Cutting the Mica Swirl Tops Soaps :)

I was all "video makin' happy" last week lol! I got these all cut and on tape and then I walked away from the computer (mostly) for a few days...sooooo...I am FINALLY getting around to posting these!  IDK how great the video is in reality.  In MY head at least I think it is wonderful because I finally did it :P

But anyways, I HOPE it came out okay :) I was uber excited and still am!  Black Raspberry Vanilla and Moonlight Pomegranate - mmmmmmm :)

I think before I officially go post my link on the GreatCakes page I will go get some still shots and put those on the blog - just because my video is NOT that great - but yes, giddy excited a bit I was when I figured out I had a perfect spot to perch the phone and still get ok passing for viewable videos! Happy dance happy dance :)

I want to say I was having a less than beautiful day - but let's be honest, that's how farmer woman tend to roll.  Old t-shirts and make up free! If I really like this video thing I may start doing my hair first LOL :)

Also - please note the OCD with my cutting - I never get a straighter than straight bar and I have some issues haha! Perhaps someone (husband dear) will get me a REAL cutter soon! Actually, maybe I will get me a REAL cutter once I am done with baby goats next month.

And yes, before I start I scrub the HECK out of my hands!  I can't cut for beans in gloves, I tried, didn't work, my hands gets all slippy.  VERY ugly scene!  SO I scrub my hands like medical style before I cut soaps. Just saying - I dunno, another OCD thing with me.

Guess I better go get those pics then so I can post my link for real huh?

Cutting "Key Lime Pie Soap" (aka da Lime in da Coconut)

I've been making videos! YAY froo froo fancy pants phone!  No, no video camera here - just an android phone - but still!  Okay, so don't laugh - there's some MAJOR double chinage going on...but here it is! My "Key Lime Pie soap" all cut and purdy-fied!

The scent is really called "da Lime in da Coconut" from Rustic Escentuals, and it's harder to see in the video that this is indeed the same sparkly mica dusted tops, but it is :) Smells OH SO GOOD!

I have been dragging my feet getting things uploaded BECAUSE I have been moving and grooving doing some "spring cleaning" in this house!  Actually....it was just well over due time to clean the fuzzy dusty house, not because of spring...but you get my drift I think :)

And so, may I present, Key Lime Pie (soap) :)

Back to the market??? Oh yeah baby!

Ok, so I'm not gonna lie...even though mankind CAN try my patience, I actually REALLY do like people!  Living out here where there aren't many people, I find myself craving them sometimes.  So back to the market I went this weekend! I REALLY had fun last weekend when I sit down and look back at it and you know, the cash is nice.  Plus, to have more room on my soap shelves to make MORE fun soaps is really helpful too!

See, when I really looked at it, I had lotions a-plenty, and TONS of stuff I have been making since February and March - like for real, probably 200 or 300 bars of soap (when I count I'll let you know). I'm not gonna lie, even though that one redneck kinda pushed my buttons, most of the people I met were pretty awesome.  And yes, the lady with the noisy toys...the toys drove me AND come to find out another lady nuts LOL...but she was at least nice.  So, I loaded up and headed back this weekend - I know, crazy right? But why pay for insurance if I'm not gonna make an effort and really sell some stuff eh? Plus, with baby goats coming I won't be able to do it again for a few weeks at least ya know?  Can't leave when mommas are due any minute....

Anyways, I HAD A BLAST!!! Met some awesome people, pretty much sold out of everything else I had that was ready to go and now I am WHOOPED! Overall, the environment is relaxed, the market handles all the "tedious" part as everything is covered so no tent needed, and they have a LARGE table in each space so I don't even have to mess with that either! Just show up and put out my stuff :)  I think I might be addicted lol :)

Plus, get this - they do a drawing each day at 3p.m. for a space number and the winner gets $50 - and GUESS WHAT!!! No, really, guess...come on, guess.....YES!!!!!!! I won today!!!!!!!!!!  And to be honest, I NEVER win anything, not even a dollar on a scratch off! No, seriously - the only stuff I ever win is phone calls from time shares :P and I won something :)

So, I had a tiring but fruitful weekend.  Now, I need to regroup, get pictures of last weeks work posted for ya'll, and get ready for baby goats AND my garden...oh my sad attempts at a garden :(  I HAVE to get on that!  But oh yes, I think I am an addict to selling things, I KNOW I love talking about my goats and my soaps all day and I will return!

