Bubble gum

Heute abend überfiel mich der Seifenvirus. Ich wollte einige Öle und Fette aufbrauchen, die kurz vorm Ablaufen des MHD waren (Na gut, außerdem braucht der Sekt für Silvester Platz im Kühlschrank).

Es wurde eine improvisierte Abwandlung der "Little Miss Sunshine" Seife. Ich hoffe, dass die Farbe dieses Mal erhalten bleibt, der Seifenleim war so wunderbar kaugummirosa (Acid Red und ganz viel Titandioxid) und passte genau zu meinen Gummihandschuhen.

Wenn die Seife gut wird, stelle ich noch weitere Bilder und das Rezept hier ein.

On a whim, I made a new soap tonight. I wanted to use some of the oils rapidly nearing their best before date (Also, New Years Eve coming up, I needed space in the fridge for all the sparkling wine, mwahaha).

It's an improvised variation on the "Little Miss Sunshine" soap. Hopefully, it won't absorb all the pigments this time around, the soap base was such a nice bubblegummey pink (Acid Red and loads of titanium dioxide) that perfectly matched my rubber gloves.

If the soap turns out well, I'll give you more photos and the recipe later.

Dividor-Ersatz

Meine Kollegin und Mitsiederin C. hatte den genialen Einfall, einen zusammensteckbaren, rechteckigen Backrahmen als Dividor-Ersatz zu zweckentfremden. Rahmen und Backpapier aufs Blech, Seifenleim rein, los geht das Marmorieren. Wir haben mal wieder das bewährte Rezept fürs Reine Gewissen verwendet. Ohne C. hätte ich wahrscheinlich nicht die Geduld gehabt, die einzelnen Schichten aushärten zu lassen. Vodka hilft - natürlich nur der Seife beim Aushärten, nicht den Siedern beim Warten. Ich befürchte, dass wir es mit den Pigmenten leicht übertrieben haben, die Seife könnte stark ausbluten. Ratet mal, wer inzwischen auch in einen solchen Backrahmen investiert hat?

My colleague and co-soapster C. had the brilliant idea to use one of those adjustable square cake setting rings (isn't a square ring something of a paradox?!) to practice our marbling skills. Just put baking paper and the setting ring on a baking tray, in goes the soap base and hey presto, marbling paradise. Once again we used the Reines Gewissen recipe. Without C. by my side, I probably wouldn't have waited long enough for the individual layers to set. A little vodka goes a long way toward accelerating the process though - vodka for the soap, that is, not for the soapsters! We probably overdid it a little with the pigments, I haven't tried the soap yet but I suspect it might bleed a little green and blue. Guess who invested in such a square cake setting ring...?

Blogcandy bei Alisavon

ALiSavon hat am Wochenende ein Blogcandy erstellt, bei dem man eine wunderschön marmorierte Seife gewinnen kann:

Foto: ALiSavon

Der Clou: Man muss sie bei einer Gegenüberstellung mit ihren Dividorgeschwistern identifizieren (möglichst ohne in den Kommentaren nach Hinweisen zu spinxen). Erst habe ich in der Marmorierung Schwäne gesehen, aber jetzt erinnert mich die Seife an den Tanz von Matisse, auch wenn dessen Hintergrund blau und nicht gelb ist...

This weekend, ALiSavon posted a blog candy, giving away this gorgeous soap. The fun thing is: to participate, you have to spot the soap pictured above, Where-is-Waldo-style, in a picture with all its little brothers and sisters (Ideally without sneaking a peek at the comments section). Initially, I interpreted the white swirls as swans. On second thought, the soap reminds me of the Dance by Matisse, although the background in the painting is blue.

Welcome to the neighbourhood!

Eine Freundin schickte mir folgenden Link zum Klatschblog Coco Perez. Offenbar hat sich Kate Moss mit dem Seifenvirus angesteckt. Ob es bald Bilder ihrer Seifen zu sehen gibt?

A friend of mine sent me this link to gossip blog Coco Perez. Apparently, Kate Moss has been infected with the soapmaking virus. I wonder if we'll be seeing any soaps of hers soon.

Die Seifen auf den Bildern hat meine Freundin C. hergestellt. Die liegende Lady war ein Rezept aus Claudia Kaspers Seifenbuch namens "Reines Gewissen", beduftet mit Lavendel. Die Venus war unbeduftet und mit Haferflocken versetzt.

In the pictures, you can see two of the soaps my friend C. made. The lady lying down was made with a recipe from Claudia Kasper's book called "Reines Gewissen"/Clear Conscience and is scented with lavender. The Venus is unscented and mixed with oat flakes.

Seifenblogpipes

Haven't had much time to post let alone to make any new soaps lately. Looking at other people's soap blogs is my methadone.

I had wanted to try Yahoo Pipes for a while, a web service which allows you to aggregate all kinds of web content, so I made a soap blog pipe a couple of months ago. INITIALLY, it worked very well and I had some eighty-x blogs feeding into the pipe. Perhaps you have seen the soapblogpipe widget in the right hand bar of my blog?

