My First Soap Creations!

I finally did it! I made my first batch of Melt and Pour Soaps!
They don't look like the prettiest things in the world, but frankly as it was my very first time, I'm just happy that it wasn't a disaster.
I decided for my first batch to use the worst quality base that I had. I got a lot of stuff off a woman on eBay that didn't have the time to make soaps, but this base looked like it had been melted a couple of times before. It was cloudy white and it had a few bits in it. Wierd, I know but this literally was just a test.

The first half of the batch is Tea Tree scented, only lightly as I know a lot of Tea Tree can even make my eyes water, and I am not sensitive to any scent that I've come across. I tried to add some blue and green colour to make a nice Tea Tree turquoise but I don't think I added enough, lol you can't really see any colour in the photo and only a little in reality.
You can see the inevitable bubbles on the top, I haven't got my alcohol spray sorted yet.

To the second half of the batch, I added some chamomile and meant to add Vitamin E too, but in all my excitement, I plain forgot! It has added a nice pale yellow-green to the soap and it smells lovely with the Tea Tree, fresh and calming yet it's really subtle. I think I can pronounce the recipie a success though, and I'll be using chamomile again! You can't really see it from the pictures, but it really gives a nice hand-made look to the soap.

I did have a little bit of an incident as I left the soaps in the kitchen overnight and they were slightly slimy in the morning. I believe this is because the kitchen was damp and it's reacted with the soap a bit, but never fear, I took ahold of my trusty kitchen roll and gave them a wipe over to get rid of the slime before I wrapped them in cling film and put them in an airtight container for storage.

I'm not too bothered that they didn't come out so beautiful, like I said this is my first time so it was just a test, and after all, they're only going to be sent to friends and family for "testing" right now. No sales until I get my safety assessment, I'm afraid.

I think I'm hooked, though, so there's probably going to be more on the way this week! Maybe even this afternoon... I just can't wait!

Small update: It must have been a dodgy batch of base because it doesn't lather... at all. Maybe those will stay in the "lesson learnt" box haha.

Epic Clear-Up

So, I won the auction, I have just about everything I need to start making some tester soaps on the way to me! (Not looking forward to missing the postman as it's going to be something close to 5Kg! And I think my postman doesn't bother to deliver anything that's more than one bit of paper in an envelope, but don't get me started on that.) I'm excited to finally get started but before that, there's a whole room to clear out. It was our lodger's bedroom and though he officially moved out back in January, there's still a lot of his stuff in there, not to mention the bed and chair taking up room too, so there's not much space to move!
As I've said before, I plan on taking over a good half of the room and setting it up as a sort of studio. Our kitchen is tiny so it's not really practical for me to use it and get all of my stuff out of the way before dinner. There's a set of shelves I think I can salvage at least some of and a lot of wood hanging about that we were going to make a wall with at one point. After drying the damp out of the room, I'm going to make a nice long workbench with plenty of room for everything, including the old microwave I laid claim to so I don't have to walk to the kitchen and back with sloppy soap!
Yeah, up until now there's not been a lot of jobs finished around our house, but along with this new hobby, I plan on motivating us to get things done that need finishing. A freshly tidied room always makes everything else look bad, right?
So today, my fella's getting off work early and after a couple of really important things get done, I'm going to try and get him to help me move some things, that's if he can get some boxes from work. When I was a kid, you could get cardboard boxes anywhere! But now with the big save the Earth thing, people are just putting them for recycling without actually giving me a chance to use them again first! Does that seem like a backwards step to you?

Anyway, there's the eternal housework to get on with, so that's it until I get something else done that's blogworthy.

First Steps

Lately, I've been looking at starting out into soap making and other crafts as a way of making a little bit of money for myself while I'm looking for full-time work.
I've always made things, as long as I can remember I haven't been happy unless I'm creating something, whether it's writing stories (I have one that's been slowly growing since I was 15) or painting, making papier mache or trying the latest kid-fad like friendship bracelets or scoubidous.
So I'm putting my mediocre skills to work and I think it'll be interesting if I keep a blog of my progress, plus it will give me more reason to keep working on, and even finish some projects for once!

Right now I have three projects that I'm working on.
One is a painting as a wedding present for my best friend. I think it'll be a lovely and personal gift, and seeing as they have just about every practical thing for their house, it'll be nice to have something decorative. I'm split between ideas for it though. I first thought of a close-up of a couple's hands, holding on to each other and symbolising unity.
Second is my video! My first time using Adobe Premier and I've decided to make a small series of videos based around Lost Perfect World, a Perfect World MMO private server that I play. It will be the tale of an alien/native species hybrid and her struggles in the world. So far I have about 20 seconds of intro but I'm proud of the quality. No blue background, white text combo for me! The server is currently down for maintenance, so progress is halted for a while, but the developers there are usually speedy and I'm expecting a large update when they get back.
Finally, there's my big new project. Soap making. I looked at some interesting crafts on the web, eventually bought Making Candles and Soaps for Dummies from eBay and I'm stuck on the idea. This is my big project, my money-maker (hopefully) and what's going to take most of my time once I have it all set up. Currently, I'm gathering what's left of the things that I'll need to make melt and pour soaps. Some might say this isn't "true" soap making, because the glycerin soap base is pre-made, but I'll be spending time making it into beautiful creations with wonderful colours and scents. Once I'm set-up I'll be testing my creations on friends and family to get a good opinion, then if everything is good to go, I'll set up an eBay shop and delve into being a cottage industry.

That's all for today, I'm just waiting now to win an eBay auction for a bargain set of supplies! Fingers crossed!