New soaps

Here they are everyone, my new creations! I'm currently selling them for £2/€2,50/US$3  a bar and this is including postage - a bargain! If you'd like to order some please contact me via the 'contact me' button on the blog. Thank you!

'Yellow Submarine' - a banana scented soap with a waved texture.

'An apple a day' - a mint and apple scented marble soap, perfect for guys!

'Seville' - an orange scented fiesta soap that smells just like a Seville orange! 

Craftathon

I've been very busy lately with all of my crafting projects. I think of this as a blessing as it manages to distract me from the more negative things that have been going on lately. You'd be surprised at how calming it can be to simply sit down and write all of your ideas for future projects out for an hour or two!

The most recent thing I've been up to is baking - something that I'm particularly close to because I just have a natural given talent for it. I think that everybody is born with a talent whether they like it or not and sometimes it just takes people a bit longer to figure out what theirs is.

I used my new stand mixer over the weekend to bake up two cakes for a birthday get together. The first was a chocolate chip cookie dough cake (I used the recipe from one of my favourite baking bloggers and it was a roaring success! How could a 3 layer devils food cake, vanilla cheesecake and cookie dough cake NOT be a success! The second cake was a much more simple two layered pineapple upside down cake.

Besides the baking I've been busy making notes and plans for new soap creations. I've decided on an apple and mint creation and a citrus themed one. I'm definitely curious to try out some marbling techniques this time around! I also purchased the most adorable baby soap mould which I'm planning on using for a in the future babyshower that is still to be planned. I think the idea of receiving a newborn babyshaped, baby scented soap would be lovely.

I've put a lot of knitting projects on hold because I simply haven't had the time to really sit down and get to it properly. I currently have about 3 different projects on the go: a cabled sweater, a baby kimono jacket and a super cute pink baby dress. Let's not even mention the fact that I had a grand idea to knit hats for a charity project in Africa! I fear I'll never get around to finding the time to do that.

I have a lot of fabric printing to do too! Mostly baby related, but I'm also planning a surprise thank you gift for a friend which I think they'll really like. 

Stay tuned to find out more :)

What kind of natural given talents do you all have? And who do you think you inherited them from?

New crafts...a certain way to make me happy!

I made soap! I had been curious to try it for a while...so I got some melt and pour soap, some colourants and some scents and away I went. It was slightly expensive because obviously these kind of things are heavy and therefore more costly to ship...and for some reason the VAT on them was killer as well. I think I'll stick to good old eBay for my melt and pour bars next time. 

This is strawberry cheesecake soap - and believe me, it really DOES smell like one! I melted down the chunks of melt and pour soap in the microwave in 30 second blasts until it was completely liquid. After that I halved the mix. In the first one I added just a few drops colouring and in the second one I added considerably more so it would be a much darker red.

I poured the lighter red/almost pink half into a soap mould (but you can use any ordinary baking tin if its a silicone one...probably metal too, but for some reason the idea of liquid and metal makes my hair stand on end!) and then waited a few minutes until there was a skin on both batches of soap. With the darker one I turned it out of the plastic tub it was in and started to roughly chop it up with a knife into cubes. I then added these into the batch of lighter soap, pushing them down gently so they sank into the liquid. 

You have to remember at this point to spray the soap with rubbing alcohol. I didn't have this in a spray form but only a gel form so I used some vodka in a spray bottle which worked just fine as well. Due to the alcohol content of vodka it's pretty much almost the same as vodka. Yep, think about that when you next drink your glass of vodka - you're basically drinking what they use to wash their hands in hospitals! 

A sprinkle of strawberry seeds on top of the soap and all that was left to do was wait a few hours for it to set. I guess it took about 4 hours or so before mine was set and it turned out with no problems at all. Adding those cubes of colour gave a nice effect and once it was chopped up into blocks the effect was really fantastic! For a first attempt I was really, really proud of this and I can't wait to make some more soap.