HOWEVER, either those eightysomething blogs became too much for the pipe or something else went wrong, but after a while it stopped functioning properly (in the Yahoo Pipes interface, it worked well enough, but as soon as I tried to view it in a feedreader or via bloglines, it didn't work anymore). Couldn't figure out why, so for the moment, I have split it into three separate pipes which function individually. I tried to aggregate those three pipes back into the original pipe, but it doesn't work properly; it only shows the posts from one of the three pipes. If anyone has any idea why that is, I'd be thrilled to know. (I'll retry feeding all blogs into a single pipe again once I have more time on my hands)

So for now, there are three little soapblogpipe widgets to the right.

Below: editing view of the (not-functioning) blog pipe which should aggregate the three new pipes

The Yahoo interface view of one of the three new soap blog pipes

Goldfinger

Finally I get to stamp those precious golden-veined soaps...

Fremdseifen

Not only do I have tons of pictures of my own soaps waiting to be shown, I also have a lot of Fremdseifen eager to make their appearance on this blog. So here are some soaps made by Peppermintpatty from the Naturseifenforum:


An experimental soap scented with banana and Nivea (body lotion) perfume oil. Peppermintpatty was not so keen on the mix, but I like it. Am using it at the moment.

Mango Lassi (gone already, sniff)

A shaving soap made with almond oil

Süße Ziege, a sweet-smelling goat milk soap

That's it for today. There are more Fremdseifen to come though.

Dudu Osun

My colleague C. gave me this Dudu Osun soap a while ago. It "bleeds" dark brown suds. I always think that I must have had really dirty hands when I'm using Dudu Osun. It has a lovely fresh scent though, I wish I could identify the individual fragrances and mix that scent. Anybody any ideas?

Blog candy bei El Sapone

I'm not a big blog candy enthusiast, but I love Sannyas' floral-inspired earrings: Click. Have to find out how much they weigh though (I'm afraid of buddhalike earlobes, though I dearly love chandelier earrings).

Foto via El Sapones Blog

Good things come to those who wait...

...and I'll have to wait a little longer to cut and stamp this scrumptious new batch of the "Große Ereignisse" soap (it's five days old and still very soft). Doesn't it look absolutely gorgeous?! The gold vein is much stronger in this batch. I hope that there is a little swirl inside, in the upper part of the soap.

Belle of Belfast

This soap was named Belle of Belfast because - like the belle in the folk song Tell Me Ma - she's as nice as apple pie:

I reckoned that if I put the apple perfume oil into the yellow part of the soap base and the vanilla perfume oil into the green part, it would make one perfect yellow-and-green apple-pie-like soap. However, vanilla doesn't only turn light colours into brown, it also trumps green dye (at least in the quantities I used). The green parts you can see in the first picture turned rapidly brown after exposure to air. Which would have happened to any green apple. So actually this soap is like a little vanitas.

What a sad, scary thought! Let's quickly skip to the soap again and perhaps listen to the song once more. It was a very nice soap, made mostly of the usual suspects (palm, coconut, canola, olive oil as well as a little bit of cocoa butter and macadamia oil). I only had a small test bottle of apple perfume oil (10ml), so the scent was drowned by the vanilla, which I used liberally. I cut most of the pieces with the wave-cutter and I still love the feeling of wavy soaps when I use them, but then you don't get to stamp those soaps. Well, you can't have your apple pie and eat it...

Soap stamps

At some point last winter, I received one of the Wandering Soap Stamp Parcels from a soapmakers' forum. It was packed with polymer clay stamps in all shapes and sizes, which other soapmakers had cast from their own, self-made stamps. It was really hard to limit myself to only about a hundred stamps and not to cast a copy from each and every one of them.

Unfortunately, I had to redo some of them because I spoiled the first batch. As I was putting the stamps in the oven, I must have subconsciously thought of cake and not of polymer clay: I turned the temperature up to 175°C - eewww, what a NASTY smell! Couldn't get it out of the kitchen for several days. That's what my lovely little stamps looked like after the cake treatment:

Große Ereignisse werfen ihre Schatten voraus

Happy New Year everyone! I know I have probably lost my last two or three readers because I haven't updated regularly, but this year will be better. Come summer, I will have more time on my hands.

What's new in Soapaholic's world?

I'm offically giving up on posting chronologically because I'm still so much behind (Plus, my extensive readership could probably not care less which soap was made when as long as I include nice pictures of the soaps along with the posts). Also, I couldn't wait to show you these little gems I made last weekend with my friend C. (I borrowed her wooden mould. Someday we will both splurge on machine-washeable plastic block moulds and our life will become so much easier).



The recipe was taken from Claudia Kasper's book (note to self: need new tag "book review"), it's called "Reines Gewissen"/Clear Conscience. We wanted to make a thick gold vein/swirl, but it did not turn out as richly golden as I hoped it would, even though I put approx. 40g of gold mica into a bit of the soap base. 40g may sound little, but the mica is nearly weightless, so it's a LOT of powder. Perhaps I'll try a gold vein with just the mica and a little oil next time. I stamped it with the remaining gold mica, using the little Tchibo cookie stamps they always sell around Christmas. At the moment, the soap is sitting on my curing shelf, waiting for the grand day to come... Now I only need to order new ingredients and make at least another block of this soap. Wait and see!

What else is new? I've tried some essential oils.

(+)

* the soap base doesn't heat up too much
* the soap base doesn't thicken too quickly
* the scent pretty much stays the same and doesn't change in the process of saponification

(-)

* Oh no! You have to be creative and mix your own fragrance?!
* Ouch! Essential oils really are expensive!
* Therefore, my range of possible fragrances is rather limited at the moment.