Herbal Bubbles

Stop by today for the Coast Guard Festival Craft Show! It's going to be a beautiful day and there's lots to look at! We'll be here until 5pm 😁

I'm all packed up and ready to go for tomorrow's craft show in Grand Haven! I'll be in the Ottawa County Building parking lot across the street from Central Park from 8am-5pm. The weather is looking promising even though it's supposed to get pretty warm, I'll take the heat over rain, wind or snow! I can't wait!

I finished labeling all of my new soaps for this weekend's craft show. 3 out of the 4 are new soaps I haven't made before. They all smell so good and look amazing!

In 6 days I will be participating in the Grand Haven Coast Guard craft show! The flyer in the first picture is for the craft show put on by the coast guard festival that will be located in Central Park, I will be in the parking lot of the Ottawa County Building across the street with other vendors. I will only be there this Saturday, August 2nd from 9am-5pm. This will be my first year at this craft show and I'm very excited!

Let's talk about soda ash. It is a reaction between the lye in the soap and the carbon dioxide in the air. It is a completely harmless, safe, and natural occurrence, only affecting the soap's appearance. Some don't mind the ashy look, but to many it can look displeasing. It shows up more dramatically on the black soap because of the color contrast and I usually choose to remove it for better appearances. To get rid of it, all you need to do is wash it off! I take a wet wash cloth, wipe it away and then dry it with a paper towel.

In the first picture, the bar of soap on the left has some soda ash on top whereas the bar on the right does not (because I washed it off). Some bars have more soda ash than others, how that happens is science beyond my knowledge haha.

I will be selling this soap at my next craft show in August!

Today I made a masculine batch of soap. Dark and mysterious, black as the night, with a new essential oil (EO) blend I'm really enjoying. I've been asked several times at craft shows if I sell soap with Patchouli EO and this may not be 100% Patchouli it certainly comes through and blends so well with the other two. I can't wait to see how the moons that I added on top look when cut!

Last week I unmolded and cut these soaps. They turned out so good! Would I have liked more swirls, sure, but these still look really cool, and they smell amazing!

Today was a good soap-making day. I made a larger batch and made two different kinds. The first one is a warm summer soap, colored with French Pink clay and Red Moroccan clay, and scented with Lemon EO, Peppermint EO and Geranium EO. I'm not sure what to call it yet, but it'll probably have something to do with summer or flowers haha.

The second soap is my second attempt at a gardener's soap. The first time I tried making one I messed up a different part of the recipe which unfortunately ruined the entire batch. This time I was extra careful and measured everything precisely. It's colored with Cocoa powder and Spirulina powder, scented with Lemon EO, Lavender EO and Eucalyptus EO, and I added coffee grounds and poppy seeds for exfoliation. This soap is intended to look earthy, smell refreshing and help get any and all dirt off after working or just being outdoors. It obviously can be used however you please but this was the inspiration behind the idea.

I'm excited to see the swirls and how the colors turn out in both of these soaps. They are both new creations and so far have turned out really well!

I cut the Lavender soap and the patterns turned out, interesting, haha. The colors definitely could have been swirled more, some bars have more of one color in them and they're not really mixed well. It's always so hard to tell because you really have no idea what the inside will look like until you cut it so there's the dilemma of not knowing weather you've mixed it too much or not enough. They still look pretty nonetheless, and they smell amazing!

Back at it again for my next craft show in August. Yesterday I made a batch of Lavender soap colored with indigo powder olive oil infusion, scented with Lavender EO (essential oil) and decorated with organic Lavender buds. I also filled two moon molds before adding the EO and color for a future soap. I adjusted the percentages of the ingredients from my most recent recipe hoping to get a better lather, more bubbles, and a more stable bar in general. So far so good 🤞

Today's the last day to stop by the craft show! The sun is out but bring a jacket, it's a little chilly.