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!

Cranberry Fig Solid Sugar Scrub

We have a new Gift Givers class coming up next month at Otion to prepare you for giving handmade gifts for the holidays. We will make custom lip balm, bath fizzies and sugar/salt scrubs. I'm playing around with a fun solid sugar scrub idea using my favorite scent this season: Cranberry Fig! Anne-Marie has a great post about making sugar cubes on Soap Queen based on Erin Pikor's single use body scrubs.

They are simple to make and super luxurious!

Ingredients:

• 1 part shea butter melt-and-pour soap base, or base of preference

• Up to 1 part carrier oil (jojoba, sweet almond, avocado, etc.)

• 3 parts white sugar

• 4 ml of fragrance per pound of mixture
  

• I used the Celtic and Fall Leaves single cavity flexible molds, which are also great for lotion bars, soap and bath fizzies!

• Color is optional. Merlot mica was used in this example.

Instructions:

1. Melt soap base and stir in carrier oil, fragrance and color.
2. Pour sugar into melted soap and oil while stirring. If it hardens quickly, simply re-heat in microwave.
3. Pour or spoon into molds. Place molded cubes in freezer for ten minutes, de-mold and enjoy!