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!
I don’t remember when I first fell in love with the lavender/spruce scent combo, but it’s been a long standing favourite of mine for a while now. The woodsy, calming sweetness of lavender blends beautifully with the bright, fresh, camphoraceous notes of spruce and it’s just downright lovely. And, thanks to both of these essential oils being relatively inexpensive, they lend themselves quite well to soap making! This Lavender Spruce Soap is the second recipe in my lavender spruce series; it features lovely purple and green swirls in a creamy white base, and is wonderfully fun to make.
I had so much fun making this pretty soap. Coloured with powdered indigo and some pretty purple and green micas, I wanted to channel Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights—and the winter solstice seemed like a great time for it. I had a lot of fun thinking through how to create a soap that would channel such an incredible natural wonder, and while I don’t think I quite nailed it, I do think these pretty bars are a fitting tribute.
