This beautifully marbled soap is a wonderful example of things not turning out quite how you expected, but being wonderful anyways. My working title for these bars was “Indigo Swirl”, but this batch of soap had different ambitions. The particular level of trace in the batter meant the pour-swirl I had planned ended up turning into wispy, marbley seams of blue rather than dancing swirls, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with how everything turned out.
Our Soothing series continues with this lovely Soothing Cleansing Balm. Up until now all of our soothing projects have included a water phase, and many of our awesome soothing ingredients (cucumber distillate, chamomile hydrosol, urea, etc.) live in that phase. This project is 100% anhydrous—this means many of the ingredients we’ve used before are off the table, but several news ones are now on the table!
Today’s soap is in honour of Robbie Burns’ day, but it also doubles up nicely as a Valentine’s Day soap with its rosy scent and dusty pink layers. I had a lot of fun making this soap, even though it turned into a bit of a learning experience (a.k.a. things didn’t go precisely as planned!). Though it’s not quite what I had in my imagination when I started soaping I love how the rustic angled layers turned out in the end, and I hope you will as well!
This striking Sea Buckthorn and Charcoal Cleansing Balm stars two potent ingredients to create a perfect-for-Halloween cleansing balm. The inspiration for this came from wanting to create something for Halloween—in past years I’ve done lots of pumpkin spice things around this time of year, but this year I wanted to do some Halloween projects! Orange and black came to mind immediately, which quickly led to sea buckthorn (orange!) and activated charcoal (black!).
Today’s project is inspired by a face mask I spotted on Instagram that rings it at about $100/100mL. It definitely had some good ingredients in it, but nothing that should make it that sort of wince-worthy expensive. My version blends two different clays with some herbs, honey, and some other good stuff for an easy to make face mask that you can personalize every single time you use it. And it’s definitely not $100 😄
I had so much fun crafting up these creamy, sweet-smelling, sparkly bars of tea latte inspired soap. The batter is silky smooth and has great play time, so the whole mixing-pouring-swirling experience is calm and easy and fun (no pudding panic here, ha!). A dusty brown base is accented with milky white swirls reminiscent of the swirls on top of a latte, with the brown hue coming from the essential oil blend. The tops of the bars are sculpted up and decorated with sprinkles of tea leaves and a bit of something sparkly for a little something special. I think these bars of Cream of Earl Grey Soap are pretty darn lovely!
Make it Up: The Essential Guide to DIY Makeup and Skin Care is now available at booksellers all over the world!