First of all I want to say Happy Mother's day to all you awesome mom's out there! I hope everyone had a really special day. :-D
Ok, so the purpose of this post is to show that I am NOT perfect by any means and in my soap-making mishaps do happen. I usually try to hide them because I am a "perfectionist" and mistakes are UBER embarrassing to me... I was tempted to hide this one from the world but I figured I can grow from this as a soap-maker and as a person. I'm accepting the fact that sometimes things that happen are out of my control. When things go wrong, we can learn from them and try to make sure it doesn't happen again!
So what went wrong you ask?!? Well, I'll tell you. When I started my soap-making back in November of 2009, I used the little liquid dyes from Hobby Lobby for coloring my soaps. This worked great! Then I started making soaps with two colors (i.e. some of my molds had flowers on the top so I'd make the flower one color and the body another). This worked great! Until I looked in my cabinet where I keep my finished soaps and realized the colors were meshing together and making a new color! And it wasn't a pretty color, it was usually brown or some other gross color. YUCK!
So after doing some research, I came across other ways to color my soap by using oxides and micas! These are non-bleeding pigments so they work perfectly for two-toned soaps! No more brown blah color! So I used some oxides in my soap and they turned out great! Then I decided to try some micas to color my soaps. They leave the soap a semi-opaque color of the mica you used with a really cool shimmery look! In the picture below, I used Brambleberry's super blue mica and lavender mica to color my clear soap then cut them into strips. Then I poured the clear soap and set the strips, let that dry, then made a light purple color for the final bottom layer. I cut them and here is how they looked:
They aren't the prettiest soaps ever, but I thought they looked ok, right?!? Oh, I forgot to mention the glitter! I love that little glittery shine. :) This was my first time using glitter and I might become a glittery soap fanatic now. hehe ;-) Anyway, I cut the soaps and covered them in saran wrap and let them sit on my counter. About 4 days later, I looked at them and they looked like this:
OH MY GOSH!!!! I couldn't believe my soaps turned into this! They weren't too pretty to begin with but this way they look DISEASED!!! I felt like this project was a failure. WAAAAH. I contacted Anne-Marie from Brambleberry (who is the nicest and most helpful person EVER!) and asked why this happened. She told me that when soaps with mica are placed in direct sunlight, they will fade like this (unless you use a UV inhibitor, which is like sunscreen for your soap!). The STRANGE part was that these soaps were nowhere NEAR the sun! I guess the lights in my kitchen must be very strong and mimic the sun. Oh well, not really much I can do about it now.
SO... I've decided to offer these "OOPSY" soaps at half price (ONLY $2!!) if anyone is interested in purchasing them. There is nothing wrong with them, they are just faded but they do smell great (celestial waters fragrance)! Here is the fragrance description: "This is not an oceanic scent but more of a sweet mountain spring scent. Imagine a hike on the banks of a babbling brook through the Appalachians, with the sweet clean scent of hemlock, magnolia, and honeysuckle lingering in the air."
If you would like to purchase one or more of these soaps, Please send payment ($2 per bar with $2 shipping/packaging charges ($3 shipping for two or more soaps)) to my paypal account: cass_jupiter@yahoo.com
Oh, and there was another oopsy that happened... I made my second batch of bath fizzies and apparently the mixture was too moist. They immediately started flattening out on the bottom so I re-molded them and took off the top half of the bubble and left the bottom half on so it wouldn't flatten out again. Then the top half proceeded to "grow" so they turned out looking like acorns. (the bottom in the picture was actually the top which mushroomed out)
So because these turned out "acorn shaped," I will also offer these at half price too! They are rosemary-mint scented with a slight green color to them because I added some dye to them. :) If you would like to purchase these, they are available for $1.75 each and the shipping/packaging charges will be $2 for one or $3 for two or more. You can mix and match these with the "imperfect" soaps above if you'd like! You would send payment to my paypal: cass_jupiter@yahoo.com
Ingredients for the bath fizzies: Sodium bicarbonate, citric acid, sweet almond oil, water, rosemary mint fragrance, and yellow and blue dye
Also: All soaps on my original etsy are now 50% off until May 13 when the listings expire! Only $2 per soap! Check them out!
You can check out my milehighbodycare etsy page for 25% off all large single color soaps!
Have a great night everyone. :-D
