LOVELY NEW CHRISTMAS SOAPS AND A NEW ONLINE SHOP

We have got a new retail shop where you can buy our soaps easily and quickly.  Please go to:

Puro Soaps Shop

We currently have some lovely new Christmas soaps all cured and ready to go, we have re-designed our famous Puro Signature Olive Oil soaps which are now available in a lovely cube as well as offering some very new and exciting Portuguese inspired soaps.

 Puro Signature Olive Oil soaps

 cute new Christmas cupcakes

 Snowballs

 Christmas Mini Cakes

 Unique Portuguese Tile soaps

 Portuguese inspired soap pastries

 Sardinhas! a pair of lovely guest soaps

 Candy Cane

 Christmas Rose cupcakes

 Snow Queen

 Spiced Gold

Packing THAT CAKE!

Yesterday I had the scary job of packing up my Skull Soapcake safely enough so it could be transported to its new owner in Germany.  I have been so worried about this that I actually left the cake longer than the normal cure time just to make sure it would be as dry as possible.

The weather has been absolutely terrible here in Wet, damp and humid Devon with temperatures mostly above 15 degrees, even up to 19/20 but with torrential rain showers.  The air is so damp that I have had real problems getting my soaps to dry out properly.  Hence my trepidation.......

I decided to photograph the process, perhaps it might give me good luck, who knows?

Firstly I gently tucked a sausage of tissue along the outside of the lower tier then I covered the skull itself with a protective ring of tissue.

I then continued with the sausages of tissue covering the whole cake in its own protective turban, pleeeeeease let this work.

Lastly I wrapped the whole thing in a double layer of bubble wrap, then inside its own large box totally surrounded by my recyclable, non polystyrene chips.

I am sad to see it go, it has been living quite happily in our house as I have tried to get it as dry as possible, I will miss the bright colours and the lovely smell!

One great thing about making a totally unique custom soap like this is that often there are bits left over which can be incorporated into another design.  I decided to re-vamp our Christmas Spice Cake which we are selling "by the slice" this season, I used some of the left over flowers which I loved.  Not exactly Christmassy but a lovely seasonal red and merged with the holly and berries I thought it worked well.  What do you think?

The Maddest Soap Cake I Have Ever Made!

YES.... Here it is, I have never made anything quite as mad and crazy as this before and I must admit I like it.

My Harley Davidson Skull soap cake

And, for once, I remembered to take a few photos as it was being made, so here goes.

This is the skull in the process of being painted, a huge 200g skull of white cold process soap highlighted with burgundy mica

the piped red poppy flowers drying on little wax discs

The Harley Davidson Logo under construction, I wanted to write the whole thing but it was just too much to achieve freehand in soap so I decided to use the famous Harley flames instead

These are the two base cakes white cold process soap swirled with orange and black so hopefully each cut slice will look stunning

I then put it all together with white piped icing, added the poppies, pearls and some small piped black leaves that I highlighted with Burgundy mica - this is quickly becoming my absolutely favorite colouring and highlighting product it is stunning.  I am really happy with the results, a bit creepy but very eye catching.  I just hope the client in Germany likes it!

Now for some more detail of the finished cake.

I hope you enjoy this project, please let me know what you think, leave a comment!

New Christmas soaps to follow soon.

NEW Soapcake Minis

Yes, pretty exciting really we have been waiting to get the time to trial some of these using a completely new technique which means we can make these little soaps in bulk without having to invest in lots of 4" silicone cake tins - thats even if you can find any for sale out there!

They have worked out really well, I only just put them up on the website and have already sold two!  We designed them as a way of bridging the gap between our really successful but quite expensive 10" cakes and the much smaller standard cupcakes.  These really are an affordable way of getting lovely cupcakes to sell either as wholesale or retail.

See how nice they look next to a full size cake....

They can be fully customized, we can make to order and basically make any design, colour or fragrance required.  All the soap is CP and the piping is all done by hand.  We are looking into a way of personalising them (probably for a little bit more money per cake) which will make them lovely as a very unique wedding present for example.  We could write the Bride and Grooms name as well as the date of the wedding on each one.  As soon as we have images they will be posted.  If you are interested in wholesaling our soaps go to our wholesale page

Do let us know what you think also if you have any ideas for interesting decorations or styles.  Thank you for reading our blog.

TEA TREE OR NOT TEA TREE? This is the question

Ok now Im confused....

For quite a few years now one of my best selling soaps has been my Dirty Dog soap, designed for washing your dog with great natural ingredients and only essential oils and natural colour.  The oils I use are Citronella and Tea Tree.  Citronella because it makes the dogs coats smell lovely and fresh and bugs hate it, Tea Tree because I always understood it was a natural antiseptic, was soothing and helped to reduce skin problems.

Now it seems this is being questioned, sometimes quite alarmingly.  Here are some links from the many I found on Google -

Against

Dogster.com Forum

Pet Poison Helpline

For - (with advice)

Pet Meds.org

Manor Vets

As a real dog lover I, of course, do not want to be in a position where I inadvertently cause any problems to any animals that have my soap used on them (many people use my soap to treat Horses with fly problems, its even been know to be used by a shepherd washing off his sheep's rear end!).  I understand that problems occur with products that stay on the skin and potentially get licked off, thereby being ingested.  But I dont want to take any chances at all so, a little sadly, I have changed the fragrance formula and gone for Lavender essential oil to replace the Tea Tree.  Lavender is also soothing, calming, safe to use on the skin and smells great.  I was unsure of the combination but, after cutting up my first batch, I am hooked, its really, really lovely.

Isnt it funny, sometimes you are forced into a change, then when its done you wonder why you never made the change before?

Trying to simplify and keep calm

I just realised how long ago it was that I last posted, deep shame and embarrassment....

The only excuse I have is the busiest Christmas EVER! and the fact that I have been trying to recover and simplify ever since, well along with new soaps for Valentines Day and new Spring Soaps of course.  So, today, just a few pictures for you.

New Marshmallow Rose top

And the same soap cut into bars

Fruity and Juicy, with peppermint, 5 fold orange and Lemongrass

Ginger and Grapefruit made specially for a customer

Revamped Honey Bee for 2013

Lots more new soaps to follow but I hope you will forgive me, I have been busy honestly.....

Happy New Year and Many Thanks to all our followers and friends on Facebook and Twitter.
JoAnne Poskitt was our 1000th liker on our facebook page- and a little box of goodies is on its way to you JoAnne!
https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/Purosoaps