A Day in the Life of a Soapmaker!

I have been busy making soap to finalize my inventory for Christmas.  Funny thing about soap is that if you are making cold process soap, you have to allow for 4-6 weeks of curing time. 
So, that can be challenging when you are making soap for a specific holiday and not exactly sure what everybody is going to want or like.

Well, the deadline has hit.  Pretty much any soap I make after today will not be ready for Christmas. So, hopefully I have a good enough inventory to meets the needs of my friends, family and customers.

You can make soap and have it ready within just a few days to 2 weeks - that is called hot process soap. 
However, I make cold process and it needs curing time. I will be putting some posts up over the next week or so that will explain more about curing times, lye solutions, colorants and scents. I hope that will give you a little more information about the hows and whys of soap.

But for today, here is a look at a typical soaping day! 

Blending the lye/water solution with the oils.  I use a stick blender to help bring it to trace faster.

 









I added a white pigment to brighten up this batch.  This is going to be Peppermint Frost!

Pouring off a little soap to add some bright red colorant to make pretty red peppermint-like swirls!

Mixing up the soap and red pigment.  Looking good!

Pouring in the plain white soap and alternating it with the red to make candy cane swirls.

Swirling that color in!

Ready to let it set up.

This has been a fun, Christmasy soap to make.  Smells wonderful and the colors are quite vibrant!  Hope you like it too!

Focus and Breathe!

I was back in the kitchen today making up an eight-pound batch of Coconut Lime Verbena scented soap.

This is a wonderful scent that is not too coconutty  - and just the right amount of tropical.

It is easy to get a little "too" comfortable with soap making - as was the case today.  
I had everything all set out and organized and was ready to go.
Oils measured and melted.
Lye/Water measured, mixed and cooling
Colorants all pre-mixed and ready to go.
Fragrance oil all set and ready to be combined.
 
All good!  Mixed the oils and water/lye to a light trace and started to.....

daydream.....what was I thinking!  Obviously, I wasn't thinking!


I poured off enough soap into the two different colors I was going to use, poured off 1/2 the remaining soap into the two molds, swirled in my beautiful white colorant - perfect swirls.  (Spent the morning watching videos on how to get the perfect swirl.) Poured in the remaining soap and was ready to add my green swirl......and then it happened......

OH MY GOODNESS - Houston, we have a problem!

I completely forgot to add the fragrance oil.  So much for Coconut Lime Verbena - might look like it, but sure won't smell like it.


Get your head in the game girl!
 
I had about 10 seconds to figure out what I was going to do!

Focus and Breathe!

I poured all the soap from the molds back into the pot!  There goes my beautiful white swirls!  I gave it a quick blend with my stick blender and in went the fragrance oils.  Sure enough - those oils like to accelerate trace - time to get that soap back in my molds. 

In it went, the beautiful green went on top, did some pretty swirls and by the time I had the last swirl squiggled, that soap was setting up!

Lesson learned - one must pay attention when one is creating soap!

Here's a little sneak peek what the soap will look like - minus the white swirl of course! LOL!



I think you will really enjoy this soap.  Very pretty - even minus my beautiful white swirls -  and really smells great!

A Very Supportive Family

I am blessed, I will say it over and over again - I am so very blessed.  My family is so supportive of all my endeavors.  Although, I know that they are aware that I am creating soap to not only nurture my creative side, but to also help support our family.  How fortunate am I that I can work from home, be smack dab in the middle of my family's comings and goings and yet help contribute financially.  God has opened this door so wide and I am grateful to Him first and foremost.  He knows our burdens and needs, and walks with us every day.
Secondly, I am so grateful to my family who puts up with me taking over our kitchen for hours at a time, listening to me go on and on about this formula or that scent, puts up with me researching at the computer looking for information on gel phase or SAP values!

Yes, I am blessed and I hope they know how truly grateful I am.  From the bottom of my heart - I thank them for sharing this journey with me.

So, today, once again, I took over the kitchen. I am ramping up my inventory to be ready for the Christmas season.  This was all quite unintentional - this soap journey.  I just decided last August to really start playing with different soap recipes, essential oils and fragrance oils ~~ and then it happened. Soon my inventory began to grow ....and grow...and pretty soon I was knee deep in bars and bars of soap.  So, I thought, why not - let's sell a few and see what happens - and Farmhouse Soaps was born. 

Today's soap - Oatmeal Milk and Honey.  A beautiful subtle fragrance of oatmeal, almond, and vanilla.  This lovely light brown soap has a swirl of white to be pleasing to the eye as well as the scent.  The is a blend of saponified olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oil.  It includes ground oatmeal and fragrance oil.

I think you will like this one very much.  Smooth, subtle, warm and comforting.

Silly Me ~ Easy Peasy!

Today I stretched myself a wee bit and moved up to making a double batch of soap - 8 Lbs worth - all at one time!

