Bramble Berry Soap Swap!

Back in October, Bramble Berry announced that they were sponsoring a soap swap. The rules were that you make 12 bars of soap using the same Bramble Berry fragrance, send them in to Bramble Berry, pay for the return shipping, and then wait for a box of 12 soaps made by 12 other soapers to arrive at your doorstep. There were cold-process and melt-and-pour categories. Yours truly was in the melt-and-pour category, of course, and I swapped my soaps with other melt-and-pour soapers.

Here's my entry (and there they are all packed up and ready to ship on the right):

I used Bramble Berry's Lavender 40/42 and Patchouli essential oils to make a blend. I also used a clear soap base, Mauvey Gem mica and a touch of liquid violet colorant to give the soap a sparkly, deep purple color. The mold is Mold Market's Clam Shell mold.

I shrink-wrapped my soaps in plastic wrap, labeled them, and then placed them in cello bags tied off with wrapphia and a tag.

By mid-November, the soaps for the swap were pouring into Bramble Berry HQ. It turned out that over a hundred soapers participated in the swap. That's a lot of soap. (If you check out this Soap Queen blog post, you can spot my soap - it's the first one on the left. Yay!)

This past Monday, my swap package arrived containing 12 soaps from some very talented soapers. I was so excited to see (and sniff) each one! Goodness knows I have enough of my own soap around the house, but it is fun to try other people's soap and see what others are up to.

So here are the soaps I received:

From left to right:

Moroccan Mint by Barclay's Soap Box

Tomato Leaf by Barclay's Soap Box

Grapefruit by The Bubble Bakery

Clockwise from left:

A blend of Watermelon, Summer Fling, Pearberry, and Sun-Ripened Raspberry (and a sweet little pig eraser) by Soap Queen TV

Jersey Beach Bar (Coconut fragrance) by The Paper Mermaid (this bar also contains genuine Cape May sand)

Almond Biscotti by Lisa B's Creations

(By the way, the Soap Queen TV soap arrived in perfect condition - it is dented in the photo because I was a super dork and dropped it on the kitchen floor.)

Clockwise (from back left):

Warm Vanilla Sugar Ball by Morning Glory Naturals Gina S.

Bath Time! (Summer Fling fragrance) by Donna's Creations

Lavender (with crushed lavender buds and embedded Silly Bandz) by Terri's Touch

Clockwise (from back left):

Wasabi Rush by K&C's Bathhouse

Nag Champa and Yuzu by The Bath Snob

Moonlight Pomegranate by Indigo Moon

I had so much fun with this soap swap! Thank you to everyone who participated - you are all amazingly talented, creative soapers! Receiving your soaps was like getting an early Christmas present. :)

And a big thank you to everyone at Bramble Berry for making the soap swap happen, especially Amber and Anne-Marie. I had the pleasure of exchanging several emails with Amber over the course of the swap, and she was always on top of things and super helpful and friendly. And Anne-Marie is always working hard to help us soapers and bath and beauty folks. Thanks for all of your support! (And thank you for the Mangosteen and Sheer Freesia fragrance oil samples! Mmm-mmm!)

Any of you participate in the swap? Please do share! We'd love to see your fun soapy hauls!

Sweet Sangria Soap!

So, a few days ago, I decided that I wanted to make a soap with Bramble Berry's Sugar Plum Fairy fragrance oil, but I wanted to call the scent something else. I usually stick to a fragrance oil's given name, but I wanted something more seasonal, more summer-y. I sniffed and sniffed it, trying to figure out what I thought it smelled like.





This fragrance oil is very sweet - lots of fruit and sugar notes. I thought it smelled like fruit punch or a jellybean. I came up with "Fruit Punch Jellybean," but I wasn't sure if I was wild about that moniker. So I asked my husband to take a whiff and tell me what he thought it smelled like, and what I should call it. He said it smelled like wine.

Hmmm. Now I really didn't know what to think. Wine?

Well, I could see that. I mean, wine is pretty much fermented fruit, right?

So I took my dilemma to the awesome Wonder Turtle Soaps fans and asked them what I should do. And one of the fans (actually, it was my mom, who is a big fan not only of my soaps, but also of me) suggested that if I thought it smelled like fruit and sugar and Ken, my husband, thought it smelled like wine, then maybe I should go with Sangria?
 
Of course! What a brilliant suggestion! My brain was so stuck on candy that Sangria probably never would have entered my mind. But, basically, wine + fruit + sugar = Sangria. And what could be better for summertime?

The suggestion inspired me to create something way cooler than what I was orignally planning. I was going to do a solid beveled square of merlot sparkle mica-colored soap with the Sugar Plum Fairy fragrance oil.

Pretty, but ... yawn.

But this Sangria thing - my merlot sparkle mica would still be perfect, and I could do a cool chunk soap in my loaf mold, the chunks being the "fruit" floating in the "wine."

I pulled out my trusty silicone brownie bites pan and poured fragranced squares of gold, orange, and green for my soapy fruits - lemons, pineapples, oranges, tangerines, peaches, green apples, what have you. After they set up (which seemed to take only FOREVER), I cut the squares into chunks.

Next, I fragranced and poured some merlot-colored soap into my loaf mold, filling it just short of halfway. I quickly spritzed my chunk embeds with rubbing alcohol and dropped them into the merlot-colored soap in batches, using up half of my chunks. I gave the first layer a final spritz, acknowledged that it looked like some sort of weird stew, and let it harden up.

Then I repeated the step above - more merlot soap and the rest of the embeds.

And then it was time to wait.

Ugh. The waiting ...

The next day, I felt that mix of excitement and nervousness that I always feel before I unmold and slice a loaf soap. The soap cut beautifully and looked very much like I had hoped it would.

And it smells a lot like a Sangria - sweet, sugary, and fruity.

Great success! (And thanks again to the Wonder Turtle Soaps fans - I have so much fun with you guys, and you all keep me so inspired!)

Check out my Sweet Sangria soap at Wonder Turtle Soaps on Etsy and pick you up a bar or two or so of this yummy, summery soap!


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