New SoapyLove Rainbow Mold

I love this new mold because there are so many possibilities! Use a dropper to put different colored soap in each band. I found that a white background brings out the color the best, and champagne fragrance oil is the perfect bubbly scent!

Luxurious Oatmeal Massage Bars

I love how fast and easy this project is, but you'd never guess by the look of the bars! Yesterday, we had two ladies walk in to try their hand at our Soap Bar for the first time, and 2 pounds of soap quickly turned into six. I try to warn people-- soap making is addicting!

Here's what was used to make these gorgeous oatmeal massage bars:

Oval Massage Mold
Goats Milk Melt-and-Pour Base
Cappuccino Mica
Oatmeal, Milk and Honey fragrance
Chopped oatmeal

Simply melt and mix! Add the chopped oatmeal and stir as the soap cools slightly. This will help suspend the oats. Use 4ml of fragrance per pound of melt-and-pour soap, and for a little color, use up to 1/4 teaspoon of mica per mug of melted soap. To swirl, pour uncolored soap and colored soap into the mold at the same time. The amount of oatmeal is a personal preference. I always go by "less is more."

That's it! Simple, homemade and rustic looking-- the perfect gift easy enough for beginners to make.

Congratulations Graduates!

It's a big day today for Western Washington University in Bellingham! There will be three graduation ceremonies today and hundreds of celebrations. What better way to celebrate than with soap, right? Well, Anne-Marie put together a great tutorial on making graduation soap party favors here!

Three cheers to a huge accomplishment, and to keeping it clean ;-)

Melt-and-Pour Loaves and Popular Scents

If you ever have a large event and need a creative gift idea, melt-and-pour soap loaves are the way to go. We're putting together an order for a ladies golf tournament and on occasion, we'll have customers come in and make a loaf to cut for wedding or baby shower presents. It's really easy and a lot of fun! I like to melt clear soap and split it into different cups for multiple colors, and then swirl in a little bit of white base for an extra pop. You can also chop up hardened pieces of soap and drop them in for a neat geometric look. Our 12" loaf mold and crinkle cutters work great for this project!


Some of our most popular fragrances include:

1. Oatmeal, Milk and Honey
2. Vanilla Select
3. Sensuous Sandalwood
4. Lavender
5. Lilac
6. White Tea and Ginger
7. Relaxing
8. Plumeria
9. Island Coconut
10. Yuzu Cybilla

Packaging is super easy, too! Simply wrap each bar in plastic wrap, cut off the extra from the back of the bar and do a couple of passes with a heat gun to shrink the wrap to the soap. Add a personalized sticker and you're done!

Appliance Art Revival!

Check out what our little "City of Subdued Excitement" was up to yesterday:

West Holly Street in front of Otion was closed at 6pm last night for an unusual race, and I managed to snap a few shots of the action. There were four participants in the appliance race, and four was plenty. The thought of ten people hurtling down the hill in random appliances at the same time just seems nuts, but entertaining of course.


Here's a fellow who crashed during his trial run. I think he was riding a water heater? The funny part was that he was going at a snail's pace and had the whole road to navigate down, but aimed right for a cone and flipped over. He immediately threw off his helmet and started dashing to the finish line by foot with a great applause.

Here comes Big Bertha the refrigerator! She picked up some pretty good speed and I'm sure the driver was thankful for the hay bales at the bottom of the hill.

Very creative washing machine design with bicycle parts.

This guy had guts! He went really fast and kept swerving towards the crowd, but had pretty good control. It looks like he's sitting in a dryer that's connected to two bicycles.

After trial runs came the big race! Big Bertha took the lead and the dryer came up pretty fast behind but wiped out toward the end. (There's Otion in the background).


It was a good time had by all!

Father's Day-- Are You Ready?

Welcome to June, everyone! Another month closer to our Soapmaking Weekend Intensive in August, which is very exciting, though I'm impatiently waiting for the sun to come out. In fact, we have a severe weather warning today in Bellingham and I thought the store was going to float away earlier this afternoon.

I did a little perusing through Etsy for some Father's Day ideas and came across a wonderful page by SoapDreams out of Medford, Oregon. I'm totally inspired to try out some beer soap now! Check out some of their products that are perfect for Dad this year:

Guinness soap, which is part of the Beer Bar Sampler.


The Mister Man Bar with Leather and Bay Rum fragrance oils


The Pirate Soap Barrrr with Spice and Leather scent

Great products, SoapDreams! Way better than getting Dad socks again :-)