In Search Of My Holy Grail

I cut my second log of soap last night. It's still quite moist inside, but I was dead keen to see what the swirls look like inside.

It turns out they didn't go through all the way. I was reading yesterday that I should've poured the coloured soap from higher up so that it would reach the bottom of the soap/pan. Something to rememeber/try next time =D

In the meantime, I thought I'd show you how I'm progressing.

The ones on the left are the olive, castor and coconut oil soap made from the mineral water bottle.

The ones with the red swirls are a olive oil and grapeseed oil soap. After I cut the soap, there were a few little scraps that fell to the ground. I immediately took them to the sink to wash my hands with. Too impatient? Moi? NEVER....

Raspberry swirl!

Well not really a *storm* per se. But it was definately more sewing than I have done in the last 8-9 months.

In fact, come to think of it, it might be the first time the sewing machine has come out all year! How on earth did it get to June? Didn't this year just start???

Anyway, I bought a whole bunch of cushions for our couch about a year or two ago from a charity store. This was at the same as my huge material stash haul, where the lady gave me $1 a bag of whatever material I could put together. Needless to say I filled up BIG.

I came home and made a bunch of cushions. Unfortunately my sewing machine doesn't have a button hole maker, so I improvised by sewing on buttons and then little ribbons that could 'loop' over the buttons.

Worked great in theory, but looked *super* tacky, and on top of which, I'd measured the covers incorrectly so there was lots of empty space, which in turn made the button loops redundant.

I got up the motivation to cut some new proper sized cushion covers a few months ago, and even cut out some funky easy patchwork - strips - so I could try something different.

Then it sort've gathered dust in a corner.

We have guests coming to stay this weekend, and the house really needs to look ship shape. Last night hubby stayed out at a friend's for the evening, so I took advantage of a quiet night at home and got out the sewing machine.

Here's what resulted:

Classy brown bias binding cushions

Close up of pilllow case/cushion cover

In a bid to get around the lack of a button hole maker, I ended up using the pillowcase idea. Where you can slip the cushion inside the cover. I think I still did these two cushion covers a touch too small (you can see the stuffing bulge out of the one on the right), but in all I'm pretty happy with them.

The material is an upholstery type material, and I even put a bit of bias tape trimming on the edge to give it a bit of class. The sewing is pretty ordinary, but I'm pretty proud, nonetheless.

However my favourite by far was this one:

Striped white and blue cushions

It was supposed to be a square cushion. But I seemed to misplace one of the strips I cut. I ended up grabbing another piece of material and just attaching at the end. Somehow or other it turned rectangle instead of square, but I was very surprised by the result. I personally think it looks inspired or at least 'meant' to look the way it is.

Not that it matches with any of our decor. LOL

But the best thing about it? It has a ZIPPER at the back! I've never done zippers before. I had been told I'd need a zipper foot. When I spoke to mum about it she just scoffed at me and said all the clothes she had ever made for me (and she's made a lot) never used a zipper foot. So armed with that information I bravely soldered on and sewed the zipper in.

All in all I'm pretty happy with my sewing. I still have two cushions left - they're much bigger than these.  I have some pretty green flowery type upholstery material sitting around, so I might go and do that tonight!

After close to a year of freaking out and dawdling, I finally got around to making soap on the weekend.

Specifically, cold process soap.

They say that soap making is an addiction. I thought I was addicted to mmu and miy lotions, makeup, cleansers etc.

But nothing prepared me for soap.

Within 24 hours I had made 3 batches. They are currently drying and curing and should be ready to test and use in about a month.

If I had been brave and started making soap when I had originally started getting a hankering for it, I'd have so many bars to use now.

Instead I've still been buying soap, and making sure they fit all my criteria can be a bit tricky. Natural vegetable oils (no lard), only essential oils, no fragrance oils, a hard bar that doesn't melt too fast in the shower, a luxurious feel, glide and lots of bubbles. And most importantly I don't want to feel dry afterwards.

I can ask the soapmaker if she has something like that, but if she says no, then I'm kind've stuck, because I don't want to go back to industrially made soap.

