(no subject)
Among other things I’ve been enjoying about being in a house now and not an apartment is getting to try out some DIY stuff I’ve been curious about for a while now, starting with melt and pour soapmaking, and adjacent.
My first try was a kit for snowflake soap from Brambleberry, but I got frustrated with filling in the details for the top and forgot to add the colorant for the main part of the soap. Whoops. Then I used some white soap base and red colorant to make swirled candy cane soap but didn’t let it cool enough. Results weren’t what I attempted for either, but they’re still cute and smell nice, so I consider it a reasonably successful first attempt. (the big blue one is what was left of the little bit of blue for the snowflake soap mixed with clear to make it a bit less intense)
Then I thought I’d be clever and do “gold, frankincense and myrrh” soap but, in my infinite genius, forgot to take into account that myrrh often smells like cleaning products. Not a bad smell, I just didn’t think it through.
Next and last for the soaps, snowflakes and embedded snow flakes. like the swirls the first day, I know why the embeds didn’t turn out quite right (should have put a bit of the clear blue mixture in the mold before putting the embed in) but they still turned out good for my first try. The scent for these is called “fresh snow” but it apparently smells different to everyone who tries it, but no one thinks it smells crisp and outdoors-y, which is what you’d think from the name. (My take is a bag of mixed hard candy.)
The two non-soap things, though, I’m pretty much completely satisfied with.
Solid sugar scrub bars from a Brambleberry recipe that made me and my kitchen smell like homemade pecan pie (I woke up the next day to the cat sniffing my face)
And solid lotion bars, also from a Brambleberry recipe, but altered to be more seasonal with cinnamon cocoa fragrance and ground cinnamon.
Those made a lot more than I intended to make and I thought i was going to run out of small molds and freezer space before I ran out of the mixture for a bit.
Now to do something with all this before I try out anything else. (I don’t know why the pictures came out wonky with some horizontal and some vertical but i got tired of fighting it.)
My first try was a kit for snowflake soap from Brambleberry, but I got frustrated with filling in the details for the top and forgot to add the colorant for the main part of the soap. Whoops. Then I used some white soap base and red colorant to make swirled candy cane soap but didn’t let it cool enough. Results weren’t what I attempted for either, but they’re still cute and smell nice, so I consider it a reasonably successful first attempt. (the big blue one is what was left of the little bit of blue for the snowflake soap mixed with clear to make it a bit less intense)
Then I thought I’d be clever and do “gold, frankincense and myrrh” soap but, in my infinite genius, forgot to take into account that myrrh often smells like cleaning products. Not a bad smell, I just didn’t think it through.
Next and last for the soaps, snowflakes and embedded snow flakes. like the swirls the first day, I know why the embeds didn’t turn out quite right (should have put a bit of the clear blue mixture in the mold before putting the embed in) but they still turned out good for my first try. The scent for these is called “fresh snow” but it apparently smells different to everyone who tries it, but no one thinks it smells crisp and outdoors-y, which is what you’d think from the name. (My take is a bag of mixed hard candy.)
The two non-soap things, though, I’m pretty much completely satisfied with.
Solid sugar scrub bars from a Brambleberry recipe that made me and my kitchen smell like homemade pecan pie (I woke up the next day to the cat sniffing my face)
And solid lotion bars, also from a Brambleberry recipe, but altered to be more seasonal with cinnamon cocoa fragrance and ground cinnamon.
Those made a lot more than I intended to make and I thought i was going to run out of small molds and freezer space before I ran out of the mixture for a bit.
Now to do something with all this before I try out anything else. (I don’t know why the pictures came out wonky with some horizontal and some vertical but i got tired of fighting it.)