It has been awhile!!

Hey y'all! *waves* I hope this finds everyone doing good. Sorry I haven't updated in awhile, with school, adventures with my youngins, and working on some other projects things have been swamped for me. I don't get a chance to update as often as I would like to.  :(
Anyhow, for those that have still stuck around, I have a bit of an update for you. :)
The hubster and I decided to create a new business, Betwixt & Between Soapery that will be launching online this month. Yeeehaaaaaaw! We are excited for this new journey!! We are still doing Southern Aroma Creations with Mrs. Daisy and her Mister, but we have put it on hold while we work out rebranding and such. We do have plans to relaunch Southern Aroma Creations sometime in 2016, but a date hasn't been set yet. We will let you know when we have a relaunch date.

Aside from my soapmaking, I have been doing a fair bit of writing when I have downtime from school. I have one series that I have been working on for about a year or so that I hope to publish within the next couple of years, and a couple of new series that I am fleshing out a bit. I love writing almost as much as I love making soap! :)

Another update:
Our 3rd son will be graduating this year (only 1 more to go after that!!), and land sakes we sure are proud of him! When he was diagnosed years ago they told us that he would never be able to communicate well, and likely wouldn't excel in academics. They told us quite a few things that he wouldn't be able to achieve that he has. We refused to allow them to put limitations on our son like that. We were determined, and bless him, he has blown away so many obstacles that we are just pleased as punch!!  He is also the same son that was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes at 8 years old, and with a lot of work we were able to hit his A1C goals as well. So much is possible with the love and support of ones family, even at the most darkest of times. We are so proud of all of our boys and their determination to overcome hurdles that are sent their way. We are truly blessed. :)

Ok y'all, I just wanted to pop in and say hello, and give some updates but I got a ton of stuff to do this evening. I hope everyone is doing great! Stay safe!!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Where has the time gone?!?!

*waves* Happy Tuesday y'all!! Gosh, it has been so long since I have posted, well since July that is...but still a long time! Anyhow, life has been an interesting journey for me. Just to give you a glimpse into my personal life a bit. My two oldest youngins are out on their own now. My oldest has been out on his own for a little over a year. My second oldest youngin graduated last June and moved to Florida. My younger two are growing like weeds. My oldest of the younger two is a junior this year, and my youngest a sophomore. I just can't get over how much all my babies have grown, and each of them have grown into amazing young men. :) 

Aside from this, I am still in school until 2016 meanwhile the hubsters is going to be graduating in 12 weeks from now. We are still teamed up with Miss Daisy and her Mister making awesome products, but are in the process of revamping a lot of stuff including the website. It is a work in progress. We are working towards setting up at another event for Memorial Day weekend also which is exciting!! 

The hubster and I are working on some projects together also. One of our projects has to do with the inside of the shop. We are going to be insulating the shop, putting in some cabinets, rearranging things and hopefully getting someone to come out and wire it for electricity. That is our ultimate goal since southern summers are so humid and hot, and the winters...well a good portion of the winter is almost like fall lol, but there are times when we get down in the 20's and below. Occasionally we get below zero also. I don't like to be held up from my soaping adventures due to the weather so it's just gonna have to be done! *wink*

Have I still been making soap during this time? Why yes...yes I have!!! So here are a few pictures of the soap I have made during my absence from my blog.

Ok y'all, I have to run get some things done this morning. I am hoping to have some new soap to post over the next few days! I hope everyone is having a great week so far, and check back soon!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Exciting new changes!!

*waves* Hey y'all!! I hope everyone is doing great out there!! I just wanted to pop in for a moment and let y'all know that we have finally launched! As mentioned in my previous post, My hubster and I teamed up with Miss Daisy and her Mister to create Southern Aroma Creations. We have a couple events under our belts, and have launched our store!! Ohhh and we have lotions now!!!

You can find all of our stuff at:
http://www.southaroma.com 

You can also find us now on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/southaromac

We also have a brand spanking new blog that we have put up on our website:
http://www.southaroma.com/blog.html 


I will try to update this blog a little more frequently y'all! Please stop by and visit us! Hope everyone is having a fantabulous summer!!

Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Discoloration and New Stuff Everywhere!

*waves* Hey y'all!! Hope this finds everyone doing well!
Yet again it has been a busy past few months for us here in Soapyland. Between the illnesses, school, and wild weather it has been cray cray here since I last posted. Anyhow, if you remember from some of my previous posts, Miss Daisy and I got together over the fall to make soaps, and other bath and body products. Well, Miss Daisy and I worked so well together that we decided to join forces to take over the world. *snickers* Actually, we decided to go into business together, and drag our significant others along with us on this adventure. They may or may not have screamed a time or two on the way. *laughs maniacally*
My hubsters is doing the tech stuffs. Miss Daisy's Mr. is doing parrafin and palm candles and getting his hands wet cranking out a batch of soap here and there when time permits. Both the guys are cutting soap for us because let's be honest, y'all know I can't cut straight to save my life!!  Aside from this, Miss Daisy and I have branched out from soaps, scrubs and lip balms, to shaving creams and whipped soaps as well as implementing lotion items and body butters among other items. Miss Daisy has also begun adding her crocheted items, and I am hoping to add beeswax and grubby candles to everything. We plan to launch this Spring, and are both excited! So there is some of the new stuff!