For the past year I've been reading a number of places to get started. Some of the highlights included:

Millers Soap
SoapDish (online forum)
Bunches and bunches of books on soap making.

I decided that I wanted to make a castille (olive oil) soap because not only are they supposed to be milder and better for your skin, they are supposed to have a lovely luxurious feel to them. I also happen to have 4 litres of it sitting in my lab, so I may as well use that, than my more expensive 100 and 500ml oils (coz once they're gone, I need to go and order more).

I also added castor oil and coconut oil for hardness and bubbles.

I ran my figures through a soap calculator to sort out how much lye I would need to use.

This is the recipe I ended up using:

300 grams olive oil
10 grams extra virgin coconut oil
10 grams castor oil

106 grams water
40.08 grams lye

First you put the lye in the water. In my case I put it into a stainless steel jug that I picked up at a second hand store (I got a second one with a lid, because I decided I was worried about the pretty patterns on the one I originally bought might fade if it went into contact with lye for prolonged periods of time).

First time I put the lye in, I accidently got a little whiff of the fumes from the lye and water chemical reaction.

OMG.

I felt like my lungs were on fire!

I quickly put the jug as far away from me as possible, and marched out to the front door where I left the jug to cool down.

I then went to line my moulds.

I have read that you can use old milk cartons (washed of course) as soap moulds. We had a milk carton in the fridge, but I wasn't prepared to scull half a litre of milk in order to get the mould. Instead, I noticed in our recycling box there was a 1 litre plastic bottle that had previously held mineral water.

I grabbed it with glee and set about cleaning it up so I could use it as a mould.

Next up was weighing and melting the oils together.

When the temp of oils was around 70 degrees celcius I took the bowl off the stove and went outside to get my lye jug. I felt the base, and it was no longer warm. I put my thermometer in, but it didn't really register anything.

I couldn't remember if the temperature of lye and oils were supposed to be the same or not, but I figured, this was only a small batch, so let's see what will happen. I switched my stick blender on, poured in the lye slowly and proceeded to whizz the stick around the bowl.

I blended with the stick blender on and off until it got a thick puddingy-like. This is what is known as 'trace' in soap making terms. If I put the stick blender out of the pot, there'd be a little imprint from the blender in the bowl.

I then added scent. In my case this was twenty drops of cedarwood and twenty drops of rosemary essential oil and blended some more. I found out later that this wasn't really enough scent, and that chances are it won't make it through to the end. So something to remember for next time (add more scent).

After some more blending, the soap looked like it was starting to gel together a bit so I stopped.

I then grabbed a funnel and poured my soap mixture into the mineral water bottle.

Next up, I went and put some towels around it, put the lid back on and put in the corner.

Next morning when I went to check on it, the soap had solidified into a bar of sorts =D

Batch One on the $1 Shoe Rack to cure..

2 comments

Last night I went and cut the bottle apart, and then cut the soap into about 5 pieces. It cut through like dense cheese........ mmMMmm.... the colour is like a pale yellow, and I swear if I didn't know it was soap, I'd take a bite... LOL.

It's still a bit mushy and powdery like, but I can't wait to try it!

After my first pour, I ended up feeling so excited that I immediately went about putting together a second recipe.

My second batch I used olive oil and some grapeseed oil that I had infused with rose petals about a year ago. I haven't used the oil for anything, so figured I could use it to test out on soap making.

Second batch I got a bit braver and decided to try to do some pretty coloured swirls. When I got to pour stage, I only poured out abt 3/4 of the soap. The remaining quarter I added some ultramarines/oxides, mixed it altogether and then poured it in random strokes over the top. Then I grabbed my knife and swirled the soap around.

Batch 2 with purple professional swirls

Result? Really professional looking swirls. Or at least I thought it was.

The second time around I ended up using an old baking tin about 12 cm deep. I had picked up two from a garage sale a while ago when collecting soaping paraphenalia. I lined the tins with baking paper so that 1. the soap won't stick to the mould and be hard to take out, and 2. The tin looked a bit rusty, so I wasn't even sure if it was stainless steel. So I figure the baking paper would be a good insurance against icky reactions.

