Thursday 13 September 2012

.geranium

I know, I've been talking a lot about it lately but I just love geranium essential oil. It smells so delicious: very floral, oily, heavy, rosy. The scent is so rich!.

So, a few days ago I have been thinking about making another geranium soap. So why not making it using faux funnel pour technique to make it look like dessert? And I think it came out beautiful and mouth-watering, it looks like strawberry and cream sundae. Mmmm...

By the way, this is the first soap where I decided to use sunflower oil in place of olive oil. Can't wait for these sacred 4 weeks to end up to try my soap bar finally.For the color I used fuchsia and red labcolors from BrambleBerry.com, and I am very pleased of how they came out. And oh, how I love those little cracks in the white swirl!


Thursday 16 August 2012

.do it yourself: sugar cubes scrub

Sugar cubes are a nice modification of a regular viscous scrub. It smells like you want, you can give it special properties suitable for only you. Great!


I love making sugar cubes! It is super easy! Let's take the next ratio soap base to oil to sugar - 1:0,7:2.

This would be a great gentle sugar scrub. For 3.5 oz. of it you'll need:
1.1 oz. (32 g) transparent soap base
0,77 oz. (22 g) macadamia nut oil
1.9 oz. (55 g) white sugar
1 ml rosewood essential oil
yellow colorant.

Please remember that you have only 3 months to use this scrub. After 3 months you have to throw unused scrub away.

So! First you have to melt soap base. On the picture below you can see me using the white base instead of transparent. This is because my yellow colorant react with white base only.


Next, you add macadamia nut oil to the melted soap base and mix it really, really well. Then, add your colorant. Please pay attention to the picture below - the consistency is liquid and greasy. No worries, that is okay.


Now add the essential oil that you chose and prepare yourself to do everything quick.


After adding sugar your scrub will thicken up very fast, that's why it is better to have your mold ready and move quick. After adding sugar the consistency will look like at the picture below.


Now spray the mold with rubbing alcohol and pour your scrub into the mold fast.


Leave it alone for about 4 hours. After that you can cut it and put it in the jar. Please remember that you have only 3 months to use this scrub. After 3 months you have to throw unused scrub away.


Friday 20 July 2012

.12 things you should know about essential oils

I am a huge fan of Crunchy Betty! A year ago she has post the self written article 21 Things You Should Know About Essential Oils. The first thing I thought after I read that was "Every soapmaker must know this!". So if you want to read the entire article please go visit Crunchy Betty Blog. And here I wanna make sort of a shortcut of it.
Essential oils. Image is taken from the crunchybetty.com

Image is taken from the crunchybetty.com

Most essential oils are high in antibacterial, antifungal, and antiviral properties: This makes them an excellent addition to your homemade cleaning preparations. Oils that are best for cleaning are: Lemon, grapefruit, eucalyptus, peppermint, tea tree, lavender, and rosemary.

Essential oils are miniscule in molecular size, which means they are absorbed well by the skin – making them perfect ingredients in personal care items intended to heal, soften, and nourish. And what is best, they do not accumulate in the body over time – they simply offer up their healing properties and then pass on through. Scientific studies have shown that rosemary essential oil helps your brain perform. Specifically, smelling rosemary essential oil helps memory recall and performance on tests. Interestingly, this study also showed that groups that inhaled either rosemary or lavender essential oil felt much more relaxed than those who inhaled no odor at all.

Fragrance oils and essential oils are NOT the same thing. As a rule of thumb, if you see the word “fragrance” or “fragrance oil” or even “perfume” on anything, you can assume this is synthetic and NOT natural. (Even if it says natural fragrance.) Essential oils are wholly natural and cannot be patented; which means that you’ll never see an essential oil in a pharmaceutical drug. As such, you can expect that the vast majority of mainstream healthcare practitioners will never recommend essential oils as therapeutic alternatives to drugs. More importantly, because essential oils cannot be patented, drug companies will not waste money studying them. This limits our scientific knowledge of essential oils GREATLY, and the majority of what we know about them are things that have been passed down through thousands of years of personal use and experimentation.

Enormous amounts of plants are needed to produce essential oil. In fact, on the extreme end, it takes 4000 pounds of Bulgarian roses to produce 1 pound of essential oil. Other plants like lavender only take 100 pounds of plant material to produce a pound of essential oil. Still, can you imagine how concentrated essential oils must be, in light of how many plants are used to produce them?

Most essential oils should never be used undiluted on the skin. Instead, they should be combined with “real” oils (called carrier oils), waxes, butters, alcohols, or other diluting measures. Because they’re so concentrated, if you don’t dilute, you may end up with an unfortunate reaction (and unhappy skin).

Never use an undiluted essential oil on a baby or child. Children have much thinner, more delicate skin than adults have, and tend to be very sensitive to the potency of essential oils. In fact, even if you do use essential oil in a recipe for children, only use half of the essential oil recommended in the recipe. That’s all they’ll need, anyway.

Essential oils. Image is taken from the crunchybetty.com
Image is taken from the crunchybetty.com

Avoid the following essential oils while pregnant or nursing (and skip EOs completely in your first trimester): Aniseed, cedarwood, chamomile, cinnamon, clary sage, clove, ginger, jasmine, lemon, nutmeg, rosemary, sage (this is only a partial list of some of the more common essential oils – view the full one here).

To test if you’re sensitive to an essential oil (which is probably best to do before using it in a skincare preparation): Combine one drop of essential oil with 1/2 tsp carrier oil (like olive, jojoba, or sweet almond). Rub this on the inside, upper portion of your arm and wait a few hours. If no redness or itching develops, you’re most likely not sensitive to that essential oil. Keep all essential oils out of the reach of children – and avoid contact with your eyes. This is just standard safety precautions, but must be mentioned.

