Soap and Spring

Above. One drugged and dopey cat.
Took him to the vet for a checkup. He had to have bloods done.
As a standard, I drug him so he isn’t so… er… feisty.
He behaved well overall, low rumbling growls but no hissing or fanging people so that was good!

I’ve been crook all week. Caught a cold. Seemed mild. Took covid test, turned out negative. Was feeling fine so did my soap workshop Sunday.
That night my voice packed it in. Nothing above a whisper for the next couple of days. I can croak now. (in the voice sense not the kicking the bucket sense)

Tomorrow I can finally spend the day slothing about resting doing nothing. Probably half the reason I am not getting better. If this keeps up I might have to go see the doc!

Tasmania has had some pretty horrible flooding. I didn’t get down to the river for a photo – our walking track is well under water right now.
Our last efforts on the chook run haven’t worked well! The water is pooling back on the roof and bowing the laserlite.
Bummer. That will need attending to next week. We didn’t raise the end of course but for some reason, whatever we did… we did it wrong.

Last week I got several soap orders in. So exciting.
This company was fun! Not only did I get my orders but also a heap of random bits and bobs

The tube came with some tools to make interesting patterned soaps

I’ve tried a couple… this one worked reasonably well. (Second batch didn’t go as great)

The main reason I ordered from them was to get this cutter so I could cut my slab mould soap with less hassle and more precision.

I also got this:

I was puzzled about the baking paper…
But it turns out you do use it with the tube mould.
But inside the cool case?

A mad hodge-podge of things! (mmmm that reminds me. I didn’t eat all the minties… back in a minute)

So, Soap workshop. I thought I only had 4, but a last minute student brought me up to my max and we were away.
The above was a demo soap for students to cut.
New fragrance – Black Rose and Oud. (I had to look up what on earth Oud was… apparently a much sought after fragrance taken from a special tree.)

I went for the dramatic colours.

We had a bunch of nice people, even a fellow joined in this time!
Anne chose lemongrass as her fragrance. We used the saffron powder to add some colour… and Anne had fun doing gold swirls to finish things off
Amazing after a day or two how much that saffron colour develops

Krystal was our late addition to the class. Turns out she has an allergy to coconut oil. I changed up the recipe a bit and thank-fully it seems to have turned out well
She went for the black raspberry and vanilla fragrance… and wanted pink for her highlight colour. I assured her the madder root powder would turn pink

I will admit to being worried… but I should know better.
In a few days the colour did indeed develop to a lovely speckled pink (with sprinkles)

Chris is a metal worker and apparently has a ton of bentonite clay at home! So he chose to keep things fairly simple, mixed some clay in, added poppy seeds for a scrub and a lovely citrus and sage fragrance.

Julie chose baby powder as her fragrance and had some fun choosing pretty moulds to go with her lovely fresh green highlighted soaps (Couple of dinosaurs for the grandkiddies)

Jan had participated in a soap workshop with Sharon and myself quite a while back and wanted a refresher.
Since she has made a few batches, I asked if she wanted to try the Taiwan Swirl.
That way the other group members could see another design technique.
It turned out so beautifully! (Lemongrass)

And last but not least, my show off demo soap.

The colours turned out great despite a glitch when my two purples turned out almost the same!! A bit of a quick adjustment with the white and we were good to go
I used peppermint, but if I had cherry, this would be the colour combo for that!
We’ve called it the black forest cake soap

I dropped most of them off today for pickup at basket weaving… although I didn’t stay.
I did however manage to do two batches of soap.
Another Christmas one – hope to cut tomorrow, and one so I could use my soap dough flowers!!

I was a bit nervous doing this!
I thought one of my new fragrances, French Pear would be perfect for this… its lovely and elegant.
I felt like I was all thumbs trying to put these together.
I used a bit of the new mix as ‘glue’
They looked good but a bit unfinished, so out with the gold mica for a swirl on each!

Getting them out of the mould will be nerve wracking!!!
Still… I am pleased so far with the results.

Hope everyone has had a great week and has an excellent weekend upcoming!
Cheers!