....and that's all she said.

I started this blog on a whim in 2009.  At the time, I thought the concept of a blog was fascinating and what better subject than soap, my all-consuming hobby turned business?  Much later I summarized my reasons for starting this little blog.  From its beginning, I knew I wouldn't be doing this forever and I've been contemplating the end for the past 9 months.  But here at the end of the year, it's become clear to me that this is the time.

Am I quitting the whole soaping gig?  Not hardly.  In fact, things are getting busier for me all the time; I need to streamline, prioritize and make some decisions regarding the future.  I have taken on some responsibilities that need my attention and am considering some opportunities unrelated to my soap business.

I never expected to have a blog that had a steady group of followers--it's never failed to surprise me.  But I'm ready to step out of the limelight of sorts that this blog has shown on me and just be Amy, that soaper on 10th Avenue.  I appreciate all of you and as I've looked back over the last couple of years, I realize that I have made many friends through this blog that I never would have "met" otherwise.  I've always especially enjoyed checking the stats to see where my readers have come from.  (To my readers from little Luxembourg, I've always suspected that you're cousins of mine. ;)  I mean, really, the odds are pretty good!)  I especially want to thank Anne-Marie and Bramble Berry for the fun opportunities I have been given from time to time.  You have a customer for life here!

For now, at least, I'll leave this blog public.  Happy soaping to you all and all the best in 2013!

Adios, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, good night.

(Ten points if you recognize that line and ten bonus points if your parents spent Saturday nights with Bobby, Sissy, and Co. and assumed you enjoyed it just as much as they did....) :)

What do you put in your soap? (part 2)

I wrote part 1 of "What do you put in your soap?" last August and somehow, I didn't post part 2.  Ooopsies.  So here it is.

I focused my last post on the liquids I use in my soaps, specifically goat's milk.  In this one, I thought I would share my reasons for a few of the oils I use to make my soaps.  Every soaper has his own philosophy and this post is to inform and educate my customers.

My absolute favorite oil in soap is olive oil.  It's one of the most traditional and well-loved of the soaping oils because of the exquisite soap it makes.  Among the other oils I like to use are coconut, almond, castor, and avocado.  And then there are those lovely butters, like cocoa and shea, that are oh, so nice.  I could write a post on the qualities and benefits of each of these ingredients but I shall focus on one category of soaping oils today, animal fats.

Most of my recent soaps contain tallow (beef fat), although I am also fond of lard (pork fat) in soaps.  (I'm a fickle lover when it comes to my animal oils.)  Although animal fats are among the most traditional of soap ingredients, it seems that they are shunned by many these days and not considered "eco-friendly."  In my mind, it's a bit disingenuous to purposely purchase only vegan beauty products and then host a backyard barbecue.  (I'm inclined to think that this contradiction is more a result of effective advertising campaigns rather than an intentional choice, however.)  Really, if you're OK with eating a steak, you shouldn't feel it's wrong to use animal products elsewhere!  Animal fats have been used to make soap for a long, long time, and it's not just for lack of other oils.  How good is tallow for your skin?  Check this out. 



My own rendered tallow

 However, I don't use palm oil, a standard soaping oil (especially for those avoiding animal fats), but my reasons are tied to palm oil's sustainability controversy in only a distant way. When I returned to soaping several years ago, I took out a small loan (!) and bought a little tub of palm oil "shortening" from a health food store to test it in soap.  I wasn't wowed.  It was nice but hardly remarkable enough to pay to have it shipped from a supplier halfway across the country who paid to have it shipped from another country.  It seems even sillier when I live in a farming region and can buy unrendered beef fat from the local butcher shop at 10 pounds for $1. 

In spite of not living in an urban area, I am fortunate in that I am able to buy all of my standard soaping oils locally, most of them from family-owned bulk food stores.  On occasion, I order a few oils from a supplier a couple of hours away from me, but I have intentionally formulated many of my recipes to use the oils readily available.  Buying my supplies locally enables me to support local businesses (a big deal to me) and I can avoid some shipping costs, another expense I don't have to pass on to you, my customers!

How do you really know?

For all you soapmakers, how do you know that people like your soaps?  I mean, they may be in awe of your soapmaking abilities and gush over your endless creativity.  They may buy soaps from you in such quantities that you wonder if they experience most of life from within the confines of a bathtub.

But don't you sometimes still have lingering doubts?  Do your customers just sense your desperate need for positive reinforcement?  Do they hope that their financial support will enable you to take a vacation and get away from the lye fumes that have obviously affected you?  Or do they simply feel pity for their friend who whiles away the time combining quantities of oils and liquids with stuff that cleans out drains and thinks it's the funnest thing ever?

