Floating Leaves Autumn Bars

This project takes embedding to a different level. Normally, you'd use a clear soap base and place the embed inside. We're using an opaque base and using the bottom of the bar as the top, allowing our leaf to pop out! It's surprisingly simple and the end result is gorgeous!

What You'll Need:

Guest Leaves Mold
Basic Shapes Mold
Opaque Melt and Pour
Merlot Mica
Yellow Mica
Brilliant Blue Labcolor
Sensuous Sandalwood Fragrance Oil
Rubbing alcohol in spray bottle

Part 1. Leaves

1. Melt about 2 cups of chopped white soap base for the leaves and scent with 4ml Sensuous Sandalwood before adding color.
2. Split the soap into two cups; color one cup with Merlot Mica and the other with Yellow Mica.
3. Make the leaves by pouring both colors at the same time to create a swirl. Let them harden in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Part. 2. Water Background
1. Melt another 2 cups of white soap base and scent with 4ml Sensuous Sandalwood.
2. Color the entire thing with 1-2 drops of Brilliant Blue Labcolor. Add more color for a deeper blue.
3. Fill each cavity of the basic shapes mold halfway. Put in freezer for ten minutes. Leave some blue soap as leftover to be used in the embedding phase.

Part. 3. Embedding
1. Pop out the leaves and keep the blue soap in its mold. Keep in mind the leaves mold makes five bars and the basic shapes mold makes four, so you will have to repeat part 2 for one more bar.
2. Pour a thin layer of blue soap over the hardened ones (make sure to spray with rubbing alcohol first!) You may need to re-heat the leftover blue soap in your dish before pouring.
3. Spray the back of the leaf and place into the wet layer of blue soap in the basic shape mold. Let it harden in freezer for five minutes and you're done!

Happy Soapy Birthday!

There have been some great parties at Otion lately. We can fit up to 12 people upstairs for a birthday and just last week, we had two 12-person parties two days in a row! That's a lot of soap! It's been so much fun celebrating-- I see a lot of familiar faces from people who have come in and used the Soap Bar before, or who have done birthday parties with us in the past.

Look at all these smiley faces. I think they had fun :-)


The party loaf came out great, too. This is made of everyone's extra soap combined into one big mold that gets cut up and shared among the group at the end. Well done girls!

Soaping Up a Winter Wonderland

Silver Spruce is what walking through a cold, snow-covered White Spruce forest smells like – notes of White Spruce are mixed with supporting notes of Blue Spruce and Walnut Tree. The fragrance also has a sprinkling of Cranberries and Hollyberries blended perfectly with notes of Tree Bark and Sap. This complex blend comes off as a sophisticated forest fragrance without wilting at the end.

To create a fun embedded tree soap, use a basic rectangle mold to create a thin layer with clear base colored to your liking. Cut out a tree, place the layer face-down back into the mold with a wet layer of clear soap at the bottom. Make sure to spray with rubbing alcohol so everything sticks together, and back it with white base. Not sure how to free-hand a tree? Start by slicing a line down the center and cut triangles, smallest at top, halfway down and leave the bottom as a line for the trunk. The key to making it look original and tree-like is by adding smaller slices to the triangles to create additional branch shapes. Have fun!

Chocolate Lovers Beware!

I'd like to officially welcome you to fall with a delectable new fragrance oil. If you're a chocolate lover you'd better sit down before sampling this scent. It will whisk you away to another place and time. The top note is a nutty almond paired with powdered baking chocolate, creamy milk, powdered sugar and vanilla. It's love at first sniff! Behaves beautifully in cold process soapmaking and discolors to a dark brown, and it is now at Otion!

For Anne-Marie's amazing hot cocoa marshmallow soap recipe, click here!

Straight Into the Soap Bar Hall of Fame

We had a group of six girls under the age of ten come to Otion today to celebrate a birthday and they made some AMAZING bars! In record speed no less. Take a look at some of their first ever soap creations--I'm impressed! Great job girls, you made our job easy :-)

Birthday parties get to reserve the upstairs for a little extra room and privacy for food and presents if they wish. Plus, they get to make what we call a 'Party Loaf,' which is a conglomerate of everybody's extra soap in a loaf mold. It is chopped up and shared among the group at the end. For more information, click here.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone! Kat will be away next week to work at a stone-sculpting workshop. Maybe she'll share pictures when she gets back!