Soap Challenge Club: Butterfly Swirl

Butterfly Swirl Entry

I haven’t participated in the Soap Challenge Club in a long time. I really wanted a chance to try out the Butterfly Swirl, perfected (maybe invented?) by Zahida of Handmade in Florida. I don’t have a deep mold like Zahida, but the beauty of the Butterfly Swirl is that you can get pretty decent results even with a regular mold like mine.

When I participated in the S.O.A.P. Panel last year, I tested a fragrance called Mahogany. I said at the time that it reminded me of a sexy man. You can read my thoughts about that fragrance here and here. I loved the way it smelled. I have been wanting to make a soap with a color palette similar to this:

COLOURlovers.com-Mahogany_Soap

I knew I wanted to use Nurture mica. I have the Vibrance mica set and the Pastels mica set. I previously used the 24 Karat Gold mica from Rustic Escentuals in my Inspiration Soap Challenge. Even in cold process soap, it retains a lot of its sparkle. I hadn’t tried Bramble Berry’s Copper Sparkle mica, but after a quick check to see that it was safe for use in cold process, I decided to try it. I ordered it some time ago as part of a sample pack. I have used Bramble Berry’s Cappuccino mica in several soaps in the past. I love the rich brown shade. My palette hasn’t captured the exact tones of the micas, but it’s close.

I recall hearing Celine say in one of her videos that one color that really pulls a soap together is white. I think she’s right about that. Even if it’s just a little bit of white, it really seems to bring out the design. So, in addition to the four mica colors, I also used a little bit of titanium dioxide to produce a cream color in my soap.

I decided to call the soap “Sexy Man Soap” after my first reaction to smelling the fragrance. Here is a video of the making of the soap:

I really enjoyed the entire process of making this soap. The colors are a lot of fun to work with, and the fragrance is delicious. I’m going to have to order more of it.

The more I work with micas, the more I fall in love with them. I used mainly oxides and ultramarines in the past, but micas have such beautiful hues, and even if their sparkle doesn’t always come through in cold process soap, they’re still lovely to work with.

This technique is interesting because it’s hard to tell if what you’re doing will result in a butterfly shape in the soap. I knew that working with a flatter mold like mine would give me less room to get the shape I wanted, and I was quite pleasantly surprised when I cut the soap and found several bars did indeed have a butterfly shape.

Butterfly Swirl

This first set has a lighter top, but I can make out the shape of wings.

Butterfly Swirl

This second set has a nice shape, and more of the gold and brown show through. The blue is the outline of the wings.

Butterfly Swirl

I thought this third set of soaps made the best butterfly. The brown accents look like the edges of wings, and the blue where the soaps join looks like a butterfly body. The splatter tops look like the tops of butterfly wings. It is this last picture that I will enter for the challenge contest. Don’t you just love that Blue Vibrance mica?

I’m happy with how these came out. I made them for my husband Steve, and he’s claiming three, but he says I can sell the rest of them in the shop. Look for them in time for Valentine’s Day, in case you want to get some for your own sexy man.

You know what? It felt pretty good to make a video again after a long hiatus, too.

Inspiration Soap Challenge

When I saw Kenna’s Facebook post about her Inspiration Soap Challenge, I pounced quickly, knowing her 15 challenge kits would be snapped up by eager soapmakers. I was lucky enough to be in the first 15 claimants, and I received my kit and challenge in the mail.

Challenge KitHere is what I received:

One ounce each of three fragrances—Save on Scents’ Apricot Honey, Candle Science’s Coconut, and Candle Science’s Black Currant Tea. All three of them smell great.

FragrancesAdditives: kiwi seeds from Lotioncrafter, bentonite clay from Monterey Bay Spice, calendula petals from Monterey Bay Spice, Blaze Orange Day-Glo color from Majestic Mountain Sage, Corona Magenta Day-Glo color from Majestic Mountain Sage, 24-Karat Gold mica from Rustic Escentuals, Caribbean Kiss mica from Rustic Escentuals, and Clementine Pop mica from Rustic Escentuals.

AdditivesMy mission? To craft a soap inspired by Bobby McFerrin’s song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” using at least four of these ingredients.

Here is Kenna’s note:

LetterThinking of this song, the three Rustic Escentuals micas, the Apricot Honey fragrance, and the calendula petals immediately jumped out at me. The song reminds me of summertime, and those colors and fragrance screamed summer. I decided not to wait and set to work immediately.

