Warming up for Winter

I hadn't realised how long it has been since I posted on here. Summer is disappearing and I'm getting used to the shorter days. It's hard to think of the cold and dark to come, but autumn and winter does have its bonuses; the pears are ripening, the wild mushrooms are popping up in the woods and I can mark the changing season with some new scents and designs for soaps and bath treats.

This week I have mixed up a a warm and inviting blend of Orange, Tangerine, Clementine, Cinnamon and Vanilla oils to bring on the autumn/winter season. I made some squirls, squiggles and buttons out of a natural melt and pour soap that I have to add some interest to the top. Some of it half melted in the gelling stage, so has made shapes that I couldn't have come up with if I had tried. I've pushed in some short pieces of cinnamon bark and added a few seeds. The body of the soap is layered and then I have pushed a shaped bucket handle through the layers to feather them. I'm calling it Winter Spiced Posset, although I am not entirely clear what a posset is.


                

Solid Shampoos Crammed Full of Herbs!

It feels great to make these shampoos. I use as much herbal material as I think the recipe can manage, to get as much benefit from their properties as I can.
For the Chamomile, Rose hip and Lemon, I half fill a big jug full of chamomile flowers and pour on nearly boiling water and leave them to infuse for a good hour or so before straining off the liquid, adding some of the flowers back into the infusion. Ground rosehip powder is added to warm oil and left to macerate a while. Then I whizz up lemon peel to make a puree. All this goes in to the cocoa butter rich soap mix and the resulting shampoo comes out a lovely reddish colour, smelling sweetly of the chamomile and lemon.

In the summer months, we can go out in our rubber gloves and pick fresh nettles from the nettle beds up at the farm and with a fresh bunch of parsley, make a dark fragrant puree for the Nettle Parsley and Rosemary shampoo. I am a fan of nettles. The puree is strained and some of the ground up leaves added back to the infusion, along with some dried nettle powder for extra oomph. In the winter months, we have to use dried nettles of course, but they smell almost as good.

Our latest shampoo is Green Tea, Eucalyptus and Peppermint, likewise steeped, pureed and soaped. I'm so pleased with the rich dark colour of this new one.

Handmade shampoos can leave a deposit on your hair - a reaction from the minerals in the water. Best thing to do if this is the case, is to make a simple rinse of a few tablespoons of your favourite vinegar in a jug of warm water. Pour slowly over your hair. You will probably find you don't need conditioners. They were invented to counteract the effects of the detergents in commercial shampoos!

Chamomile Rosehip and Lemon;
 Nettle Parsley and Rosemary;
 Green Tea, Eucalyptus and Peppermint Shampoos

Gelato Scoop Bath Melts

These have been so long in the planning, getting the recipe just right to make the mixture scoopable, so it doesn't puff up, so it doesn't collapse, so it hardens up nicely, so that it fizzes gently, so that it makes your bath feel creamy and fragrant, so that it makes your skin feel soft and moisturised and so that it doesn't leave your bath greasy and too slippery to stand up safely. We've done it! They come in a range of lovely colours and scents and we couldn't be happier. They are available now for order to our trade customers and come in boxes of 12 X 60g scoops. These are Love Dream, Midsummer and Dr. Love.

Fondant Bath Melts

We've been just so busy for the last couple of weeks, I haven't had any time at all for fiddling around with photos and writing up what's been going on. Apart from keeping up with orders and getting all our paperwork in order for the new EU regulations coming into force, we've been perfecting our lovely new products ready to show off, finding the right packing boxes for them and making their labels. Would you like to see?
These are our brand new Gardenia Rose Bath Fondants; little gorgeously fragrant melting fizzers, which slowly release their scents and (cocoa and shea) buttery goodness into your bath.

Super Rich, Skin Spoiling, Whipped Body Butter

This is when we pull out all the stops and use some of the very best ingredients in our pantry to whip up a smooth and outrageously rich body butter to spoil your skin and help you to relax. What's it got in it and why is it so good? How long have you got? Well, we'll keep it short.

