Jennifer (a.k.a KraftyChick)Do you have a favourite season? What is it? We often get asked this don’t we? Particularly as the seasons change. We are into Autumn, and we’ve now been weeks into posts from Fall/Autumn (whatever you choose to call it!) loving folk: pumpkin this, pumpkin that, cozy this and that… and I ponder, as I’m wont to do. Do I actually have a favourite season? And have all those pumpkin posts influenced my soap making?
At one point, I know I would have said winter. You can probably guess the age I was when I would have said that. Over time, winter became a time of dreariness and dread. Falling snow and the chance of roads not being plowed in time for the work commute (no matter how long or short it was) would give me anxiety. Work responsibilities required me and all of my co-workers to be at work. Period. Then we add in school snow days – and still having those “must be at work requirements”. Can you say stress? Snow no longer gave me joy. That’s quite sad when I think about.
But back to Autumn. Let’s not rush the seasons! There is a saying: “The trees are about to remind us how beautiful it is to let things go” (or something like that). I like that. It’s hard for me to let things go – so I need reminders. I’m going to try and let the stress/anxiety of snow – “go”. It’s a bit early, LOL, but like I said, it’s not easy for me to let things go 😊And while I practice letting go, I find my tea choices are revving up for all things spice. I’ve got a hankering for something like vanilla chai – my tea shop at Breakwater Edge has a really yummy one that I love. Or maybe straight up vanilla. Either way, my tea choices do change a bit with cooler temperatures coming in.
I have been inspired to make some soap, and although it did not go as planned, it is growing on me. Given my love of tea, I decided to start adding tea to my soap as part of the water portion. I “brewed” the tea directly in my hot lye water, which turns the water a dark brown colour. It also makes the lye water smell quite funky. You soap makers out there know the smell. IYKYK. Thankfully the smell goes away during saponification.
The first soap I made was a black soap (80’s Noir), so I couldn’t really tell if the dark brown colour would stick around in the cured soap.
Peach Tea Soap
The next soap (Peach Tea) has a white background, and although I did add titanium dioxide to it, it is not as white as I would have expected, but still white…ish. More like cream. And that’s ok. What I’m not as sure about are the colours. In my mind I was going to make soft peachy colours that swirled together with the tiniest hint of green. I got the green right, but the orange colours are not soft. Not at all.
I think I was influenced by all those “I love Fall” Facebook posts and was heavy handed with the colours LOL. It is still a pretty soap – and yes it smells divine – peachy but not a candy or sugary peach. It’s lovely. Now to wait the for it to cure. I’m very impatient, so I tuck my soaps away on the curing rack and shut the door, so I forget about them for awhile. What I will try with my next soap, is using a portion of my water to brew the tea separately from the lye and add it my oils before adding the lye solution. We’ll see it that makes any difference to the end resulting colour. Stay tuned for that experiment.
Until next time. Stay Krafty my friends and let me know what you’ve been up to!
Jennifer (a.k.a. KraftyChick)