I used my one-pound shea butter recipe, which has 40% olive oil, 25% coconut oil, 25% sustainable palm oil, 5% shea butter, and 5% castor oil. I also added cream, kaolin clay, and tussah silk.

Soap BatterI decided I would leave part of the batter uncolored. I would pour the uncolored batter into the mold first. I would use the three mica colors and do an ITP swirl, then pour those into the uncolored batter to do a Holly swirl. It didn’t quite work according to plan.

Part of working with an unknown fragrance is the surprise it might offer—will it discolor? Will it accelerate trace? I had no way of knowing, really, as the reviews on the site didn’t say. I plunged ahead. I suspected it would accelerate mostly because of the fruity (almost floral) nature of the scent, which I LOVE, by the way. I don’t smell the honey as much as the sweet apricot fragrance.

It did accelerate a bit, as it turns out. I was still able to swirl my soap, but I had to move quickly. Everything was going smoothly as I poured the uncolored batter into the mold.

Uncolored BatterI had already prepared my three micas and decided to pour the soap directly into these cups.

Prepared MicasAren’t they beautiful?

The soap was thickening up by the time I was done mixing the colors.

ITP swirlSo, my ITP swirl was not as fluid as I envisioned it. I knew it wouldn’t drop swirl easily into the uncolored batter, either. What to do?

I poured it from high so that it would penetrate, then I spoon-swirled it.

Soap in MoldAnd the pièce de résistance? The calendula petals.

Calendula Petals on TopI put the soap to bed to gel. I checked on it a few times, and I can tell you that it moved fast and became quite hot pretty quickly. It was over 140°F one time when I checked it, and keep in mind this was probably within the first hour after I made it. Just a warning about that fragrance! I hoped that the fragrance would stick OK, but the flashpoint is 200°F, so I crossed my fingers.

As it turned out, the fragrance made it through saponification just fine. After I cut it, I could smell the honey notes much more than I could out-of-the-bottle. It really smells delicious. I’m telling you, you couldn’t worry when you smelled it—it would make you happy! I just hope it’s going to remain strong through the cure.

Don't Worry, Be Happy SoapHere is a close-up of one of the bars so you can really see how the colors came out. The Caribbean Kiss mica is a perfect Caribbean water shade, and the Clementine Pop mica really matches the apricot notes in the fragrance, while the 24-Karat Gold mica ties in the element of honey in the scent. As it turns out, the swirl looks great—perhaps better than it would have looked if I had just done a drop swirl with the swirled colors.

Close UPAs you can see, the natural soap did not discolor either, so while this fragrance accelerates, it does not discolor, which means it is great for whatever colors and design you want to try (given you can work with the acceleration).

I’m really pleased with how the micas turned out as well. I didn’t know if the 24-Karat Gold mica would look like much in CP soap, but it honestly pops pretty nicely—you can see the sparkles throughout. It’s hard to tell from the pictures, but the sparkles really do catch your eye if you can see the soap in person.

A couple of interesting notes about this challenge:

  1. It was fun trying to use the kit to make something based on the challenge idea, and I found the idea came to me immediately. Kudos to Kenna for the great idea.
  2. I really fell in love with the Clementine Pop mica, and I’m going to have to order some more of that. I liked the other two a lot as well. I do not have as much experience with micas, and so I feel shy ordering them (for some reason) because I’m not sure what I’m going to get. I was so happy when I checked Rustic Escentuals’ site and found they were all CP stable.
  3. I really liked all three fragrances. Coconut does scream summer, but even without checking, I figured it would discolor more than the Apricot Honey, so I went with my gut on that one.
  4. Almost all the materials I received were new to me. I have used calendula petals and bentonite clay in soap before, but I had not used anything else. I had never even purchased from any of the companies except Rustic Escentuals and Majestic Mountain Sage. It was fun to learn about some potential vendors and try their products before I buy them.
  5. After watching the music video for “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” again, I discovered the colors I used (or at least similar ones) appeared in the video! I see them mostly in the background. Isn’t that wild? I wonder if my subconscious somehow dredged that up (as many times as I saw that video in the 1980s!), but… nah.