I was a little worried about the second batch. It took a lot longer to set, and at one stage when I uncovered the towels to look at the soap, I nudged a bit too hard, and now there is a icky dent in it =(

The soap also cooled down a lot faster than my mineral bottle soap, and I was worried that something had gone wrong, as I didn't let the soap trace to super thick gel pudding.

It is still sitting in the tin (I won't upend it until tonight) but at least when I checked it late last night it was starting to set a bit more.

The third batch I did last night.....

This time I added cocoa butter. =D =D =D

This time I added a bit more scent. 40 drops of rosemary essential oil and two glops of patchouli essential oil. Not very professional, but I was too excited to weigh out. Lazy and bad, I know.

I also did swirls on the third batch but added more colour. This batch is darker than my first. I'll be curious to see how it turns out. I wrapped this one up super tight and put it in the living room (warmest room in the house when the reverse cycle is on).

Batch 3 with dark blue swirls (even though it looks exactly like batch 2)

I checked on it this morning, and it seems ok?

I will see if it's ready to cut tonight or tomorrow night.

While both batch 2 and 3 have baking paper to line. I haven't done it proper with cuts or anything, so I'm pretty sure when I upend these they will be a bit wonky on the edges.

I don't care though. I think I'll be so thrilled that I made my own soap - and that these two batches have swirls in them, that I think the world could cave in, and I'd die happy soaping up in the shower... LOL.

Right now my first batch is laid out in a cardboard box on baking paper waiting to dry out. I found out that it's actually better for air to circulate all around the bars. So I'll move them over probably to the $1 shoe rack I picked up last weekend. I cleaned out my 'walk in wardrobe aka spare bedroom' on Sunday afternoon, and chucked a whole bunch of shoes (I'm trying to be ruthless). So it turns out I won't need to fill up the third shoe rack after all. That, and there'd be no room to put my third shoe rack in that room.. haha. So instead, I think that it will be a nice soap dryer for me.

I think I've found a new addiction.

In other news, Hubby wont' be home tonight, and hopefully if I have time, I have plans to sew. I might just move the sewing machine out to the living room to do it. My lab is full of soap and miy stuff atm, and I don't really feel like moving it all to do sewing. But the cushions need to be given new coverings urgently...

Naturally I left my camera at work on the weekend so there aren't any pics. But I'll make a point of documenting tonight to show you guys tomorrow. Heck, I might even get around to making another batch......... mebbe.........

geminisc's little biz

I was just quickly scrolling through my posts (which I know are far and few on the ground these days - sorry!) and realised that I never officially announced my store. That, and the post below this one may be confusing for anyone who wasn't aware of why I would go get a banner made.

Most of you may already know (although some of you may not) that I now sell my MIY at markets and online.

This has been going on for abt a year, and I'd probably argue that my posts have dropped significantly since I started selling - mainly due to lack of time on my part.

I work 5 days a week on top of my markets on the weekend, and any spare time is given to home or making more products.

Atm my inventory includes: lipsticks, foundation, blush, eyeshadow lip balm, face cleanser and face cream.

Soon to be added after testing include: lip gloss, lip scrub, night creams, serums, bath bombs, bath salts, etc... the list is never ending... *rueful smile*

My online store can be found here: www.iheartcosmetics.net

FYI, I also have a birthday sale atm  - all my face creams and cleansers are on sale for all of May.

Recently I ordered a banner from Vista Print (they had a freebie sale excluding image upload and shipping). All you get is the banner, no holes to hang, and I didn't order the adhesive hangers to go with. I finally got around to unfurling it last night and putting in rivets in the corners. (Mum gave me her rivet maker from her stash which is DECADES old)

The minute I sat on the ground to put in the rivets Freddie crawled up to me for a cuddle. Naturally I gave him a pat but explained I was busy atm.

When I turned around to put in the last rivet, I felt a cold nose push up against my lower back.

After completing the rivets and getting the camera to take a pic, this is what I saw:

Fred glares at banner: What have you got that I don't have?

One of my all time favourite novels is Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte.

Imagine my delight when for the last few weeks they have been showing a BBC series of Jane Eyre on cable tv.

They actually showed another version a few months back, but that was fairly average.

