Mantra Swirl Callenge

I am determined not to miss this months link up, although with internet issues today anything was possible. The challenge Amy from Great Cakes Soap Works set this month was called the mantra swirl. I have seen this done on soap queen, but had never thought to attempt it. Well after paying my fee, I was stuck. I did a trial run the photo is on my facebook page. I scented it with Brambleberry's Apple Jack Peel, the first time I had used that fragrance, it wont be the last, it is so yummy, just like apple pie. I was happy with the end result but knew I could do better. So I spent time thinking and planning, and setting up.

I was inspired by the fact that we are almost at mid winter, and while it has been quite mild, the last few days have turned cold, and it has been snowing on the mountains. So my natural thought for scent was Brambleberry's Fresh Snow, I had a "snow scape" in mind, so I kept one layer white, and had the next two layers in different shades of blue. Then I squirted brite orange and fried up fuchsia in between each of the layers to give a sunset look. After I swirled it  put drinking straws randomly in the blue/orange/pink. After it had set I pulled the straws out and filled the holes with yellow M&P, to give the appearance of stars. Now I know that stars don't come out at sunset, but that is my artistic licence, and it is just something I wanted to try.

 

The pink and orange didn't make it very far down the soap. And I could have made the yellow a bit brighter, but it is my very first time using M&P soap, so that is my excuse on that front.  I am happy with the end result, and will be doing the mantra swirl again. Cant wait to see all the other entries. I have seen a couple on FB and they are stunning.

Soap Challenge Club. Peacock Swirl.

The peacock swirl is something I have always been in awe of. So I was very excited to try it when Amy set up the new round of soap challenges. I am not sure what was more challenging making the soap which took me 3 goes to get right, or trying to find a little bit of time this week to take the last few photos and write a blog post. This afternoon the sun was shining so I dropped everything and grabbed some of the last batch of soap and went out to the wood pile to take some photos. I am too late to join in on the link up, which I am sad about. But I can't wait to find out who won the prize of a new soap mould.

All my soap mixes lately have been tracing pretty fast, which usually doesn't bother me too much, as I only seem to have time for simple colouring lately. My usual recipe isn't too different to that offered by Amy but I do discount the water, and mix a bit more to make sure it is good. So I added the full amount of water, only only added fragrance to the bottom layer. Everything is going great. I was organised and made my tool

 

I did try and look for roller pix but I couldn't find them so I just improvised with skewers.

 

My squirty bottles. I will use the ones with the long nozzles again, but the flat lidded bottles just didn't quite do the job as well. I used activated charcoal, yellow liquid dye, purple mica and green mica. Unfortunately I didn't put enough mica in and had to add extra.

 

But in the time it too to adjust the colours it started to set up. At this point I am pretty happy.

 

At this point I am not. The mix was just too thick to drag.

 

Set and cut. Pretty but no peacock.

 

Attempt #2 Same recipe, but I didn't muck around with the colours and it set up even quicker.

 

Attempt #3. Recipe change. I went with a castile this time, extra water, and soaped at 25 deg. Again I used the purple and green micas and charcoal and left one plain. Scented with Lemon Eucalyptus. YAY I got the swirl. I put it into the oven to hopefully get a gel, but a set I would be happy with. I then left it for 3 days. before I even peeked into the oven. I was happy when I went back and it had set. It was still a bit soft, but that is castile soap. The colour faded, but I am still happy that I got the swirl. I can't wait now to sit and check out every body else's entries. I have seen a few on face book and am in AWE. Amy you are a champ, thank you so much for working so hard to keep organising the challenges. 

 

 

Congratulations to Tanya who was the winner, and totally deserved to be. I really think voting would have been very hard, they were all beautiful soaps

 

Great Cakes Soap Challenge 2013

I had great intentions for taking part in each challenge that Amy had set this year, especially since there is only going to be 4 of them. I did actually get the tiger stripe soap done in time but to take photos and and post about it was just beyond me over the easter week. My excuse is that we had some very dear freinds come and stay, as well as having all the kids home, so my time was pretty streched. Well it still is, but I am forgetting about all the jobs that are calling my name for a little while and am going to get this post done, while I drink my cup of tea.

First up was the tiger stripe. I had already tried this after I saw Amys valentines day soaps. My daughters boyfreind is a deer hunter, and last time he shot a deer, we saved all the fat from the butchering, I rendered it down and the first soap I made with it was this "Vanilla Anise" I coloured the black with activated charcoal and put the vanilla in that part with the hope that the white would stay white, I think I'll keep dreaming. But I don't mind the little bit of discolouring from the vanilla. And would prefer to put up with the browning than use titanium dioxide after reading a news article about the dangers of it.
The mix was a bit thin, I think. And didn't quite "tiger stripe" as I had hoped. But I am still happy with the end result.

 

Vanilla Anise.

 

Next up I had offered to make party favours for my sisters baby shower, as she doesn't know the sex of her baby I got to make two lots of soap, a blue and a pink. The blue I coloured with a neon ultra blue violet. I was expecting a more blue colour, maybe I should have added a bit more. I scented this batch with fresh snow. I was a bit nervous about how it would turn out as I was using the base of cereal boxes to make smaller soaps, but I am happy with the end result.