The other new stuff I want to mention is discoloration that happens in soap. There are several significant factors to the discoloration of soap. In my experience it can be anything to the liquid and additives that you add to your soap, to the fragrance and on occasion the actual color that you use. Any fragrance that contains vanilla will discolor, unless you use a vanilla stabilizer. I generally don't use vanilla stabilizer, but will sometimes use a white colorant like TD to lighten. Most of the time I use it to my advantage and use what it will discolor to as part of the theme. On occasion though, the discoloration can be unexpected, especially if we are testing new fragrances. The discolor can be a beige, chocolate brown, yellow, or even an orange. Some of the fragrances that Miss Daisy and I really like discolors our soap. Over the past few weeks we have been making a ton of soap to get ready for our Spring launch and here are some of the ones that we are watching for discoloration. Some discolored immediately, others will discolor over cure time. 

Waikiki Shores by Miss Daisy after pour

Miss Daisy colored the base of the soap batter, but this fragrance contains a lot of vanilla so we may see it darken just a bit.

Strawberries and Cream by Miss Daisy after pour

Strawberries and Cream after cut. It was still soft when we cut it, and Miss Daisy didn't expect it to discolor the way it did. I still think it looks amazing!

Doodlebug made by Me after pour

The tan parts of Doodlebug may get a bit darker, but I was pleased with this overall.

Of course we cannot forget the milk soaps that we made also! This turned out well I think, but discolored of course, not just because of the addition of milk, but the fragrance as well. We added the milk part later on in the process. We are watching these batches to see how much they discolor over cure time since we did these a bit differently than we normally do. :)

Almond, Oatmeal, Milk and Honey. The milk that I used for this one was unsweetened almond milk, and I topped with rolled oats.

I was very pleasantly surprised that my white swirls came through so well!

Miss Daisy's Cherry Oatmeal Milk and Honey Soap. She used goats-milk for this batch, and topped with oats. It looks like a dessert doesn't it?!?!

Miss Daisy was so nervous about this one also, but it came out so well!! We will likely see this one discolor a bit more due to the goats milk and the fragrance oil that was used.

We have made other batches as well but for this post I really wanted to focus on the ones that we are expecting to discolor. When cure time is up we will take a few more pictures to make comparisons with.
Ok y'all, I have got to skedaddle and get some more things done! Please check back again soon for more of our soaping adventures!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Friday Fun Part 1!

*waves* Hey y'all!! Soooo...I was going to do a blog post on the carrot soap adventure that I had, but decided to forgo that and jump to the fun filled weekend that I had at Miss Daisy's house. :) Her and I have been brainstorming, and we have been getting a bit crafty. So we planned a weekend of soap making adventures and thought we would add some additional things as well. So our Friday went a bit like this....
We decided we were going to do hot process batches, and got our three crock pots plugged in and ready to go. We began measuring our oils and then I realized that I left the Castor oil sitting on the table at home!! So while Miss Daisy continued to measure the oils that we were going to use, I scrambled looking for an adequate substitute for the Castor oil. I went on Google, and then began hitting every soap group that I am a member of on Facebook but unfortunately as I feared there was no substitute because Castor oil is an oil unto itself. So I decided on two different oils to try instead, and ran them through the SoapCalc. Yes, we were flying by the seats of our pants on this one!
We got everything measured out and off we went! We got two of our crockpots going and decided to do a different recipe for the third one. This recipe included the addition of Blue Moon Harvest Moon Pumpkin Ale. Because we were working on the third recipe, we were unable to get pictures of the first two crockpot cooks. But we did manage to get the beer soap pictures. ;-)

I added the Beer Lye mixture, and Miss Daisy stick blended away!

Miss Daisy brings the soap mixture to trace.

It didn't take as long for the beer soap to get to this phase as it did the other soaps we made.

Look at her cook! I was amazed at how quickly this cook went.

We only let it cook for a few more minutes after this. Once the soap cooled down we added a pumpkin spice fragrance to it. We had to work fast getting it in the mold, but as we were molding it, we put pumpkin embeds in.

The top looks a little messy because that sucker hardened up so quickly. We did manage to lighten up the top though.

Here are the pictures of the other two batches that were made during the same time. 

Here is the Pumpkin Spice Beer Soap. I just want to mention that whenever you are doing embeds in a soap, it is best that you have enough embeds to fit the mold so that when you cut you get an embed in each. I am embarrassed to say that I had one pumpkin fall out that I had to put back in. *giggles*

This is our Autumn Mums. The only difficulty we had with this one really was the purple not being as vibrant. It was slightly muted after drying. It is still a gorgeous bar. The smiley face was definitely a bonus.