This soap will be ready to use on August 2, 2014. I decided to give one bar away. Here’s the catch: no fair entering the contest from multiple Twitter or Facebook accounts. You can certainly enter more than once using one of each kind of social media account, but if you try to game the system, I will disqualify all your entries. I was disappointed to learn someone tried to do that with my last giveaway. I want someone who really wants this soap to win it, not someone who just enters freebie contests, so please—your social media accounts should contain tweets besides giveaway announcements. Aside from those caveats, go for it!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Soap Challenge Club: Dandelion Zebra Swirl

This month’s Soap Challenge Club challenge soap is the Dandelion Zebra Swirl created by Vinvela Ebony and described on her blog Dandelion Seifee. Here is my contribution to the challenge:

Dandelion Zebra Swirl

The recipe I used to create the soap is a slow-moving recipe modified from one recommended by Amy Warden of Great Cake Soapworks:

  • 60% olive oil
  • 25% coconut oil
  • 10% sunflower oil
  • 5% castor oil

The resulting soap should be extremely conditioning and great for sensitive skin. I used a Bramble Berry fragrance called Kumquat to scent the soap, and it smells absolutely divine—very fruity and fresh.

I left my soap base uncolored. The sunflower oil does contribute some sort of lightening effect to the soap base. I have noticed when I’ve used it before that the resulting soap has a lighter color than if I didn’t use it at all. However, because sunflower oil makes for a softer soap, it is best not to use too much in a recipe—perhaps no more than 20-25%. Sunflower oil also contributes to a nice, creamy lather.

Typically, I use kaolin clay in my soap, but I am not sure what effect clay might have on speeding up trace, and because I wanted a nice fluid soap for this technique, I left it out.

I mixed my oils and lye at a low temperature—below 90°F. I pulsed my stick blender a few times, mixing just until my oils and lye were emulsified. The colorants I used were neon pigments rather than oxides, as I just recently learned oxides can also speed up trace. I used two pigments from Brambleberry: Tangerine Wow and Fizzy Lemonade. The other two pigments were from TKB: Reformulated Neon Green and Reformulated Neon Blue.

As you can see, the colors are nice and bold, and though the soap base isn’t white, it’s a very pretty light natural shade.

Dandelion Zebra Swirl

Because of the high amount of soft oils, the soap is definitely softer than my typical soaps; however, I know from experience that high olive oil soaps can become quite hard with a longer cure time.

It’s such an interesting technique. I think I would do it again with some different colors.

Trying this technique gave me some ideas should I decide I want to try the Peacock Swirl again, too. I was able to maintain soap of the consistency I think might be required for the Peacock Swirl when I made this Dandelion Zebra Swirl soap. I think the trick might be to avoid oxides (if I can) for the Peacock Swirl, as it seemed to work great for this soap. Thanks to Amy Warden for teaching me something I didn’t know about oxides!

Here is a last look at the soap from a different angle. I am happy with the swirl on the top, too!

Dandelion Zebra Swirl

Soap Challenge Club: Holly Swirl

Lavender Romance Soap with a Holly swirl. Ingredients: water, olive oil, coconut oil, sustainable palm oil, sodium hydroxide, avocado oil, fragrance, shea butter, cocoa butter, castor oil, kaolin clay, colorant, activated charcoal, yogurt, buttermilk, goat milk, silk.

Lavender Romance Soap

This month’s challenge in the Soap Challenge Club hosted by Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks was to create a soap with a Holly swirl. The Holly swirl is named for its inventor, Holly Bailey, of Missouri River Soap Company. She makes excellent soap and generously shares her techniques on her YouTube channel. You can read her blog here or follow her on Facebook here. The technique is a swirl within a swirl—an in-the-pot swirl of two or more colors coupled with a drop swirl with an additional color. Here is the video Holly made when she tried the swirl for the first time:

Holly mentions in the video that vertical soaps really make this design shine, and it’s true, but I don’t have an appropriate mold for vertical soaps, so I improvised with my standard mold.

Lavender Romance Soap

I used a fragrance that discolors, but I didn’t want it to wreak havoc on my swirls, so I only added it to the black part, colored with activated charcoal. The activated charcoal was a little gray when I first cut the soap, but as the fragrance has darkened, so has the black in my soap. I think it has a sexy look that goes together well with its sexy scent, which is a blend of rustic amber with bold Parisian lavender and a mysterious black myrrh, sweet vanilla tonka bean, and a splash of Egyptian musk rounded out with raw clary sage. I received it as a free sample from Bramble Berry in one of my earliest orders with the company, and I immediately used it to make solid perfume. It smells gorgeous! It’s quite possibly one of my personal favorite fragrances, and I just can’t wait to try this soap!

