Saturday, February 11, 2012

Soaps for grannies

The first soap that I sold at the Christmas market was to a woman slightly older than I, who was buying the soap for herself.  It was Lavender soap.  There is something special about Lavender soap.  It's the soap that the grandmothers in my family get for Christmas.  Since I sold all the Lavender soaps that I had at the market, I needed to make a new batch especially for the grannies.  And since there wasn't enough time to cure before Christmas, the soap were packed with a slip of paper that explained about curing soap and that the soap would have to be used for purely decorative purposes for about 10 more days.  Ready to be used in the new year.

I made this especially with the older women in mind.  I had just bought some Shea butter and wanted to try that in soap.  One of the grannies is a fan of Shea butter, so I thought I would make her happy.  Needless to say I used Alkanet infused oil to get the purple color, but I have to admit that I completely love the pretty blue that it turns at first and I would really like to get that color permanently.  I think I have to sacrifice some of my precious indigo soon to make some blue soap.  Blue soap with Shea butter would be just perfect.

But back to the Granny soap.  I made a small batch and tweaked the recipe a bit so the percentages are a bit strange.

Olive oil 50% - 270g / 9.5oz
Coconut oil 28% - 150g / 5.3oz
Shea butter 9% - 50g / 1.8oz
Cocoa butter 9% - 50 /1.8oz
Rice bran oil 4% - 20g / .7oz

I used sugar in the water and about 80g of the Olive oil was Alkanet infused.  Scent was pure Lavender, no mix this time and I sprinkled a few flowers on top.  Sea Mayweed, Achillea, Lavender and Calluna, the Sea Mayweed flowers turned a pretty lime green when the soap dried and I liked the effect.  There are alway surprises when working with natural materials and I do appreciate that.  I may use those flowers again and maybe arrange them a bit more carefully.  Tweezers work well for this fiddly work.

Speaking about fiddly work.  The eiderdown cleaning progresses at a snails pace.  I now have 114 grams cleaned, but I am going to make a harp (a tree frame with strings) to help with the cleaning.  Norwegians use this and I'm going to try to see if I can make one and clean faster that way.  I'm really excited about my eiderdown and I can't wait to get the cover.  It's being made in Germany right now and I think it will be fabulous.


7 comments:

  1. I love all your recent soap.It is natural and beautiful!

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  2. "Fiddly" love that word. Will now use it often. The alkanet is another favorite of mine. Sometimes I just mix it in my saop before infusing and get pretty purple dots all over. A little scratchy but many of my customers are farm wifes with cery dirty hands so they donlt mind the exfoliation.

    Your soaps alwasy calm me just to look at them

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  3. Lovely soap, good luck with the cleaning process, hope we get to see the cover as well!

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  4. Thanks, ТОНКАЯ МАТЕРИЯ - I can say the same about your soaps. Love them :)
    Donna, lol, I didn't realize. I use a mix of English and American having lived in both countries :) and sometimes I don't realize how different the vocabulary is.
    Cynthia, I will so post a picture of the casing when it gets here! I'm so excited myself :) I'm sure everyone will be thoroughly bored with the subject of my duvet by the time I'm done.

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  5. Hello Ambra, I good like emailing you, my email is nubesdejabon@gmail.com
    Kisses
    Julia

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  6. Lovely soap!!!
    I could stare at it for hours...
    natalia

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  7. Ambra i just love your posts! i am not much of a blogger, just help my mother with her food blog sometimes, but i was searching the internet for fun ideas and recipes and yours came up. i have read through alot of your posts already and am enjoying myself! :) i would love to learn more about making soaps. i have so many questions about how to do it.. like how do you get your flowers to always turn out in the middle of your soap? how long does it have to sit and 'cure'? in what kind of environment? do i need to buy special cut outs to shape the soap or can i use something i may already have handy at home? i would love so much hearing back from you! you inspired me to make soaps! and so many other things! i am def going to try the dandelion coffee and honey.
    thank you so much for sharing!
    -Canaan-

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