OH!  I forgot to say...when you ask "Where have you been?"  I have been at "Olde Security Square" - and I have LOVED IT!

Welders and Goat Milk Soap...what a MESS!

In a good way LOL, but still...the guys my husband works with crack me up! He's a welder you see - we aren't talking about "mild mannered suit and tie office workers".  Oh no, these are hard core rough neck types, and they are a HOOT to sell soap too!

I packed the hubby up with a few baskets of soap this morning before he headed out.  He called me about lunch time with the tally on sales - which was pretty awesome - and THEN he rattled off everyone's suggestions:

1. make more camouflaged soap - I've done a batch or 2 before and wouldn't mind doing it again.
2. Make a Houston Texans soap - um, no can do...I can do the colors as a theme, but not embeds, I'm not embed kinda gal right?
3. Make a John Deere soap - I think I have the perfect fragrance all picked out, can do.
4. Make a Harley Davidson soap - sure, got to pick a scent, but I can do that I think, color wise at least.

The list went on for a bit, THEN he told me what everyone had bought.  One guy bought "Monkey Farts" for his wife without even smelling it - just because he liked the name! Cracked me up! Another  bought the NG fresh outdoors scent I call Country Skies and after leaving it in his car decided he needed to leave it there and not shower with it because it smelled so good!  Okay, it's your soap now, though I suggest showering with or without it I said to tell him...hehehe....and THEN I found out this little tid bit!

Guess what, no really, GUESS!  Now, keep in mind hubby work for a HUGE company on a HUGE complex way out in the big city - well- guess what they do a few times each year?  Oh yeah baby, they host a huge craft fair thing for employees and their families!  FREE!!!  You go, you get a table and you sell your stuff while people come and mingle through out the day.  Did I mention it's a SUPER huge complex????  Soooo...one of the office ladies - who also bought some soap - is going to get me an email with the info!  How exciting :)  I love free stuff and free stuff where I can make a little money - even if it's not a ton - is TEE-TOTAL-RIFFIC! 

So...perhaps later I will see about posting some pics of the soaps I cut today.  I am VERY excited with the "Key Lime" soap - can't wait until that one is ready as it is FANTABULOUS for real I declare!  And my mica swirl - OH SO PRETTY!  Came out how I envisioned it so perfect too!  Okay, guess I better get outside and go feed the herd.  But a nice pleasant day was had AND not only did I make a little $$$ but I also got some gardening in :)

Fresher than fresh milk - coming soon!

I know - confused right?  I already have 3 goats I am milking each day.  But guess what! No, guess.....

I have TWO MORE goats due May 4th and the excitement is REALLY building now!  Look:

Above is Pomegranate, big as a house!

And THAT is Lucy's baby belly....

And here is Lucy's sweet face!  I am SOOOO excited!

Just a few more weeks and I will have MORE milk LOL!  And baby goats...which means...any soap not made before May 1st will be on hold until the middle of May if not later.  I bottle raise all my babies (it's a goat CAE prevention thing - herd is negative, but I still practice prevention just in case...) anyways, like I was saying, I bottle raise all my goat kids.  That means for a week or 2 they will be in the house in a play pen until they can go outside into the kid pen.  Everyone knows you can't make soap with kids underfoot - people kids OR goat kids and lye do NOT mix right???

So...I have a batch or 2 to knock out before then and hopefully if I remember preservative some lotion to make!  Oh yes, I forgot to order preservative!  DUH ME!  Working on fixing that...

Now, I have to go start picking out names.  My them this year is the letter "D" and I want to be all set when babies arrive to just finish up their papers - these will be registered and I have a deposit on one doe kid already - and then move along with things.  SO SO SO Excited did I mention that???

So, I had to share...we got babies a-comin'!

And WHERE is my promised acceleration???