Let's start with the cocoa and shea butters, and that's a really good start. Velvety and moisturising, cocoa butter is what many of our products are built on as it is so amazing, lovely to use and great for the skin. Shea butter apart from being just gorgeous, is anti-inflamatory, emollient and a humectant, asides from acting as a limited natural sun block. Now line 'em up, because this body whip also contains an amazing blend of our precious cold pressed oils. Grapeseed, Jojoba, Avocado, Hemp and Rosehip Seed Oils.
Grapeseed Oil, light, delicate and moisturising; Jojoba, the closest oil to our own skin's natural sebum; Avocado, high in sterolins which are reputed to help heal sun damage and scars; Hemp oil, rich in Omega 3 and 6; and, holy among holies, Rosehip Seed Oil (Rosa mosqueta) used to help with a variety of skin conditions, dermatitis, acne eczema, mature skin, burnt skin, wrinkles. It's high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C and essential fatty acids. Many claim that it has excellent regenerating properties which can help slow the signs of ageing, maintaining a smoother, firmer and more youthful complexion! With those kind of credentials, you've got to love it!

But that's not quite enough. Just for good measure, to nourish the skin and to keep those oils in tip-top condition, we add Vitamin E, and let's not forget those essential oils; soothing, healing, calming and relaxing Lavender and very precious Chamomile.  We don't add water, fillers, emulsifiers or preservatives. Just let all those beautiful oils do their work.

Whipped Body Butter. Glorious!

Hearts and Rebatching

I feel a good bout of rebatching coming on - it's not actually as painful as I remembered and feels pretty instant. Why don't I do a bit more of it? I'm sure it's something worth exploring to see what I can come up with. Here's a pic of some rebatched lemon soap to which I've added some berry fragrance, swirled in some pink colour and extra grated soap and blobbed some heart and ball embeds in the top. And glitter? Why not?

Avocado Oil

Have you ever made a sweet milk shake or ice cream with avocados? Me neither, but apparently it is thus used in The Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia and Vietnam. That's according to Wikipedia and at first sounds a bit odd, but that smooth creaminess might just whizz up nicely into a nourishing treat.
Here at You're Gorgeous Handmade Soap, we like to get our hands on beautiful cold pressed Avocado Oil because we know how wonderful it is for the skin. I'm all for smoothing it on to the skin 'neat', as it were. We've heard that it can reduce age spots and heal sun damaged skin and there's a study which found it can increase the amount of collagen in the skin significantly. It is easily absorbed into deep tissue and is rich in vitamins A, D and E as well as potassium. All good.
When it came to designing a soap using this gorgeous oil, all I could think of however, was Mexican food and how well avocado lands on the palate accompanied by other flavours. Well, it seemed obvious to team it up with fresh and citrussy essential oil of coriander and lovely, lovely mouthwatering lime. We whizz up a puree of fresh leaves too, to give the colour a bit of a kick. This looks great when the soap is freshly made, but of course, all that green does fade over time. Oh, and I nearly forgot - poppy seeds!

50p Sale!! Handmade Soap Going Cheap!

Come and join in on our 50p Sale, coming soon to our Facebook page!
Soapmaking by hand doesn't always go to plan and we end up with all kinds of soap that doesn't turn out quite how we expected. When the outcome is a little wide of the mark, we put the soap aside to do something else with it. We've got quite a bit mounting up, so we have decided to have a 50p SALE!
Well I know that's cheap -very, very cheap - ten times that amount would still be a reasonable price to pay for some lovingly prepared, mild and creamy handmade soap, but we do want to clear the decks and let you get your hands on our lovely soap for a fabulous price.

Our sale will be one day only, so to make sure you don't miss out, go to our Facebook page, Like our page and use the drop down menu from the Like button to add us to your Newsfeed or Interests List.
http://www.facebook.com/soapglut

This is what we used to know as a Ten Bob Note. 10 bob = 50p in today's money (for you young whipper snappers out there).

It's All About Rose

Forgive me for being old fashioned. I do try to be modern sometimes, but the rose-tinted past is often a much more comforting place to be. There is nothing like an old fashioned rose to take you back a few decades, when everything smelled sweeter and photographs were fuzzy around the edges.
Here are some delightful ivory roses studded onto our equally delightful Bois du Rose and Geranium scented Shanghai Silk handmade soap.

Shanghai Silk Ivory Rose Handmade Soap

Keeping it Orange!

Oranges may not be the only fruit, but it's hard to imagine things without them. Personally, I would love to be able to reach out of my bedroom window of a morning and pluck myself a few for breakfast juice. But that isn't going to happen any time soon, so instead I reach out for a bar of our Fresh Orange Butter Soap for an early morning citrus hit in the shower. Essential oil of orange is so uplifting and refreshing and at the same time promotes relaxation, is anti-inflamatory, anti-septic and anti-depressant. Can you think of a more cheerful fruit?
Orange oil is also a remarkable and beautifully fragrant degreaser and right this very morning, I used it to remove gummy adhesive after peeling off some very sticky sticky tape. Worked a charm and smelled fantastic.