Simply Soap...

Who knew that soap making could be so much FUN and such a creative outlet?

Below are a few samples of what this shepherdess has been up to:

The lighter colored bars on the bottom left of the above photo are orange/oatmeal.  The darker bars in the front two rows are unscented, the reddish bars and hearts are cinnamon/clove.

I've been practicing with ways of wrapping my soaps for sale.

I like this 'plain' style with brown paper and a raffia tie.  Of course I'll have to make up labels with my shop name (what do you think of "Bluff Country Treasures"???) and ingredient lists.  All of my soaps will be all natural and animal friendly.

This is a sample of my Orange/oatmeal bar, wrapped and ready to sell.

It smells heavenly!  Just a light hint of orange and this soap is a skin conditioning bar with ground oatmeal (that I grind with a cup and pestle!), for a gentle exfoliant.  I love it!

I had all sorts of fun playing with some silicone molds for shaping my bars!

This recipe is for Coffee/Mocha hardworking scrub bar.

It contains coarse ground coffee (gourmet!) grounds that scrub even the greasiest, dirtiest hands and even removes oders.  I've added skin conditioning oils to soften the skin after scrubbing it clean.  The chocolate, coffee and vanilla, all natural essential oils give it a mouthwatering scent of Mocha!  I swear ~ I'm going to have to put a "do not eat!" label on this soap because it smells SO delicious!

The small, rectangular bars (about 2 oz) look like fudge.

I think the little sample sized Teddy bears are adorable ~ they're just under an ounce each.

Above, I have a teddy bear sitting on a "log"  that is actually a cylinder that I cut from a mold that I made from an empty toilet paper tube!

And of course I LOVE the little sheep!

She's the first one that I made and I sprayed the mold with "Pam/olive oil" but I think it would be better if I don't spray the mold next time.  I'll find out in a few hours because I'm going to MAKE SOAP this afternoon...

This photo of a full sized bar shows the coffee grounds that give this soap it's scrubbing power:

I can either sell the bars with the uneven textured top, or trim it off for a more 'traditional' looking bar of soap.  I may just offer them both ways.  You get a little extra with the rough edge, plus I like the primitive look of it.

I'm going to have to take time off from soap making long enough to work on a web site/page that promotes my new enterprise!  I was originally going to call my business "Bluff Country Bounty" ~ thinking that the products will be the bounty of the area that I live in which is known as the Bluff Country.  But, I'm not sure that people will really know what I mean by 'Bounty'.  Someone looking for homemade soaps or wool or yarn, wouldn't automatically click on a site called BC Bounty.  But I think "Bluff Country Treasures" more accurately describes what I'll be offering and people might be more likely to check it out.

What do  you think?

I would truly appreciate your opinions!

In fact, if you have any other name suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them!

Gonna go make soap now...

;-)

DREAM says...

Apparently, Dream isn't going to say anything today!  I've been fighting with Blogger throughout this entire post.  It won't let me download photos the way that I normally do.  Now, I can't get it to let me download a picture of Dream at ALL.  

:-(

Sorry Dreamer!