I thought I'd offer two foolproof indicators that your customers really, truly love your soaps.

1. They use it up.  Literally. One of my regular customers said that she needed soap because she was down to a sliver of her last bar.  To demonstrate her desperation, she presented me with the sliver, a generous term. To keep it from sliding down the drain, she'd placed it in one palm and rubbed it with the finger of her other hand.  (We can safely assume that a friend held up a magnifying glass to enable her to complete this operation.)  I sent her on her way with not only several bars, but also a stack of scrap chunks and ends to ward off another soap crisis.

2. A picture will suffice here....

Is this evidence of an irresistable bar of soap, or what?  I didn't discover it until I was setting up for an indoor farmer's market and must have happened the previous week at a craft show.  After examination and consultation with the other vendors, we determined it must have been done by a child.  I think it should be noted that my friend's honey products on the neighboring table remained unscathed, so I feel even more honored.  The typical polite comment of a browser at a craft show is "Oh, your soaps look good enough to eat."  And to some, apparently, it is.



A sidenote: Recently a woman remarked that my soaps looked too good to eat.  It makes you shudder to think of what she does with homely soaps, doesn't it?

Friendly Competition

Sad to say, my previous experiences with other soapers at craft shows haven't been all that memorable.  I hadn't experienced the comraderie that should exist between two people with the same passion; I've either been acknowledged with an aloof nod or I've gotten the vibe that I am Serious Competition to be Feared not Friended, in spite of my efforts to the contrary.  But last weekend I finally had a different experience.  Lisa of Lisa's Handcrafted Soaps, two tables away, noticed me first and came over to introduce herself.  Within minutes we were pals, discussing--as soapy pals do--lye volcanoes, soda ash and mold sizes, for starters.  We took turns checking out each other's stuff while the other one acted as a lookout in case a customer stopped by the unmanned table.

Of course we had to do a soap swap.  Decisions are not usually easy for me.  My first choice was easy, however.  She makes liquid soap, something I've never tried.  It was one of my goals this year, but in spite of my grand plans, I just didn't get my experiments started. She gave me several pointers and prodded me to try making my own.  Anyway, I chose her unscented bastile liquid soap (and could not wait to get home to try it out).

My second choice (a tougher decision!) was a bar of avocado soap which contained a high percentage of avocado oil, along with comfrey leaf and cedarwood essential oil, all of which I've never tried before.

Lisa, being even more indecisive than I am, asked me to choose two of my bars for her.  I chose my eggnog soap because the scent is flat-out delicious and the bar contains egg yolk, which she had never tried as well as my most popular beer soap, with a honey ale fragrance.  I'm hoping that she's inspired to try making her first batch of beer soap after using one.

I appreciated and share her attitude about multiple handmade soap vendors at a venue--there's enough room (and dirty bodies!) for all of us. We both sell soaps and similar bath products but we have our own unique twist when it comes to ingredients and looks. It's not as if we're both peddling the same mass-produced products.  And all of us (not just the soapers) were at the event in hopes of making money, so in reality, we were all in competition for sales. Why get worked up over it?  In spite of the "competition," business was brisk for both of us.


For all our chatting, we were nearly the last people out of the place.  We finally packed up our unsold products (both of us use Bramble Berry boxes to tote our stuff around!) and hope to catch up with each other next year. (And whew--now that everything has been properly photographed, I can tear into my new stuff!)

Laundry soap how-to

Here is a post for all of you who have asked me for a recipe to make your own laundry "detergent."  There are many versions of this recipe, but this is the one I use.


Keep in mind that this homemade soap is different from commercial detergents, which contain optical brighteners to make clothes appear whiter and brighter as well as surfactants that provides lots of bubbles and suds.  On the other hand, this is soap, pure and simple, and doesn't contain any scents, colors or common skin irritants.  For me, the choice for homemade is a no-brainer.   

The three ingredients: washing soda (not baking soda), borax, and a bar of laundry soap.

I grate 1/2 the bar of soap with a cheese grater.  Some people use a food processor, but either way, it doesn't take long.

Pour one quart of water into a pot and add the soap shavings.  Heat the water and stir until the soap dissolves.

Add 1/2 c. of borax and 1/2 c. of washing soda; stirring to dissolve.

When all is dissolved, pour the mixture into a pail and add cool water until the mixture reaches two gallons.  Measuring all that water is a bit of a hassle, so I marked the two gallon line with a sharpie to make filling the pail a quick step.  Stir it up, then pour it into gallon jugs or used laundry detergent containers.

