Soaping up a Winter Wonderland

Sorry that I haven’t blogged in over a month had a ton of appointments and no time to soap:(. So for the last few weeks I have been busy making a bunch of Christmas/ winter soaps!

Fir needle Mantra swirl Christmas soap

First I have the classical holiday soap with a mantra swirl of red, green, and a touch of gold. The scent is the distinctively Christmassy smell of a fresh cut fir tree.

After my soap batter had reached emulsification I added 1.5 oz (for 2 lbs of oils) of Fir needle essential oil, this EO is very slow to trace so I had plenty of time to play with the design. To achieve the colors I first split of about a 1/3 of a cup of thinly traced soap in a condiment squeeze bottle (the kind you find ketchup an mustard in, they are easily found in a craft store or Target), and added around a ¼ of a teaspoon of gold mica. The remaining soap batter was and split in half. The first half was colored with 1 teaspoon of red rainbow mica (soon to be discontinued along with all other rainbow micas) and the other half was colored with 1/3 of a teaspoon of a mixture of 2 parts green oxide and 3 parts green rainbow mica. To get a full tutorial look HERE.

Fresh snow drop swirl

The second batch was a drop swirl made with Wholesale Supplies Plus’s Fresh Snow. This fragrance oil was described as: a cheerful blend of fresh mint, blooming jasmine and pine needles. I love this FO! While it did speed things up and had minor ricing (nothing that couldn’t be blended into submission) it was totally worth it.

To pull of the design I scented the soap with 1oz(.5 ppo) of fresh snow then split the batch into half, and one of the halves into half. I colored the 50% portion of batter with ½ a teaspoon of titanium dioxide and poured it into the mold until it was half way full. The 2 smaller portions were colored different shades of blue; the darker shade was colored with 1/3 of a teaspoon of blue oxide and the lighter with 1/3 of a teaspoon of blue rainbow mica. I poured the blues into the mold linear motions. After slightly swirling the top of the loaf I sprinkled some snow worthy glitter on top!

Hot Chocolate themed soap

My most recent batch is a blend I call mint hot cocoa, it is a blend of spearmint essential oil and Bramble Berry’s Hot Cocoa fragrance oil which out of the bottle smelled like those cheep “Hershey” chocolate lip glosses but it really bloomed out nicely in soap.

In this batch I made a few minor changes to my usual recipe, changing out shea butter for cocoa butter and adding an ounce of heavy cream deducted from the water amount.

For the design I first reserved 12 fluid ounces of unscented (this is important as the Hot Cocoa FO discolors) batter and scented the remaining amount with .85oz of hot cocoa and .15 oz of spearmint EO (again for 2lb of oils). After coloring the scented batter with 1 teaspoon of cocoa powder I poured it 2/3 the way up the mold. With a small sifter I dusted the surface with green rainbow mica for a pencil line. I went on to slowly pour the unscented batter over a spatula close to the surface of the previous layer as not to brake through. Finally I textured the top with a spoon to make it look more like whipped cream then sprinkled the top with the green mica and cocoa powder.

 I hope you enjoyed my blog and happy soaping!!