very last thing I wanted was a partial gel as that would have had me inconsolable.

Anyway, this is what my nekkid Fools Gold soap looks like.








Time for me to go sit alone, in the corner, sporting a very big  dunce cap.......