This is our Falling Leaves soap run. Thank goodness Miss Daisy's Mister was there to offer an extra set of hands over the weekend! On this batch we decided we would do a sort of criss cross thing with embeds on top. It hardened so quickly that I am not 100% sure that I like the edges, but it does look rustic. The three of us got to the point to where we had to glop it in the mold, slam it down, and hope for the best. We unmolded and wallah!

Well these are all of the pictures that I have on hand of this run of soap. I do want to mention that we were able to unmold these three batches and cut the loaves within less than a few hours. I was pleasantly surprised. :)
Ok folks, it's getting late here and I still have a few things to do (labels) before I can hit the hay for tonight! Please check back for the next part of this adventure.
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Soaping with Miss Daisy!!

*waves* Hey y'all! I hope everyone is doing great! 
So this weekend I headed to the mountains to see some of my favorite people, and get some soaping time in with a dear friend of mine, "Miss Daisy". Now Miss Daisy and I met eachother a few years ago at the start of our annual family camping trip. We met through Cyndy, of Cristal Dragon Candle Co. (I have all sorts of crafty friends and family members y'all!) Well... to make a long story short, awhile back Miss Daisy got the handmade crafting bug so to speak, and started making these wonderful sugar scrubs to sell! Goodness sakes you want to talk about yummy-ness on your skin! Woo-weee! Auh-mazing!  Anyhow, we decided we were going to do a batch of hot process soap together over the weekend. So, here are some pictures of that adventure.

So Miss Daisy used the stick blender for the first time, and stick blended her very first batch of soap to trace. Well I say a batch of soap but it was a double batch to be exact. We had just enough room in that crock pot for the soap.

So this is the batch after cooking for awhile. We would check on it and stir it periodically until it reached complete stage.

Now you might be asking whats with all the oils on top...well...after it hit gel stage, we superfatted it with some additional goodies, and Miss Daisy began to stir.  

Miss Daisy stirred the superfats into the gelled soap until they were completely incorporated and we then cooked it for about 30 more minutes after that.

 Now, fast forward because since this was a double batch, we were busy and just didn't think about getting any pictures of the colors we chose. So we got it in both the molds, sprinkled some glitter on top and wrapped the tops of the soap. The next day we unmolded and one of the guys cut the soap for us. (Y'all know I can't cut soap straight to save my life! lol) 

This was after the first soap loaf was cut. See the pretty glitter??? :)

So "The Misters" took the soap outside to see if the glitter catch the sun rays and sparkle a little more. It didn't, but it still looks pretty outside too doesn't it? Goodness sakes it has a light lovely fragrance to it also! :)

We did do a test from a couple of soap scraps we had leftover, and I plumb forgot to take a picture of the lathery and moisturizing loveliness of this soap. I will next time we use the hot process method, promise!! Well, that's it for this adventure! Stay tuned for the next blog post coming up soon about my adventure with Carrot soap!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy

Floapies!

*waves* Hey y'all!! Hope this finds everyone doing great! I have been busy soaping away, and I have embarked on another adventure with Floapies! Ok so I know that's a weird name but let me explain. You know how when you're in the tub taking a nice long luxurious bubble bath...and you drop the soap so you have to hunt around for it? Well when you drop a this particular soap it floats so your not hunting around for it..hence the name "Floapies". ;) In order to make Floapies you have to use a mixer and whip air into the soap batter. 

For your listening pleasure while you peruse the pictures of my Floapie adventure, with a special shout out to Greta. (lol)

 

 

Solid and Liquid Oils before whipping them.

After whipping the solid and liquid oils. I realized later on that I should have waited to add the liquid oil while I was whipping the solid oils. It would have made bigger fluffier peaks. You live and learn though. Next time!

After slowly adding the chilled lye I "whip it good!" *does the dance and realizes she is without the red hat* Anyhow...back to the lye , it has to be chilled lye. I know it may sound weird, but warm lye will melt the solid oils. 

It looks almost like frosting doesn't it? It would have been fluffier if I would have did what I mentioned earlier. 

I separated this into two parts and colored one a teal color. (I know, surprise surprise!)

While you probably cannot see this very well, the teal turned into a pastel teal as a result of how white the soap batter is.

So I spooned it in my mold and did a slight swirl with it with the pastel teal and the white.

They look like little cupcakes don't they?

I had extra soap batter so I slapped it in one of my one pound molds and swirled it together.

Wallah! We have Floapies! Yayyy!

A Floapie close-up! By the way, if you love the smell of Downy, you will love the fragrance of these Floapies. It is pure heaven!!

Well, I hope you enjoyed the music along with my latest adventure! I have a ton of stuffs to do before I can call it a night! Check back soon y'all!
Suds & Bubbles,
Soapy