Saturday 22 September 2012

Beautifully bespoke soap wedding favours

Hi everyone!

I thought I would write a blog about what I've been up to lately. I recently made over 100 bespoke soaps as favours for a wedding for a great couple I know. They wanted his & hers soaps, and this is what I came up with:

His and Hers wedding favours
For the girl soaps, they wanted something pink and creamy with a few sparkles. The chosen scent was white chocolate raspberry truffle - which smells divine, by the way!

White chocolate raspberry truffle soap

It was a very simple recipe, but had lashing of shea butter to make it nice and creamy and oh-so-good for all the ladies' skin. I also put lots of glitter on the top to make it a little more appealing. The pink was done with a liquid colourant and the white has a tiny bit of titanium dioxide to make the base soap colour a pop a little.

For the guy soaps, they wanted something fresh and masculine. The chosen scent was exactly that, and I added a tablespoon of ground apricot stones to make it a little scrubby and different from the girls.
Man Bath: Mountain
I made this soap as a large batch for last christmas and it went down great with the guys in my family. It's called Mountain because it's so fresh, has oodles of delicious cocoa butter so it makes a great lather, and is a little bit scrubby. I also put a pencil line of the ground apricot stones and then added white soap on top, to make it look slightly like a landscape. (Not sure if I completely pulled it off, but a few people got it!) The green is coloured with a chromium green oxide and the white has titanium dioxide to make a great contrast between the mountain and the sky.

So there you have it! Everyone at the wedding was really impressed, and I got nothing but good feedback so I was really pleased with how it went down. The bride and groom said they loved them, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters! Here are a few more shots of the soaps on the table ... though they are a little blurry so apologies!


So there you have it folks! That's what I've been up to lately :) Have you ever made wedding favours before? What did you decide to make?

Hope everyone's having a good weekend!

Naomi

Saturday 25 August 2012

Welcome to my new blog! & Virgin, unrefined cocoa butter

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my brand spanking new blog page, courtesy of blogspot! I'm currently re-vamping my website and decided my blog needed a makeover too, so here we are :)

I thought I'd kick off my new blog by showing you an ingredient I recently bought:


Virgin, unrefined, unfiltered cocoa butter!

There's nothing better than finding a new supplier of soapy things, and a few months ago I stumbled upon Fresholi - a soapy supplier of some very interesting things. One thing I came across and really, really liked on Fresholi, was organic palm oil - something I'm very keen on buying to make the most nature-friendly soaps. But the one thing I was really impressed with, was their supply of virgin, unrefined and unfiltered cocoa butter.

I've used cocoa butter before in soaps and it really adds to the lather of the soap in general, but the after effect of it is soothing and gives your hands a silky soft feel. The main difference between regular cocoa butter and the unfiltered, unrefined butter above, is the smell. It smells deliciously of chocolate and has such a beautiful aroma. I often order things to be delivered at my work address, and when this came I had a few people asking me what the chocolate smell round my desk was! (Quite a few of us were tempted to eat it too!) Another difference is that because it's unrefined and unfiltered, all the goodness of the cocoa beans is still in there, antioxidants and all.

On my first visit to Fresholi I only bought a small sample of the cocoa butter, and I have to admit, it stayed in my soap cupboard for quite a long time before I knew what I wanted to do with it. I eventually decided I was going to make a Man Bath soap with it, and formulated my recipe to include the butter. Est voila:


Man Bath: True Grit

Although I added a fragrance oil to this soap so you can't smell the chocolatey aroma anymore, it still has all the benefits and goodness of the butter. I added ground apricot stones to this batch, so it exfoliates whilst soothing skin, and is perfect for the shower. I'm so so pleased with how it came out, it's exactly what I wanted, and everyone who I've had test it for me said it was great.

So there you have it! A fabulous, all-natural ingredient jam packed into soap :) Do you like using natural ingredients in your soap?