This week's soap challenge was to create our own "scent blend" using any fragrance oil or essential oils we have on hand.  Given the nature of my trade I have to admit I have a lot of essential oils!  I feel more confidant blending them into a carrier oil to use in my facial room than blending them into soaps.  For some reason I have terrible luck with how my goat milk soaps turn out with essential oils.  A wonderful blend of essential oils that smell good before adding them to the soap turn out smelling putrid! 

So far all of the goats milk soaps I've made have been with lavender or a lavender blend. So this time I'm leaving out the lavender.  I'm also staying away from my fruity and citrus oils because they are my FAVORITES and I have a lot of soap with those oils.

I'm looking for a woodsy or floral outcome.

These are the different oils I experimented with:
palmarosa, bergamot, ylang ylang, sandalwood, rose, geranium, patchouli, clove, tea tree, palma rosa, cedarwood

I tried to stay with the 3,2,1 ratio but it just didn't have the right smell so my blend is definitely heavy on the base notes.  Which might work out better because my essential oils always tend to disappear by the time their done curing! grrrr

Here's the final product:
15 drops rose
10 drops ylang ylang
15 drops sandalwood
15 drops cedarwood
25 drops bergamot

I blended it into my basic goats milk soap recipe.  I also experimented with acai juice, to see what kind of color it might add to the soap.  At trace I divided the soap and added the organic acai juice to half and then swirled them together before pouring into the mold.  The acai juice turned into a khaiki, green/brown color.  Not the purple/plum color I was hoping for. 

The outcome of my scent blend in the soap, not good.....still smells great when I blend it into my jojoba oil, in fact I had two clients this week comment on how nice the massage oil smelled. :)  The soap on the other hand still smells putrid to me! 

Next weeks soap challenge from Amy @ Great Cakes Soap Works, http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php# Faux Funnel!  Stay tuned.....

This weeks challenge from Amy Warden at Great Cakes Soap works http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php#was to make a soap with alcohol.  Not a problem, one of my favorite soaps is a beer soap.  This time I wanted to try something different so I opened up my husband's well stocked liquor cabinet!  I had read a shaving soap recipe that had a natural bay rum scent so I thought now was a great time to give it a try.  I needed a dark Jamaican rum which he had on hand but was hesitant to let me use it due to it's cost being somewhere around $10/oz.  He has expensive taste!

The following is what I blended together and added at a light trace: 2oz dark Jamaican rum, 1T allspice, 1T cinnamon, 1oz bay essential oil, 1oz sweet orange essential oil.

I let that sit for 48 hours, then I strained out the spices and heated the rum to a boil.

I wasn't sure how fast it was going to set up, therefore it's a boring soap!  I only made 1lb and I have enough bay rum oils to make another so I"ll have to add in something fun next time!

It smells amazing!! :)  Ready to sell 5/8/12