Confession: I made my first batch of soap about 14 years ago and in all the years since, I have never once made a batch of vanilla soap. Sure, I've accidentally bought the occasional fragrance that contained more vanilla than I realized, like my lovely yellow lemon poppyseed soap that magically tuned to bland brown in mere hours. But I've avoided the straight vanilla fragrance, as much as I like it. However, I recently bought a bottle of the most amazing vanilla fragrance. It is incomparable in sugar scrubs and the sort of scent that you almost have to take the teeniest lick, just to convince yourself that it's really not edible. But I figured it was high time for some vanilla soap. When working with vanilla-based fragrances, I've found that it just doesn't work to fight it. Titanium dioxide, vanilla stabilizer--the effects only last so long, if at all. Brown soap is just so....brown. And boring. I wanted to make a vanilla soap that popped. Day one of ...
life in and out of the soap studio