 

 

Fresh Snow

 

 

Then I had to make the pink. I had the perfect scent. In my soap supplies order I was given a sample of Peach Mango, very girly. I added some orange EO to make up what I needed for the batch and coloured with neon fired up fuschia. The mix started setting up really quick so I scooped and glugged more than poured. Not sure if it was the recipe, or the fragrance, or the fact that I made these at 4am when I couldn't sleep.

 

 I wouldn't call these tiger stripes either, but I still think they look cute.

So if my sister happens to read this, I hope you like them.

Peach Mango and Orange

 

 

Now for the second challenge, the Elemental Swirl. I love the effect of this, with the two layers of contrasting colours. I knew I could do it, but I also knew I needed to be quick and well prepared. so I planned. I looked at my list of what needs to be restocked and thought Rose castile. Castile recipe would give me plenty of time to work. I didn't have quite enough Rose Geranium EO so I added some May Chang and Cedarwood to try and hold the May Chang. I mixed up white, green and blue clays for the base,and white, yellow, red and pink clays for the top. I got my cocoa ready for the line, all is well. I mixed up the soap and it went straight to a thick trace, so I quickly divided it up. Did the ITP for the base, poured it, sprinkled the cocoa. looked back at the jugs with the top colours and they were starting to set, so I had an in the pot glug. I had to spoon it onto the base. Then I started stressing that maybe it was going to be lye heavy, but when I went back 2 days later to cut it. It was perfect. I was so happy with the result. And the scent is so nice and lemony and floraly. Now I just have to find a name for it.

 

Rose Geranium and May Chang.

 

Amy, thank you so much for setting up these challenges again. I really don't know how you can do it. But I really am glad that you are.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everybody out there. I hope the new year is good to you. This morning as we were driving to the dairy, (yes I know things are pretty rough when you have to get out of bed on new years day to milk somebody else's cows) we were greeted by an amazing cloud formation, and for a change I had the camera. Which in no way did justice to the early morning sun on this cloud. When the sun came up fully the clouds all disappeared and we are now getting a full summer blast with hot dry winds, which is good for the washing as long as there are no bush fires.

Now I just need to get my act into gear and take some photos of soap to post. Seeing that this blog is supposed to be about soap. I could make a mile long list of resolutions, but I think I will spend my time working on what I have in front of me. Which lately has been the renovations of our "Hut". This is a small cabin on our farm which we have been fixing up to make into a small shop. I need somewhere besides my kitchen to make and store soap, and we have always had a dream to have a farm shop where people can come and enjoy our little valley, and pick up some unique gifts and foods. The whole preparation has taken us heaps longer than we had planned as our budget has been so tight that almost everything has been recycled and done by us. It is so easy to think that we just need to buy this or that, but we had to keep coming back to what our original plan was, which is to have a rustic farm hut, and to use only what we had on hand. I am so proud of what we have achieved, although there is still a few finishing touches to do. I am hopeful that in the next couple of weeks we will be open for people to come and see. We have big plans but for now we are concentrating on soap. Hopefully I wont take too long in posting some pics, and more details.

White Chocolate Truffles

I am just about to make these. They are our all time favourite christmas truffle recipe. I have lost the cookbook and I cant find them anywhere on line. Thankfully my girls put the recipe on the computer, but as this computer is about to be retired I thought I would put the recipe here, for safe keeping. And also to share because they are too good not to share.

Enjoy.....

WHITE CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES

200g White Chocolate

125g packet cream cheese

1 tbs Honey

1 tsp Vanilla essence

1/4 cup Roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped

1/4 cup Coconut

1 cup Coconut, extra.

Melt chocolate over hot water; cool. Beat chocolate, softened cream cheese, honey and essence in a small bowl with electric mixer until smooth. Stir in peanuts and coconut. Cover, refrigerate several hours or until firm. Roll teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls, toss balls in extra coconut. Refrigerate until firm.

To make a tree centrepiece:

125g White chocolate, melted

3 honey ice cream cones

60g dark chocolate

Mark a 6 cm circle on a foil covered tray, spread with a little of the white chocolate. Stack cones together using a small amount of the white chocolate and secure to base. Completely cover cone with a thin layer of white chocolate. Starting at base of cone, place truffles around edge of cone, securing with a small amount of white chocolate. Continue in layers to form tree. Refrigerate until set. Melt dark chocolate over hot water, drizzle over tree. Refrigerate until required.

Bits and Pieces

Yet again it has been ages since my last post. I have actually got some soap made, I did A Turkish Mocha, same as last time with a gradient colour, except I didn't leave any unscented soap out to top it off with and of course the fragrance coloured the soap, but it still looks great. I took a few bars to the last farmers market, just to fill out the table. I had a couple of bars of the last batch left so I thought I would be safe by having these fresh bars there. Not to be, the old bars sold and then most of the fresh ones did too I did tell the lady who bought them that she would have to let them sit for a few weeks and she was fine with that because they were for Christmas presents any way. I also made some soap with amber fragrant oil, I am not really sure what amber is supposed to smell like, but I love the fragrance in this soap. I coloured half of it with gold mica and left the other half plain, but the fragrance discoloured and seemed to engulf the mica, but the scraps of mix that I poured into individual molds came out a really nice gold colour.

