Busy again.

I've had small wholesale order, so today I'm busy making bath bon bons. Mmmmm the brown sugar ones make me feel so hungry...and I'm on a diet too. Good job they're not edible, otherwise I'd have eaten half of them! LOL

I'm a bit annoyed coz someone on Ebay has nicked one of my pics and my text description, (inlcuding fonts and colours), to sell one of their own bath bombs. The font and colours are all connected with my website and shop identity. I use the same font and colours on all my labels, invoices, business card etc. It's very lazy of the seller to copy my post. I mean, how difficult is it to describe a bath bomb?! Anyway, I've reported them to Ebay, so hopefully they will take the listings down and put their own stuff up.

I spend a lot of time doing my pics and creating templates for my listings, I don't want anybody just copying my stuff. Even though it's in the public domain I own it and they could have at least asked permission. From now on any new pics will be watermarked and I guess I'll just have to keep checking listings to see if anyone is copying my decriptions.

Anyway, back to making the bath bon bons.....

Organic Soap

I have been playing around with *organic soap base and essential oils. Some people on a soaping mail list I am on have said that they had some problems with it, mainly it's odour and the fact that it is soft and can feel slimy. I presume this is because, it contains only vegetable oils, salts and water softeners. There are no detergents/surfactants per se. I suppose it may also be more likely to be attracting moisture to it's surface, if it contains a high proportion of glycerine, which is a humectant, a substance that retains moisture.

Anyway, I have used it today, and done some experimentation adding shea butter, mango butter and aloe vera to the organic base. It seems to be holding up well and the butters and gel dispersed nicely in the melted base. I can't say that I found the smell of it offensive. It smelled like soap to me!

Before I cut up the soap base to use, I noticed some opaque spots running throughout it. The soap baseitself is a transparent light honey colour. People have mentioned about these white spots on the soap mailing list. They don't appear to be in the finished soaps but I will keep an eye on them over the next day or two.

It has been good to make something a little different. I usually make soaps, with bold and bright designs but with the organic base I have gone for a more subtle effect. No point using an organic base if you are going to add bright colours and manmade fragrances to it. Instead I have used natural butters and gels, botanicals and organic essential oils. I even made a special soap just for me. It contains shea butter and Rose Maroc Absolute, at over £6 per ml, I won't be making this to sell, unless anyone fancies paying about £15 for one 100g bar of soap? .....Nah I thought not! LOL

*100% of the oils used are certified organic by the Soil Association. It contains natural glycerine from the organic oils.