You might not think that's much if a big deal, but when making soap - working with caustic materials - hoping your batch doesn't go crazy - it is a big deal (at least for me)!

Since I started making soap earlier this year, I have been making 4 Lb. batches.  My wooden mold (which I love!) will hold 60 ounces of liquid.  Just the perfect size.  But when you want to really begin turning out more bars per soap-making session - a 4 Lb batch doesn't yield a lot of soap - just 12 bars!

My daughter Lea was kind enough to make me a second wooden mold - a fraction of the cost and absolutely perfectly made!  So I have two wooden molds that can easily handle this volume of soap.

I love small batch soap making.  You can monitor your soap, see how essential and fragrance oils will affect the base oils and you can really help it become a beautiful bar of soap.  Now that I have made many of the formulas in the Signature Soap Collection - I know how all the components will marry.  They will mix beautifully and not seize or rice up.

So, today, I checked my ingredients, double checked my lye calculator and ventured into this new arena.

WOW - what have I been waiting for.  Easy peasy!  Eight lbs. of beautiful lavender essential oil soap. 

Lavender Essential Oil Soap

One clean up - one time getting everything ready - one beautiful batch of soap.

It's a whole new world from here on out.

A Great First Day!

Yesterday was the day to finally launch Farmhouse Soaps.  Thanks to everyone for the warm and encouraging notes and good wishes.  This has been a fun endeavor.  I love to make make soap, enjoy coming up with new ideas for soap, and am finally getting my soap making supplies organized so I am not constantly taking over our kitchen.

I would like to thank Evelyn Cooley at Wild Thyme Herb Garden for the opportunity to carry my soap in her shop!  I hope you will stop in some time, her shop is amazing; she is the leading local authority on herbs, teas, salves and organic gardening.  She is a dedicated shop owner that hosts classes on making medicinal salves, learning more about teas and of course herbs.  

 
Her shop is located on the west end of Main Street in Downtown Genoa.  This Thursday, November 7^th is Genoa’s Candlelight Walk.  All the shops will be open in the evening with wonderful trinkets to share!  Be sure to stop in her shop and say hello!

Last night I was making more Pure Castile soap.  This is a soap made from 100% Olive Oil.  There are no aromatics or colorants in this soap.  Pure Castile is a classic soap that comes from the Mediterranean area, where the abundance of olive oil prompted its development in the Middle Ages.  This is a soap that has long-lasting creamy bubbles that I like to think of as more “lotiony” than typical hand crafted soap.  Olive Oil soap may be helpful for those with chapped or dry skin, cracked skin, psoriasis or eczema.  As this is a nurturing, moisturizing soap – it may help such skin conditions.

I also was in the mood for something Christmasy!  There are a lot of “Christmas scents” on the market and none of them were too appealing to me this year (Although Lea is begging me to make Peppermint - might have to try that one).  The Seasonal Soaps I do have right now are Winter Pine and Cranberry Harvest.  Two lovely scented soaps that are nice for the holidays and beyond.

However, being in the Christmas spirit, I did decide to make an Orange Pomander soap.  I used Twinings Winter Spice Tea for the liquid base. Winter Spice is a comforting chamomile tea spiced with cinnamon, cardamom and cloves.  I love to use a tea base as it lends a beautiful natural color and a mild undertone of scent.  This soap is a saponified blend of olive oil, coconut oil, and palm oil.  It also contains clove, orange, cinnamon and rosemary essential oils.  And to top it all off, a light sprinkle of ground clove.  I am excited to see how this soap turns out.  The house smelled amazing last night!

Welcome to the Grand Opening of Farmhouse Soaps!

I would like to take this opportunity 

to welcome you to the 

grand opening of Farmhouse Soaps

This has been such an amazing journey and I am so excited to be able to share these wonderful, hand-crafted soaps with family, friends and the community.
I hope you will take a moment to browse my site. 

Under our Signature Soaps you will find the line of hand crafted soaps that I will be carrying on a permanent basis.  These are soaps that are tried and true and very popular.  There is a wonderful assortment of scents, colors and textures to choose from.  I will be adding to the collection in the future as I get more soap requests - or as I come up with new and exciting soap creations!

Under our Seasonal Soaps you will find soaps that are fitting for the season.  Right now we have Cranberry Harvest and Winter Pine.  These are two beautifully scented soaps that will delight your senses with the true essence of the holiday season.  Available soon will be Christmastime scents as well as wintertime scents.

Coming soon!  Soap making classes will be coming to Farmhouse Soaps in January, 2014!  Be sure to check back often for dates and times as these will be small, intimate classes and are sure to fill up fast!

And finally, I hope you will take a moment to meet the person behind Farmhouse Soaps!  I am happy to share a little bit about myself, my background and why I love to create soap!

If you need to contact me or wish to order soap, please feel free to send me an email at buyfarmhousesoaps@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for visiting!  Please stop back often as I will be continuing to post on this blog and share the Farmhouse Soaps journey!

All the best ~