Welcome to our second and final soap of the 2018 holiday soaping season—Christmas Tree Soap! These clean white bars feature an abstract Christmas-tree-inspired swirl down the centre and a topping of dancing mica swirls. I had so much fun creating these bars, and the saponification anticipation was strong! I couldn’t wait to slice these bars and see how they’d turned out—and now I can’t wait to share them with you!
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 will happily admit that I motored through my Unicorn Bath Parfait very quickly—the luscious, silky bubbles and bath water was far too lovely to pass up if there was still some parfait in the jar! So, when Ivan from YellowBee dropped by with some very cool screw-top test tubes I knew what had to be done—more bath parfaits, with a fresh, summery twist 😄For some reason I’ve had Five Alive on the brain—I think I made a Five Alive soap back in 2011, and something got me to thinking that I should make more Five Alive things. For those of you who might not know, Five Alive is a blend of five citrus juices that usually comes in a blue can covered in dancing fruit—according to Wikipedia it’s widely available in Canada and the UK, but less so elsewhere. Anywho—the gist of it is “yay, citrus!” plus bath time delight. Let’s dive in!
With spring and sunshine finally here, I want to get my glow on. I’ve been loving looks featuring glowy highlights that get their punch from catching the light with a touch of glimmer, but not outright sparkle. A sort of optical effervescence, you could say—like champagne. A slight golden glow with dancing bubbles and a feeling of whimsy. And from that visual was born this absurdly simple-to-make Champagne Glow Highlighting Powder.
Every year from April 10–15 I observe what I call Titanic Week; the anniversary of the maiden voyage and sinking of the RMS Titanic. It’s not much of an event, but it is a thing I remember, and have every year since I was about 11. In honour of Titanic Week 2018 I thought I’d make and share some Vinolia-inspired bath bombs. Vinolia was the luxury soap given to the first class passengers on the Titanic, and was scented with lemon and rose. A few years ago I made a soap inspired by Vinolia (I even gave a bar to Robert Ballard!), and I adored the scent combination—sweet and bright, but not at all cloying. It’s fantastic and highly deserving of being turned into a batch of Vinolia Lemon Rose Bath Bombs.
I’ve always loved Robbie Burns day, so when January 25 fell on a Thursday this year I knew I wanted to make something Scottish inspired. I’ve been loving bath bombs lately, so that’s where I started. As far as themes go, haggis seemed… unappealing… as did Chicken Tikka masala. So, I settled on milky tea. A British friend of mine once told me my Scottish ancestry was apparent in the vast quantities of milk I put in my tea, which I thought was rather amusing. Scotland by no means owns milk tea (it’s delicious, of course lots of other places have figured out it’s wonderful!), but whenever I think of Scotland I’m reminded of the lovely little cafe I visited when I was last in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh Larder served the most wonderful oat scones with clotted cream and jam, and beautiful milky tea. I was there in September, and it was rather prone to rain and chills throughout my visit, and so warm milky tea always makes me think of Scotland. Hence, these lovely bath bombs.
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