Lavender Romance Soap

I used ultramarine violet oxide and titanium dioxide to color the swirls, and they turned out well. The fragrance has not migrated very much to the swirled parts of the soap, so they have remained vibrant. The slight discoloration that did occur in some places only adds to the sexy, smoky appeal of the soap (in my opinion, at least).

As you can see, the tops have a mica swirl done with purple and white micas. I did not gel this soap because I didn’t want to risk glycerin rivers in the titanium dioxide. Also, when I work with a new fragrance, I find that not gelling is sometimes smarter because the soap is less likely to do crazy things in the mold.

This soap also taught me to love using activated charcoal in my soap. It is so much fun to see how it looks in the soap batter and the finished soap. It can go gray if you do not use enough, so you need to experiment to determine how much you might need to use.

The Holly swirl technique is fun, and I would definitely recommend trying it, even if you are relatively new to swirling. It was not as complicated as the mantra swirl or the peacock swirl, and I liked the results a lot better, too.

Soap Challenge Club: Mantra Swirl

Plum Tea Soap with a mantra swirl. Ingredients: olive oil, aloe vera juice, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, sodium hydroxide, shea butter, fragrance, castor oil, colorants, goat milk, kaolin clay, activated charcoal, silk.

Plum TeaThis month’s challenge in the Soap Challenge Club hosted by Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks was to create a soap with a mantra swirl. There are two ways to do a mantra swirl. One involves putting a divider in your mold pouring two colors in the mold simultaneously, then using a bottle with a yorker cap to squirt a third color in between and using a skewer to swirl the soap. Alternatively, you can put two dividers in your mold and pour one color in each section. When you cut the soap, you have to be careful to cut it so that the design shows. Here is a demonstration of how to do this kind of mantra swirl and how to cut it.

I chose to do a modified mantra swirl because I wanted to use my favorite cutter. Amy warned that it was more advanced, but I thought it looked about the same. Boy, was I wrong!

First things first, here is Kenna‘s demonstration of how to do the modified mantra:

Just a pause to say how wonderful the soap making community is. So many talented soap makers freely share their techniques and recipes with beginners. It is rare to be a part of a community that is so giving, especially when many of us are selling our craft.

I have to confess I committed a big no-no, and I kind of have to wonder when I’m going to learn about this because I do it all the time: I used a fragrance I’d never tried before. It accelerated and thickened up fast, and I was sure I’d ruined my swirl. I was so surprised and pleased when I cut it and found it was pretty.

2013-07-06 12.35.16It is so hot here in Massachusetts that my soap started to gel even after I had cut it. Soap has NEVER done this to me before. I had put this batch in the freezer and then the fridge to prevent gel because I want to avoid it getting so hot that glycerine rivers destroyed the look of the white part. Instead, I have about three pretty bars (you are looking at them above) and the rest are sort of warpy, goopy messes. It’s tragic!

2013-07-06 12.35.52I’m sure the soap is fine to use, though. I don’t think I can sell it. Bah!

It’s a shame, too, because the fragrance is heavenly! It is a beautiful, soft plum fragrance with a tea base note that is just amazing. I definitely love the fragrance.

What I think I might do is show the bars in a YouTube video and ask if anyone wants them, absolutely free. I will definitely be keeping some for myself!

I tried to video the making of this soap, but it didn’t work out because Steve had to drop the camera and help me get the soap into the mold. Poor man even got a glob of raw soap on his ungloved hand, and I sent him off to wash it off so he didn’t get a lye burn. It was a scary few minutes!

I couldn’t be more pleased with how the soap turned out or more disappointed that the gel I tried to prevent happened anyway and made a mess out of my pretty soaps!

Wow, I used a lot of exclamation points in this post. But let me tell you, this was some exclamation point soap.

Peacock Swirl

I joined Amy Warden‘s Soap Challenge Club because I so enjoyed learning some new swirling techniques through participating in her Soap Challenge 2013. In fact, I even designed a soap that is shaping up to be a real keeper in my regular sales line.

I’ve watched tutorials on how to do the peacock swirl, but I had never tried it. I made three soaps in an attempt to learn how to do this swirl. While I’m not 100% happy with the look of any of them, I do think it was a valuable learning experience, and I would not rule out trying this kind of swirl again some time.

The first one I made had a gorgeous blue and green paired with black and white and was scented with Celestial Waters by Bramble Berry. It smells absolutely divine, but my black soap ran a little and the resulting soap looks a little smeary to me: more like streaks of gray instead of defined black and white.