The liquid thickens a bit as it cools and gets gel-like and a little gloppy, somewhat like egg-drop soup. 
I shake the jug up before pouring and use 1/2 cup per load of laundry.


I don't have a high efficiency washer and don't know much about them, but I have read that since homemade detergent is low-sudsing, it is safe for HE washers.  If you're a member of the fancy washer club, you might want to look into that yourself. 

Cobblestone soap

The bars that just didn't turn out like they looked in your head or the batches in which the scent disappeared about the same time you sliced it.  The ends of a loaf.  The crumbled edges.  The odd-sized scraps and the leftover bits.  If you've been soaping for any length of time, you have a shoebox full of oddball soaps.  If you're like me, you hate to callously throw out your hard work, so you just start a new shoebox. 

I've done various things with my scraps over the years.  I've shredded them up for laundry and I've handed stacks to family.  I've shredded them for decoration in other bars and used scraps to make sugar scrub cubes.  Yet they continue to accumulate.  However, a family member reminded me of one of the most obvious uses for leftovers--cobblestone soap.  I have to admit that I've only ever made it once, in an attempt to salvage a batch of pureed cucumber soap.  I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the batch had the nasty stench of saponified veggies.  Needless to say, chopping it into little bits and adding it to another batch with another fragrance (albeit a lovely cucumber-mint) did little to redeem it.

I think I must be a suggestible person, because two days later I decided I just HAD to try a batch.  I chose fruity scents as my theme and had no trouble finding enough variety in my boxes.

Here's what I came up with, the pale green soap holding the bits together having a coconut-lime scent.

I was on a roll.  My project the following day was my leftover Christmas soaps--a mash-up of the best of the season.  The pines, peppermints, spices, and Christmas treats all in one delightful cacophony of color and fragrance.  I could easily have just mixed them with some unscented batter and still have plenty of scent.  Pero no.  I decided to try out a new ginger fragrance I'd bought.  I thought it was be so pretty, a stark white soap with all sorts of Christmasy soap chunks. 

What?!  You see a peach colored soap?  Nonsense; it's your imagination.  Since when is peach associated with Christmas?   That's why I used a non-discoloring fragrance.  Ahem.  What I really like about this particular batch, however, is that I can detect the different scents of the various batches.

I am a huge fan of this whole cobblestone thing now and I already have more batches planned because there is no shortage of soap around here. 

You do remember, don't you, that today is the LAST day to enter Bramble Berry's Givember giveaway?  Make an order today so you'll be ready to jump right into next year's soap projects after the holiday season.  Include the code GIVEMBER50 to be entered in a drawing for a Bramble Berry gift certificate.

Christmas-y drinks--as soap

In the past, I've made a few Christmas-themed soaps amongst my collection.   I don't know what happened to me this year, but I've been making Christmas soaps like I can only do this once a year.  It probably helps that I'm struggling to keep up as they've been selling out so fast (best problem EVER!)  I am having so much fun thinking of designs and scent combinations; I'm already planning some of next Christmas' soaps.

Ever since Laura of Glad Heart Soaps posted about making eggnog soap I had been thinking about it...even daydreaming about it.  I caved.  (I blame owe you, Laura!)  It's just as good as she described it--creamy, vanilla-y, with a bit of spice.  I thought I would add real eggnog to my batch but when I looked at the list of ingredients at the store, (when will I learn?) I decided to pass.  Instead of using spiced corn syrup, I used real heavy cream and real egg yolk and a sprinkling of nutmeg on top.

I know you've seen this design from me recently, but I'm kind of in love with it... 

I love eggnog nearly as much as I love pumpkin, so I had an easy solution for my extra cream--pumpkin eggnog.  (I may have bought way more cream than I needed for the soap. Ahem.  Now how did that happen?)

Bliss in a glass.











Now this design is not original with me, but I saw it years ago and thought it so clever that I wanted to try it myself.  Can you guess the scent just by the picture?  It's scented with a Hot Cocoa fragrance, which smells just as good as the real thing. 

I made little marshmallow embeds by rolling still-soft soap into little marshmallow shapes.  Don't they look squishably soft?  I get so excited when a batch turns out just like I wanted, as if it were the last thing I expected.  Hmmm...I don't know what that says about me....

Now don't forget, you only have until the end of November to enter Bramble Berry's Givember giveaway!  Use the code Givember50 on your order to be entered in the drawing for a $50 gift certificate.