Do not take essential oils internally, especially oils like wintergreen and eucalyptus. While some essential oils may be used well-diluted in something like toothpaste with safety, it’s generally recognized that there’s no need to take essential oils internally. In fact, there are several toxic essential oils that should be avoided even through skin contact. Luckily, these are NOT common essential oils, and most of them you’ll never find in the store.

Not all essential oils are created equally, nor does more expensive necessarily mean “better.” There are certain brands I will use in a less therapeutic fashion (like for cleaning), because they’re far less expensive than their counterparts. When you see a wide fluctuation in price between, say, lavender essential oils, you can bet that the far less expensive one is likely lower in quality. However, a small variation in price differences on the higher end will NOT mean a better essential oil. It will just mean a higher price. (A little birdie also told me that there are also only a handful of essential oil distilleries in the world, which means that most essential oils come from the exact same places – thus there is little difference in quality between the more “typically priced” EOs.) What I’m saying here is: Understand that you DO have to pay for quality, but that if you’re just using essential oils in non-therapeutic fashions, it’s okay to use less expensive oils.

Essential oils will last for at least 5 years (if not 10), so one bottle could literally last you a decade. Hopefully that thought will help mitigate the cost involved in purchasing some essential oils. Because they are SO concentrated and only a tiny amount is needed in anything you do, they’ll last you a very, very long time. The only exception to this rule is citrus oils, which will see a reduction in potency after a year or two.

Remember that what you’re allergic to in food, you will be allergic to in essential oils. So if, for some reason, you can’t eat sage without breaking out in a rash, steer clear of sage essential oil (or any product containing it).

Read more at Crunchy Betty Blog.

Friday 6 July 2012

.do it yourself: homemade bath soak

I know a lot have been said of that. But this is quite easy way to make your own homemade bath soak!


First you gotta decide what properties you want your bath soak to have or what scent do you want to bathe yourself in. For example I love lavander, i love the scent, the look and everything it makes to my body and mood! If you are tired but can't fall asleep or insomnia tortures you - this is like the very best recipe to lull you down to bed. Let's make you 3 bags! What you need:

9.9 oz. sea salt
0.48 oz. of lavander beads
45 drops of lavander essential oil
0.7 coconut oil (optional).
a spatula
3 organza or bath tea bags


No matter what kind of beads you take, it may be grade 1 as well as the lower. 45 drops of essential oil will give us about 15 drops per bath. You can surely use less or more it's up to you. But I would not recommend going over 20 drops per bath as high concentrations of any essential oil may harm your skin. And as for coconut oil again, you can use more or not use it at all, for me the target is to moisturize my skin but at the same not to make my bath greasy.
First take a big bowl and mix well sea salt, essential oil and coconut oil. Mix very well. If salt grains seem too large you can work em in the food processor. But it will still melt in your bath, so there is no difference. Now you are ready to add lavander beads. You can mix it in or leave it like that.


Then divide your salt into 3 equal parts and put each part into single organza or bath tea bag. And this is pretty all. Enjoy!

Be careful! Don't use when allergic or pregnant.

Wednesday 27 June 2012

.ylang & geranium

Ylang and geranium are two of my favourite essential oils. When I was choosing scent for my new batch of soap I decided to give it a try and mixed it together. I love how essential oils may mix creating some unbelievable fragrance that you would never know! For example recently I've found out essential oils blend that smell like dried berries and other with the scent of pepsi. Nice, ha? I'll share this secret soon!

I don't want to waste your time so my target in all this "plants-posts" is to find out in particular what useful properties does essential oil give us.

Ylang-ylang is a super stress reliever as it helps to relax, removes insomnia, depression and stress. It is great for all skin types because it moistures, renew skin cells, heals damages and scratches and what's most important it controls oily secretion of your skin. Ylang-ylang has aphrodisia properties: it makes women and men more sensual. Also, a few resources reported that it helps to recover breasts elasticity after pregnancy.
Try to blend with bergamot, lemongrass, rosewood, grapefruit, petitgrain, patchouli, jasmin, cassia, rose, orange, lavander, lemon, neroli, sandal, citronella.
Be careful! Don't use when pregnant! Not supposed to be used by children younger 12 years.

Geranium is like all types of doctors in one little flower. I won't even try to list all of it's properties, i will just mention those which concerns skin and aromatherapy. Geranium essential oil heals skin damages and diseases as eczema, psoriasis, dermatitis, herpes. It strengthen blood circulation, renew skin cells, controls sebum, it is perfect for oily, sensitive and irritated skin.
Try to blend with orange, lemon, basil, bergamot, grapefruit, jasmin, juniper, cedar, lavander, patchouli, clove, lime, neroli, rose, rosmary, sandal, citronella, petitgrain, rosewood.
Be careful! Don't use when pregnant! Not supposed to be used by children younger 6 years and people with low blood sugar.

So what we have here - SuperHealer and SuperReliever altogether in one bar of soap. Super! It will be available through my Avadavat Etsy Shop soon.

Thursday 21 June 2012

.paper

Hey dear friends, I've got a little something for you today. These are the resources where you can find digital paper for free. I love using digital paper for the packaging of my soaps. It is super easy and always up-to-date. You can make your signature paper for packaging, adjusted to the holiday themes, or even personalized for the gift sets. Hope you will enjoy my selection.



Resources: Mel Stampz; the hybrid chick; Shabby Princess; Persnickety Prints; Sheryl K Designs; artamongus