2013-06-10 19.02.05Still, even though it didn’t turn out with the perfectly defined swirls I have seen other soapers produce, the results are nice. I am in LOVE with the Celestial Waters fragrance, too. It smells absolutely gorgeous.

I decided to try again to see if I could produce more defined swirls. I chose some brighter colors this time.

2013-06-09 16.58.14The swirls are still not as defined as I had hoped.

2013-06-10 19.17.59I scented this one with a scent described as “base notes of raspberry, cantaloupe, and watermelon, middle notes of jasmine and violet, and fresh top notes of grapefruit and kumquat.” It smells amazing, and the colors are a perfect match for the scent. I’m going to call this one Yummy.

I put the glitter on it because my daughter Maggie happened to comment when she saw it that she liked when I put glitter on soaps. I think the glitter kind of “makes” this one. But like I said, it still wasn’t quite right. So, I thought maybe I could try again and get it perfect.

2013-06-10 21.00.20Well… not so much. I even tried a different recipe. No luck. The soap just seems to want to run together too much. And it was at a fairly decent trace before I dragged the comb through.

2013-06-10 21.00.34You can see it sort of starts out defined.

It smells AMAZING, by the way. I used 10X orange essential oil for the base layer, and I used litsea cubeba essential oil for the orange and yellow parts and peppermint essential oil and spearmint fragrance for the green and white parts. It actually smells really, really fantastic, and I like the colors for this soap. Maybe with a different design next time.

2013-06-10 21.00.46And there are spots where it stays defined. I’m liking the look of this bar after a little while in the fridge.

2013-06-10 22.52.17In fact, this whole half is not too bad.

2013-06-10 22.52.07But the swirls are not defined throughout like the others I’ve seen.

2013-06-10 22.52.30I admit I’m stumped.

So, I feel frustrated at this point because I feel like there is something obvious I am just not getting. It took me quite a while to learn to swirl my soap, and someone pointed out to me that I shouldn’t discount the water if I want to swirl. Voilà, I was able to swirl just fine. Now I very rarely have any trouble swirling.

But I am stumped. I watched about three tutorials. I soaped cool. I chose tried and true recipes that have worked for other soapers using this swirl. I used colorants that other soapers have tried and that have worked for me before. Perhaps I need to let the soap sit and get to a thicker trace.

Pros Cons
Even if you don’t get a defined swirl, it still looks pretty cool. It seems to be pretty hard to get a defined swirl, and a defined peacock swirl definitely looks better.
I tried out some really interesting scents that I would use again. All of them. I can’t help but feel that if I had used a tried and true design, the overall effect of the soap would have been nicer, and I would have been happier with the results.
This was great swirling practice, and I always like learning something new. This technique was really, super hard to clean up because of the bottles with yorker caps. The soap was really hard to get out of them completely.

So what’s the verdict?

I don’t think that this technique is worth the trouble for the effect. It is really gorgeous, but so are other types of swirls. I am not saying this just because I wasn’t happy with my results. I think I’d be saying it anyway for cleanup alone.

I plan to submit my Citrus Mint batch, the third batch, for the contest because I think it turned out the best, at least on half of the bars.

I really wish you could smell that Citrus Mint. Oh, it’s incredible. Mmmm! That mix of essential oils and fragrances is a keeper, for sure, but I think a different design next time.

Ooooh, I so had my eyes on that 18-bar birch mold! Oh, well. There is always the next challenge. Bring it on!

Soap Challenge 2012: Week Three—Mica Swirl

The challenge for week three of Great Cakes Soapworks‘ 2013 Soap Challenge was to create a soap with a mica swirl. Just as with the elemental swirl, I had never done this type of swirl before, mainly because I hadn’t tried micas. I had sold a few bars of my Angel soap, so I decided to remake it with a mica swirl instead of pink soap on the top.

Angel Soap

Wow, what a difference it made in the look of this soap! You can’t really see the detail properly, even in this photograph. The swirls have a beautiful iridescent sheen. I love it! Here is what my first batch of Angel soap looks like, for comparison:

Angel SoapI think the mica swirl is here to stay on this soap! I do not know when or if I would have attempted a mica swirl if not for this challenge, so I have this challenge to thank for both my Hobbit’s Garden soap, which I just LOOOOOVE, and now a change for better in my Angel soap.

