Welcome to our first Christmas 2018 soap—Sugar Plum Christmas Soap! Sugar plum will be one of our ongoing themes this season, and I’m really excited about all the different projects I’ve devised for it. We’re kicking off the theme with these stunning purple, swirly, sparkly bars—I had so much fun making these, and I haven’t been so excited to slice a soap in quite a while (well, until I made our other Christmas 2018 soap)!
I had so much fun creating these sunny, speckled bars. The idea was to create a swirl using texture—as opposed to colour—to differentiate the swirl from the rest of the soap. When I set out to make these bars it had been positively ages since I’d made soap. Who else gets sucked into those strange inertia loops where you haven’t done something in a long time, so you keep not doing it, and then BAM… it’s been months? That’s me and… so many things. Anyhow—as I brought the lye water and fats to trace and starting working with the batter I wondered why it had been so long. Soap making is far too fun to fall victim to the do-nothing inertia loop!
When I got my awesome little TKB Trading Lipstick Mold one of the first things I wanted to investigate was the compatibility of the lipstick recipes in my book with the mold. The compatibility was resoundingly… not. Efforts to use the lipstick bases from my book resulted in lipsticks that looked like they’d been torn in half. They wouldn’t come out of the mold in one piece (or even three) to save they lives—I had to dig them out with the handle of a spoon and many, many cotton buds. Boo. Oh well, at least we know. Anyhow, with my learnings from working with TKB’s lovely moldable lipstick base I set off to create my own. As you can probably guess I’ve got a lot of cosmetic type ingredients so I’m thinking I’ll create at least two different bases; this one will be a more basic one, featuring easier-to-purchase ingredients.
This soft, squeezable cleansing balm is rich and creamy, melts into a stunning cleanser once you start working with it, and leaves your skin feeling refreshed and just a touch minty. I love it first thing in the morning to help me hit the ground running!
This idea was born out of perusing one of those in-flight catalogues whilst I was undoubtedly quite bored. You know the type—you can order Arwen Evenstar’s pendant, a mini-putt for the corner of your office, and a brand of makeup you’ve never heard of that is apparently huge in Europe. One of the items in this catalogue was some sort of makeup eraser stick; a compact twist-up tube of some substance that would help you tidy up cosmetic snafus—a cat eye that’s headed for the hills, or some mascara that liked the looks of your eyebrows. I liked the idea, and the ingredients gave it away as a simple cleansing balm, so this is my DIY take on it.
This silky smooth Eucalyptus Mint Cleansing Oil is really quite lovely; freshly herbal and minty, with a touch of a cooling tingle that definitely helps perk one up first thing in the morning. I tried a new solubilizer and I really like it—the cleansing oil rinses off beautifully and isn’t too drying. It comes together quickly and easily, and I’ve included a big list of substitutions and alternatives at the end of the recipe so you can easily adjust it and make it work with whatever you have on hand.