This version on the other hand was to absolutely die for.

So well acted, gorgeous cinematography, and the chemistry between Jane and Mr Rochester.....

*swoons quietly*

If you haven't seen this, definately worth watching.

It makes you sniffle up and ache and cry in all the right places.

Hrm, that just sounded weird, didn't it?

Just go and watch the damn thing, and you'll understand what I mean.

So in case you weren't aware (for the Sydneysiders) the centrepoint tower food court complex is shutting down for refurbishment. This means that all stores inside are shutting down.

Which means...

Geminisc Bargain Time!

Today, after doing some obligatory wedding stuff, I walked by the health food store, and it happened to be their last day. 70% off store wide.

In saunters geminisc, picking up supplies for her miy, including some expensive essential oils. My total bill? $86.10 reduced to a crazy $25.83

*score!!!!*

A few weeks ago I helped a colleague pick out a handbag, and in the process found one that I liked. It's got 3 zip pockets, and is in shiny white, which will look great as a neutral, and will work wonderfully as a summer handbag. At the time, I put it down, trying to be good.

I walked past today, and noticed it said Closing Down Sale. So in I walked. My handbag is still there.....

And it's been reduced. Originally $55, it then has a tag that says $29. Now it has a tag of $20..........

I didn't have enough cash on me, but I told myself, if it's still there tomorrow (pay day), it's mine.

I'm really trying to be good, by giving myself some wait time.

Oh, and did I tell you about my last shoe buy? Remember those shoes that I was eyeing about a month ago? They disappeared, and I regretted not purchasing..

But last week, lo and behold, there they were! I'm not sure if they got more stock, or they simply found it in the back, but either way I snaffled them up - even though they cost a whopping $60. But it will go with pants and skirts, and will make me look a touch more polished.

You'll be proud to know that I also went back to the jewellery sale today - but managed to NOT buy any more jewellery. Mainly because I only had $5 in the wallet, and that was my lunch money. And paying $5 by card is a touch too ridiculous. Even for me...

Course, who knows what will happen tomorrow when I go back to look for my handbag.. *gulp*

Still tons of bargains to share with you - but I really need to upload pics to do them all justice.

I meant to take photos last night, but got bit by the jewellery making bug, and finished off a new necklace and earring set, as well as a few more earrings and another ring.

Photos soon - promise!!

But boy, I must say, my bank balance is taking a hard hit. I should be saving up for more miy supplies - gonna start selling a few more goodies next year - but I keep on spending that cash on other hobbies...............

You don't want to know how much I've spent on beads lately.......

But I really am feeling the crafty itch.. I've been found reading lots of sewing blogs lately. I really should finish the skirt I started making. And I have all these great ideas that I want to put into practice... Oh if only I had enough hours in the day!!! This wedding stuff is really taking it out of me.

Still so many things to organise! Ah well, keeps me out of trouble right? Although it hasn't stopped me from sniffing out bargains. *fingers crossed*

My work colleague was just telling me today how it seemed like I had a magnet that drew me to every bargain...

Not sure that's necessarily true. In the case of the last few days, it was more that I'd been watching these stores, and waiting for the right time to pounce.. LOL

There's also a new lingerie outlet that I heard about last week - that I'm hoping to go visit sometime soon. But seeing my schedule (busy buying handbag tomorrow, busy sorting out wedding photographer on Friday), it seems very unlikely that I'll get there until next week.

Hope you guys are all sniffing out bargains too!!! And photos soon - promise!

Remember me buying a whole bunch of diva jewellery last year? Well we've moved offices, but there is another diva store nearby, which is actually closing down. so for all of this week, all stock is $5 or below.....

*gasp*

I accidently wandered in yesterday and spent abt $20. I dragged a friend back today on the premise that she might find something, and she shouldn't say not to a deal... and I myself ended up spending $39... that's about $49 worth of stuff! This from the girl who has just abt bought $100 worth of beads etc in total over the last three weeks....

*slaps self*

I will try and take pics either tonight or sometime this week. Camera is at home, and the fiance really doesn't need to know abt all this expenditure.................

*looks around room idly*

*slumps over the keyboard*