RobsCreations

I made soap with the CP process only once before and it has been  beginner's luck   a success . OK, first time I used a recipe I found on a book and I made only a few minor changes (like using water instead of beer, and bamboo powder instead of kaolin clay). For my second time, I wanted to use the leftover oils/butter I had at home...I created the recipe myself, but I passed it through a lye calculator (twice), as textbooks require! Here you have my recipe (I'm not violating any copyright, I'd say :-) ) I wanted to add a personal touch to this recipe and I decided to use coffee to color and scent the soap bar. I prepared a medium Moka machine and kept aside the used coffee grounds. After having mixed the oils and the lye solution, I've hand-whisked the emulsion, split it in two and added coffee (3 espresso shots) to one part and coffee grounds to the other. I've poured the emulsion after reaching a very light trace and that's the res...

Not much to be said besides what's in the title!  Bamboo powder to scrub and sweet almond oil to nourish. ENJOY!

Few weeks ago I bumped into this video  by chance. I got stricken by the ability of the lady (Christina Griffiths) and by the interesting technique she was using to create some super cute Baby cards. She used water colours to colour some embossed animal figures. In this other   video ,  Christina used a gold shimmering mica to water colour her cards and she really did an amazing job!  I don't have water colours at home, but I have plenty of mica and pigments and I wanted to try them. I went for very simple cards (nothing compared to  Christina's) that I've also decorated with cornflower petals and with an embossed sentiment. Micas are a naturally existing  silicates which can occur in scales , sheets or flakes . In the cosmetics field, coloured micas are fine pigment-coated powders that are used to add bright colours and iridescence (shimmer) to many products.  Besides using micas in soap making , I have used t...

Silicone Molds ♥ Dinkalulu.com ♥ WhysperFairy.com ♥ Molds4You.com: CONGRATS!!!!! Blog Winner is...... : Thank you RobsCreations for your entry!!!! You I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS!!! I'M SO HAPPY AND GRATEFUL!

Spoiler: it worked!!! Anyway, it's worth going through the entire post for comments and the final soap test! An incredibly important step: wooden mould lining ! If you don't do it in the correct way you can have spills all over your working surface and this is definitely not good when working with a very caustic emulsion (lye+oils are still not fully saponified when you pour the emulsion in the mould so they are still highly caustic ). Looking on the internet I found this  amazing   video  and...voilà! I managed to line my mould in few minutes and in a much safer way than I've ever done before (when doing M&P it happened to me to lose a lot of soap because of holes in the corners!!!) I've chosen the Beer soap (Shaving soap) recipe from Janice Joyce  'Make your own soap' book. Thing is, that I didn't have a flat beer at home or the Kaoline clay so I went for distilled water and finely ground bamboo powder, respectively. This soap...

I have been preparing soap  only   with the Melt&Pour method so far (see the following post  for more details) but I always wanted to try the grand-mother-way of making soap (Cold Process or CP)    too .  I allowed myself to take some extra time and to organize things properly before starting.  Ahead of my first CP soap making session I have tried to gather as many info as I could, I bought a small booklet with recipes, the safety  equipment  and working materials. For details on LYE safety and safety equipment please refer to this amazing and detailed post  from Soap Queen TV bog (The original blog of Brambleberry (R) ). Recipe book... I bought this one from TheSoapKitchen.co.uk for less than 9 Euros. It's a handy and nice booklet with suggestions, tips and 11 recipes. Only a small negative thing: it suggests to exchange opinions, experiences and recipes on a blog that actually doesn't exist... in their defence I have to ...

An easy and light dessert! Here is what you need: 125 gr of raspberries 45 gr of sugar 3 x sheets of gelatin (to be softened in cold water  in advance ) 1 glass of water  Wash the  raspberries  and then dry them with a piece of kitchen paper, Blend the raspberries with a kitchen  blender, Add the water to dilute the puree and then transfer it in a small casserole, Add the sugar and the gelatin and gently warm the liquid up to allow sugar and gelatin to melt, Remove the casserole from the stove and let it cool down a bit before pouring in small glass containers Leave the glasses in the fridge for at least 3 hours  Tips: You can filter the raspberry puree (before adding sugar and gelatin) if you want to get rid of the seeds Remove the dessert from the fridge 15 minutes before eating it  Add a couple of drops of a great balsamic vinegar Comments: GREAT!!! No negative comments this time! :-)