But apart from that I have been keeping busy milking the cows and starting our garden. I have got our carrots, tomatoes, zucchinis, onions, beetroot and radishes all planted. I have been busy weeding the garlic, I am spending a bit of time worrying about the garlic as it has spent so much time water logged, and then the weeds came up. so I am hoping that we will at least get enough from the crop to keep us in garlic for the next year and have enough to plant again in the autumn. Still have to plant the potatoes, corn, eggplant, chilli, capsicum, beans and peas, and what ever else I see in the nursery that I feel like growing.

So in between all this there has not been much time for blogging, or taking photos. I can hear a collective sigh of relief from here. But I will be posting photos of the soaps soon. I know I have been hinting about our latest big project, but I am going to keep hinting. It is getting closer to completion. But with the garden needing to be in, and all the weeds growing in the paddocks our weed spraying business is getting busy, so project time is very limited. However we now have a dead line, so soon I will be doing a full post on it.
 I couldn't help my self, here is a sneak peek.

SPRING HAS SPRUNG

I can not believe how long it has been since I put up a blog post. It feels like forever. But we have been busy, not making soap, but busy any way. Spring is definitely here which means life gets more hectic than normal. But it is so nice to be outside in the beautiful sunshine, and to be hanging the washing outside instead of in my new drying room upstairs. There is just something about putting the washing out side and letting the sun hit it.

 

One of the highlights of the past couple of months was that a close family friend had a 5 week job in a small costal town about 4 1/2 hours from where we live. Because he knew he would get lonely being away from home for so long he asked us to come over each weekend. How could we refuse an offer like that. His apartment looked out over the bay, and it was whale season.

 

WARNING: This post contains heaps of photos. Which like the slide shows of old, probably are more interesting to me than you. But I have enjoyed looking through them again.

 

 

 

A whales tail. We saw this mother and calf on our first weekend, it was the only whale sighting in the whole month. We felt very special.

 

Looking out over the bay to the naval base and a wood chip exporter.

 

At the harbour the pelicans and seals were lazing about waiting for some treats from the fishing boats.

 

 

The wind was cold, but that didn't stop us inland folk wanting to get down and explore the rock pools.

 

Some of the inhabitants of the said rock pools. Those crab colours give me some inspiration for a soap.

Our kids were amazed when they learned how a star fish eats its food, now years later they can see for real that the science book was right.

 

Dan being king of the castle.

 

My wonderful husband trying to keep me warm in the icy wind.

 

Green Cape light house (Under repair). This light house sits on the eastern most point in Australia.

The houses were once used by the lighthouse keeper and staff. Today the lighthouse is fully automated.

 

After visiting the lighthouse we followed another road which took us down to the naval warf. There was a ship there so the warf was closed, but we managed to get some photos. Some sailors saw us and nobody came to confiscate our camera, so we assume that there wasn't anything too top secret. But just to be sure I'll only put this photo up.

 

A wallaby hiding in the bush.

 

This tower was built by Ben Boyd originally to be a lighthouse in 1847, but he wasn't allowed to use it as a lighthouse, not long after this his financial empire collapsed and the Davidson family who took it over used it as a whaling station instead, somebody would sit up top and watch for whales. It gave them the edge over their competion, because they saw the whales first. Needless to say the tower has not been used for a very long time.

 

We had a laugh at this poster, it makes the angelfish the same size as a great white shark.

 

To get to see the rock pools sometimes required some steep rock climbing, my shoes were not designed for rock climbing.

 

This wall is a monument to fisher men who have lost their lives off this part of the coast.

 

Back home, signs that spring is almost here, the parsley is huge, and the mandarins are ripening.

 

 

 

The garlic is growing nicely.

 

 

The chooks decided that they needed to eat the red cabbage more than we did. I was not happy.

 

 

One afternoon the kids said that they felt like burning something. So they did, one of the blessings of living on your own farm is that you can feed your inner pyromaniac from time to time. This is not only fun but it helps keep the summer bushfire risk down as all the dead dry fuel gets burned now, when the likely hood of fire danger is extremely low. Just to expand on this point, it rained that night. It is also good excercise, and now that our kids are young adults, we can just let them go. We did teach them fire safety since they were toddlers.

 

Mark and I saw the smoke that was going up, and decided that we didn't want the kids having all the fun, so I grabbed the camera and we went up the bush after them. I couldn't help taking heaps of photos of our little creek. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it is.

 

Sarah with her poly pipe burner.

 

More smoke.

 

A burning blackberry bush.

 

Another shot of the creek.

 

Worn out kids heading home.

 

The first spring flowers. I love the brightness of the first jonquills and daffodils.

 

Happy Spring, or Autumn, or Fall. What ever it is where you are.

 

Hopefully next time I'll have photos and updated of our latest project, and some soap. I haven't been totally slack in the soap department, but I have only made some plain castile and goats milk, both unscented and uncoloured.