Honey, honey!!

It's been three months since I moved back to India and I have loved every bit of it. What a wonderful feeling to be back home!! I love that everything is so familiar. Casual chit-chat with total strangers, vegetable shopping at the farmer's markets, valuable lessons of honesty learnt from a ripe old granny selling vegetables at the market (I will never forget her), hardworking people who come door to door selling wares...anything from oils to steel utensils. :)

So, a few weeks back I opened the door to a person selling honey freshly taken out of the hive. Though I already had an unopened jar of honey I got from the supermarket, that didn't stop me from buying another kilo from the kind person at the door. He had just taken it out a couple of hours back. He filtered it right before my eyes and told me to store the honey at room temperature. I could see the beeswax in the big container and I asked if he could sell it to me. Didn't have much luck there, as it was already sold. But he promised to get me some the next time around. 

Time for a honey soap!! My generous cousin shared some beeswax with me, so it was time to get bubbly.  Made with coconut, palm and olive oils, beeswax and of course wild honey: 

I just love the honey color and lovely honey fragrance

Gelled almost the instant it went in the mold.
Just about avoided a volcano situation.
Thank God for fans!!!

Beehive pattern.
Some of the air bubbles were already popped.
I wonder who did it!! ;)

Beeswax makes some really hard soap.
Added  just about 3%.

Next post will be about how soap can climb out of the mold. LOL!!

Going for lavender and wheatgrass soap update

I love soap with natural colors. Granted, I can't get all colors with natural stuff and not to forget how fickle they are to play around with, but still, there is something that I just so totally love about them. This time around the quest was for a lavender colored soap. 

I read so much about alkanet and have been wanting to try it out for a really long time. The nudge to actually look for a supplier and order it, came from the very lovely Claudia from alegriamediterranea soaps. :)
Thank you Claudia, I'm going for lavender this time because of you!!

Outcome when alkanet powder was added directly at trace:

Immediately after pouring soap into the mold. A light cement grey

The soap gelled and darkened

Final outcome. 

Not happy with this lavender color. I remember reading that the color lightens while curing, but I still have to see that happen. Vegetable oils used: Coconut, palm and olive. High percentage of coconut oil. 

I will need to go for that lavender again. Just made another batch. This time the alkanet was infused in castor oil for a week. Fingers crossed! 

A few weeks back I made a soap with my cousin with Tea tree and peppermint EO and used wheatgrass powder to color it green. Here is how it changed over time. 

Taken right after it was cut

Taken right after it was cut

A month later

Slight fading

There has been a slight bit of fading, but I usually see that happen with all natural colors. Jennifer I hope you try out wheatgrass in soap. :)

Here comes the artist

I finally tried my hand at making flowers in soap and here's the outcome:

Turmeric soap meets cocoa flowers

Here's how they came out of the mold:

My art skills surprised me ;)

I love this mold. It is actually used to sort and store jewellery. It make great guest size soaps. And yes, I still see a soap mold in every container. :)

Scented with Orange EO and Lavender FO and colored with turmeric and cocoa powder. A vegetable soap with coconut, palm, sunflower and wheatgerm oils.

Couldn't escape the soda ash even with a cling wrap cover

More soaps in my next post...adios!!