Soap Challenge 2013: Week Two—Elemental Swirl

The challenge for week two of Great Cakes Soapworks‘ 2013 Soap Challenge was to create a soap with an elemental swirl. I had never done this type of swirl before, and I think the general idea is to create a soap with contrasting elements, such as reds, oranges, and yellows to represent fire, and blues and greens to represent water. I didn’t exactly follow the “rules” because I had an idea for a soap I’ve been thinking about for some time, but for which I didn’t have a design idea: Hobbit’s Garden. I had already picked out scents of apples, oak, and English ivy, as well as a rainy/earthy scent, so I decided I would divide my scents as I was not doing as many colors as some of the other challenge participants.

Hobbit's GardenAs you can see, the bottom layer has a green, white, and black swirl, and I scented that layer with apples and oak and English ivy. The thin gold mica line in the middle represents the One Ring. My inspiration for the colors is the cover of the first edition of The Hobbit as drawn by J.R.R. Tolkien. The top layer was interesting because I was originally shooting for the bluer cover of The Hobbit.

Hobbit CoverBut the soap knew what it was doing and decided I needed to be a purist and go with darker blue of the original first edition:

Hobbit CoverIn fact, the blue came out exactly the slate blue of the cover above, as you can see.

I am so, so happy with this soap, and I can’t say I would have thought to try to make it like this if I had not been participating in the challenge, so thank you, thank you Amy Warden!

 

Soap Challenge 2013: Week One—Tiger Stripe Swirl

I am excited to be participating in Great Cakes Soapworks‘ 2013 Soap Challenge. Each week offers soapers the opportunity to try a different challenge. The challenge for the first week was to create a soap with a tiger stripe swirl. Of the various challenges planned, this particular technique is the only one I’ve tried. I think it is nice to get my feet wet with the familiar.

Spearmint Stripe

I made spearmint-scented soap I am calling Spearmint Stripe. The soap may have been a bit too thin to do a true tiger stripe swirl. Some of the layers broke through a bit, and others seemed a bit wider than I was looking for. However, I am happy with the way it looks, which is exactly like it smells. My inspiration for the colors was the green and white  spearmint candies similar in appearance to peppermints. The colors came out exactly as I wanted, and the soaps smell delicious.

The soap is chock full of goodies for your skin: olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, sweet almond oil, cocoa butter, and castor oil and a kiss of buttermilk and kaolin clay with a whisper of pure silk.

I just love the way it smells. The spearmint fragrance blends well with other fragrances, but it smells delicious on its own, too. I have noticed, as I said in one of the videos, that this fragrance seems to fade, but it pops back in wet soap, so when you shower with it, you may notice the spearmint scent more than in the dry bar. I am not sure why that is, but as smelling it in the shower is the whole point, I am happy.

Challenge Soap: Avalon

I love challenges, a fact to which my poor neglected book blog can attest. I was thrilled when the Soap Making Forum started monthly challenges. I was eager to participate last month. The theme was Mardi Gras, and I even had an idea, but I didn’t get it off the ground. This month, I was determined. The chosen theme is Mythology, and I mined my favorite myths—the Matter of Britain—for my new soap Avalon. I realize King Arthur is technically more legend than myth, but I wrote what I think was a fairly convincing final exam in Medieval Literature in college about the notion that Arthurian legend was a British attempt at creating a mythology for themselves, especially later as writers like Geoffrey of Monmouth and Sir Thomas Malory wrote down the stories of Arthur.

Avalon
Avalon

Avalon was inspired by the resting place of King Arthur, the Isle of Avalon, or Isle of Apples. Back in the time when King Arthur would possibly have lived, Glastonbury Tor was surrounded by water, becoming a peninsula at low tide, and many believe it is the Isle of Avalon.

The scent I used in this soap evokes apples and roses, and it was described by Shannon of Smellicious Soaps (one of my fellow Soap Making Forum friends) as smelling like “walking through a rose garden while eating a crisp apple.” It truly is divine. The apples evoke the Isle of Apples, Avalon, while I see the roses as symbolic of the Wars of the Roses, during which Sir Thomas Malory wrote perhaps the most famous version of the Arthurian legend, Le Morte D’Arthur. Some scholars believe his treatment of the Matter of Britain was as much a comment on political events during his own times as it was a faithful recounting of the Arthur legend.

The soap is made with cocoa butter and olive, coconut, palm, sweet almond, and castor oils with a kiss of kaolin clay and silk.

 

I hope you like it! It will be available in my Etsy store toward the end of April.