I know - sounds CRAZY right? A soaper looking for acceleration....hmmm...perhaps I have lost my mind? Aren't most soapers trying to find ways to fight it so they can create beautiful swirls and designs? Nope, I promise I am of sound mind - barely - but sound, and I was ready for this particular fragrance to create and issue or two and ti didn't, which then affected my plans a bit. Have you ever planned a batch around it's warnings and then not gotten any of that stuff? For example - it says "slight accel." - and then nothing? Hmmm....maybe I have lost my mind...see, what had happened was:

I went in yesterday thinking I wanted to soap "da Lime in da Coconut" from Rustic Escentuals.  The plan in my head was:  dark brown and white swirl base with green drop swirls down the middle and a pearly white mice swirl top.   Sounds REALLY pretty doesn't it? However...I paused to check the specs on this one and to quote the manufacturer:  "CP Notes: slight accel., no discoloration, scent holding well, no scent morph"  See it?  Yeah - slight accel - uh oh....I'm not a "loosey goosey" kinda soaper...generally slight accel = soap on a stick if I am not VERY careful....

No really, I KNOW part of my "thick soap batter no matter what I do" problem is my milk.  Milk, when subbed for water 100% in your lye mix, is not actually all liquid itself!  No really, milk is made of part solids and part water!  Now, when your milk is raw straight from the goat, you have ALL the fats, and all the proteins and such that came in that milk too!  Oh yes, store bought milk, even goat milk, has been stripped down of quite a bit before it hits the shelves!  I tried once using store bought goat milk and FINALLY got a "thin trace" and ya know, I hated it! I'm use to my soap tracing in like 2 whirs of my blender - well, it's emulsified at least :)  The store stuff was horrid, took forever to trace and smelled funny since they add lipase to it :(  Just YUCK!  Never did that again ever! (My girls were all dry at the time...and I was desperate to soap but I got over it pretty quick and waited for them to come back into milk after that.)

I know, I hear you, you're saying "What about your oils???"  No, really, even 100% olive oil soap goes thick on my in like 5 minutes of barely trying!  And no, it doesn't seem to matter if I add MORE milk to my lye solution - I still get THICK batter and SQUISHY soft soap that takes MONTHS instead of weeks to get remotely hard!  It's got to be the milk - Nubian milk is pretty rich and my saanens are far behind them...I'm okay with that - the more butter fat in my milk the happier I am.  I actually have learned to like it and don't really like working with thin batter, thin trace, thin anything - heck, I'm a chubby girl, thin is NOT in my vocabulary anyways lol!

So...back to the point.  Slight accel = don't risk crazy swirls!  At least in my world, that's what it is "code" for.  So, I sat down and re-planned this batch in my head.  After sniffing the bottle a few more times, I decided I smelled more LIME than COCONUT anyways and it came to me:  MAY A KEY LIME PIE!!!! Well - I don't have any nifty pie thingies...but I can make a loaf that LOOKS like a pie!  Okay - so now I was set!

I went on in, got ALL set up - oils weighed and measured and melted CHECK, mold lined CHECK, colors ready CHECK, milk and lye prepped CHECK.  And away I went...First I mixed it all up to that nice emulsified point, and poured off a tad for the "crust" and colored it a medium brown - NO fragrance!

Very "crusty looking" - should have added some spices or ground walnuts or SOMETHING to make it more "graham crackery" but alas, I didn't think of that until later :(  Still...nice smooth crust....on to the "pie"!  I split the rest and adjusted my fragrance into the correct portions for each.  The plan was to add fragrance AFTER color was in there and then pour before it could set up - like I said, this ain't my first rodeo with the phrase "slight accel." right....

So, in goes my minty lime green - a tad more mint than lime - but that's okay:

See how it's already thick enough to stick to the sides there?  No fragrance yet either - thick is just "my thing, my style, how I roll".  So, holding my breath, I grab my wisk - NOT the blender - and dump my fragrance, stir like a mad woman and into the mold!

Wait a minute, just wait one stinking minute here!  See how SMOOTH that is???  A few lumps, yes, but not my usual consistancy with something marked "slight accel."!!!  At this point, I am thinking to myself "WOW! Maybe I FINALLY worked fast enough this time!"  You know, one of those "If I had given it a minute it would be more gloppy, I'm just lucky moments"....oh no!  No, no no no no NO!  I was more than lucky, I had a reverse curse!

