Soapy Sunday

I've been up since 6 am this morning and it's now 20 to 6 in the evening.  I've been soaping all day, 12 hours! But what a work day. I had mixed up a batch for this morning of tea tree oil soap as I have a customer waiting for it.  Then I brewed up some ginger chai tea from my favourite steeped tea lady Julie.  She had sent me a link to a girl who makes tea soaps and so got me on the journey to make some.  

Brewed the tea and went through my fragrances and found a honeydew ginger that I thought would go nicely with the theme.  I just received an order of micas from TKB Trading and one of the colours I got was China Jade. Beautiful mica with gold shimmer and true Jade green! 

Love the colour.  I've heard so many soapers rant about their micas and pigments and now I know why! 

I did this soap in three layers here's the first.  When I mixed the brewed tea with the lye it turned this beautiful caramel colour.  After I poured it I sprinkled freshly ground chai tea leaves on the top.  Second layer: 

Poured the China Jade coloured soap onto the first tea layer. Third layer:

I am anxiously waiting for my piping set from Nuture's Soap and Royalty Soaps as I've been so vamped up about piping.  Today I took the rest of the China Jade and put it in a ziplock and should have waited because soap was still soft but whatever piped it on.  Fun I can't wait to get the set ! After piping I sprinkled on more full tea leaves and iridescent glitter am  happy with the result.

I can't wait  to cut it tomorrow ! 

 My next soap in the Steeped Tea Series today was Tonia's Pumpkin Matcha.  I mixed my oils and added two teaspoons of matcha to them. I'm using a new recipe that I just love olive, coconut, palm, sweet almond oil, avocado. I've been collecting rain water too this summer and it makes a softer soap then distilled.  I've got more outside and will freeze it over the winter. But now back to soap. 

I had enough Pumkin fragrance for this batch. 

You can see how green the matcha is in the bowl. 

I used the left over ginger chai tea and rainwater and when I added it to the matcha oils it turned the perfect pumpkin colour! I was worried up to this point because I didn't want the soap to be green.  Perfect ! I had two old pumpkin soaps left over from last year and thought I'm going to cut them up and throw them in like confetti. They were still good soaps but now are rejuvenated.  Soap never goes bad really and these still had the pumpkin scent in them.  

FUN! 

Poured it into the mold and sprinkled on top some  pumpkin spice and a tad of allspice to finish it up! I can't wait to cut this one tomorrow.  It really smells like pumpkin pie! 

Lastly.  I just sold a full batch of tea tree soap and had an order for two bars so I made that again too.  This was done in 14 hours and was perfect when I took it out of the mold.  The batch makes 6 soaps. Two are gone already leaving me four but that's good for now. I love this bar it's so fresh and pure. Same recipe as above. If you are interested in getting the formulas from me I'd be happy to indulge that info but really if you are wanting to make soap there's secrets that we like to keep.  It experimental for each of us.  Research, watch YouTube, have fun with it. Thanks for continuing to stop by my soap kitchen come back  soon!!!