French Lavender

Hi everyone, it's been quite a while since I last posted, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas:)  We had a lovely Christmas spent with family and a brand new puppy addition to our household.

This is French Lavender and it's fragranced with french lavender and rich, sensual patchouli essential oils to help calm and relax.  Made from Olive, Coconut and Rice Bran oils and Shea Butter.
Pure Handmade Soaps

Moroccan Sunset

I think I must have had romance on my mind when I made this one!  Wishful thinking maybe lol.

Soap Swap all the way from France!

As a lot of you lovely ladies would know, Amy from Great Cakes Soapworks organised a soap swap from soap makers all around the world.   I was very lucky to be paired with
Séverine from Les Folies Du Savon. who lives in France, how cool is that?

Well my parcel has just arrived so I've quickly taken a pic to show you my goodies.  I've very excited to try them, because both are made from Donkey Milk, wow! that is certainly a first for me, the cake shaped one has organic banana and chocolate and vanilla essential oil and sounds just lovely and the lovely big block has Macadamia Nut oil, Shea Butter and Honey added, so sounds great for my little hands:)

Thank you so much Amy for your fantastic job in organising everything and a big thanks to Séverine for swapping with me and for my goodies.  OK, I'm off to wash my hands with french soap Oh là là!

Tribal Dance

Well I promised something a bit more colourful this time, this is it!  I'm reading a series of Australian books by Peter Watt at the moment about outback Australia.   He talks about how badly our native people were treated and how the Mounted Police almost wiped out their entire race, they certainly tried their best to do so; it's just terrible how badly they were treated! 

Anyhow these books and the spirit of our Aboriginal people, gave me the inspiration for this soap.  I wanted the colours of the outback so I've used Australian clays and I've fragranced it with essential oils of Lemon Tea Tree and Lemon Eucalyptus to continue the Australian theme and added a touch of spice, not Australian but just because.  I thought Tribal Dance suited, I hope you like it:)

White Rose

Thought I'd go with something a bit plainer this time because I've got something pretty colourful coming next post..... White Rose is made with lots of Mango and Shea Butters and yes, essential oils of rose geranium.  I've changed the colour on top from pink to this apricot colour, it looks really pretty.

Nature's Garden

 A new batch of Nature's Garden's ready, I've added Mango and Shea Butters to enrich it, coloured it with oxides and micas and fragranced it with essential oils of course:)    Another faux funnel pour, I'm really loving this method, no two soaps look the same, but they all look so pretty. 

Colours, colours, what colours will I use next? so many to choose from and I sometimes get confused as to what colours go with what, but so far I've been happy with how they've turned out and colours in soaps seem to be very forgiving, most blend together nicely.   I seem to get more excited about using colours today than I did back 7 years ago when I first started.  But that's got to be a good thing, right?   well that's what I tell myself anyhow, I'm just not too sure if my hubby agrees with me lol.

Changes

I've been having a play with my soaps again, it's as good as changing the furniture around:)  They say change is as good as a holiday, well I don't know about that one..... I really think I'd rather the holiday thank you very much, but a change it has to be.  Vanilla and Spice now is a striking pink and brown number, the brown is coloured with Vanilla essential oil and I've added cocoa powder to get it nice and dark.  I've added heaps of Shea and Cocoa Butters to it, so it's going to feel, oh so good on the skin.  I love the feeling Cocoa Butter gives to soap. 

this is what it used to look like this:

and then before that, this one was coloured with red and green clays. 

Talk about totally different, but I think the new pink and brown is my favourite so far, although I do still like the middle one as well and knowing me, I could still very well go back to that down the track.

This is the new look AloeVera Soap, coloured with beautiful Mica and a sprinkling of green clay. 

and here's the old one, coloured with green clay, which looks a bit faded and greyish looking, it didn't look quite as bad in real life.   I'm definitely liking the Mica one better, the green mica looks so much nicer I think, but that's just my opinion:)