Curse you say?  What's WRONG with this lady???  Well, see, I was banking on that slight accel bit for the top - I wanted to be able to frost/pipe the top and then go make dinner.  I wasn't in a hurry, but I figured I wouldn't have to wait long as it would set up and I would move all speedy like and then be done right?  Nope...I mixed my white into the top and it's little bit of fragrance and sure, yeah, it was thickER, but not THICK.  Not like I was thinking it would get...so, I put it into my piping set up and thinking "It's coming any minute now I better hurry!" I began to pipe and got this:

Why yes, BLOBS of soft soap batter!  WHERE IS MY SLIGHT ACCELERATION?????  Now I am kinda mad...I REALLY wanted that swirly white brown marbeled soap with green in it and a mica swirl top as I am digging the mica swirls at the moment!  I was thinking I should have gone with said design, I was ready to walk away for a bit anyways, and so I did, I went and started dinner.  Seriously, like 15 minutes later it was STILL soft!  WHAT????  Only me....

I FINALLY got this - still a bit soft - but REALLY pretty when it's all dusted with pearly mica no?  Yes, very pretty indeed I think!  I unmolded it this morning, but haven't cut it yet - I had to go out and feed and milk first and felt like blogging a bit before I got all soapy cutting stuff.  REALLY shiny pretty soap!  Not quite as fun as swirls would have been, but unique unto itself and yes, it smells VERY key lime and not so much coconut still, so I am happy with my decision there :)

It really is crazy how soap can do sometimes isn't it???  I suppose the last few weeks have gone "not as planned" for a reason though - probably the universe setting me up to get a bunch of buck kids instead of does next month - but still....I'm kinda excited to go cut stuff up now. I REALLY am in love with that top now that I look at it again.  Bet I couldn't get so lucky twice that's for sure!

Of Possum's and Mica Swirls....

So, Monday evening I got back in the soaping saddle and knocked out another batch of cherry almond soap - because the first batch is officially spoken for and I want more of it - and THEN I got all ambitious and thought I would do the mica swirl tops for the next weekly challenge.  Now, keep in mind, I have done this one before and REALLY liked what I got.  See:

That would be my version of "Vanilla Oak" which I actually call "Rustic" since it looks so homey and rustic with it's natural warm brown that it turns.  I added the swirly green mica top and green mica pencil lines so it would look like this:

Why yes, that IS the oak tree that throws things at my house and scares the snot right out of me at times...but you have to admit is is a gorgeous big ol' tree ain't it?  Something that large just needed a soap designed after it :)  Anyways...

So, like I was saying, I had knocked out my cherry almond soap, and I even made it through the next batch.  Oh yes, I had decided to use Moonlight Pomegranate for the fragrance on my mical swirl tops and it was coming along NICELY!  I walked out to the big freezers, and put my soap in there because I didn't want it getting too hot and cracking (and it was WARM in this house Monday night) and as I turn around to come in the house look what I found:

FOUR - yes 4 - of our barn cats had this teeny little fella under my truck!  He was still up and hissing and that makes him one lucky possum!  If he had been playing possum, I would have walked away - the cats eat stuff all the time! But no, he was fighting to live and SO tiny!  Like fits in the palm of your hand tiny!  Now what to do right? Well...I still had my gloves on from soaping (because I don't want any possum germs I was thinking...what a nerd right?), so I scooped him up by the tail, and imprisoned him in a bucket with a net over the top while I looked around a bit.  No mama to be found :(  Lucky me - I HAVE GOAT MILK!  ALMOST EVERYTHING CAN DRINK GOAT MILK AND SO DOES MY NEIGHBOR! Who, by the way, has doctored on possums before....

 So he was doctored - had a small wound where I am guessing a cat carried him away from his mama and fed a little goat milk and given a mitten to sleep in.  The next day my time was eaten up by finding him the proper rescue place to go to as he can't stay here - we aren't experts like that! But my soap stayed in the freezer, forgotten :( Oh well, at least this little fighter was doing well though!  To survive my cats - and four of them at once - you have to be a fighter when you are that small!

But, needless to say I have just now this morning pulled my frozen soap out of the freezer lol!  At least the world, or the lord, or mother nature or whom ever let me have my soap in peace this time before tossing wild things my way haha!

So, as I wait for my mica swirl to thaw and my camera to charge to get pictures, I figured I would share a bit of the craziness via photo journal of sorts.  Why yes, we have TONS of critters out here, and not all invited!