JURASSIC COAST SOAP!

I could not stay in bed this morning, just had to get up and cut up yesterdays soap to see what I got.  Soap making is so wonderful, nothing is totally predictable and you never know how each batch is going to turn out.  That can be good and can be frustrating too but my experience is that, even if your ideas don't turn out exactly as you wanted you usually get something good.  Its this journey of discovery that is my main driver in the business making me go on trying out more ideas and new ways of creating them.

I have been thinking about this particular idea for a long time.  I live in East Devon, very near to the World Heritage designated stretch of coastline called the Jurassic Coast.  This stretches for 95 miles from East Devon (Exmouth) to Dorset with rocks recording 185 million years of the earths history.  Quite an amazing place and I really wanted to mark this somehow, in soap!  My favorite bit is the cliffs and beach at Budleigh Salterton, the river Otter snakes its way down joining the coast here and it it a truly breathtaking place.  The beach is characteristically covered in wonderful elliptical pebbles, part of the ancient pebblebeds from the area, the cliffs are red and very dramatic and the sea is quite often stained red on rough stormy days.  I believe the cliffs are red because they were once sand dunes and form part of the Triassic section of the Jurassic Coast.  I wanted to capture a slice of this scene.

 To find out more about this wonderful part of our coastline click here for the World Heritage Site web pages http://www.jurassiccoast.com/

So how to do this.  I needed to make pebbles, lots of them!  But rolling lots and lots of balls of soap takes ages and anyway I could not then create the way the pebbles look.  They are really beautiful, reds, pure white, black, greys and almost cream.  lots have streaks, dots, lines and spots in them so how to get that effect?  I had to think hard

I decided to roll out chunks of CP soap that I had already made in advance especially for this project, goats milk soap but left absolutely natural in colour.  Each roll was coloured using ground charcoal, red oxide and yellow oxide which seemed to make sense to me as they are all natural earthy pigments.  Some rolls were split down the middle, covered with a light dusting of colour and put back together so I could get lines.  These would be placed in the soap to create the pebble effect.

I decided I wanted a mixture of warm, summer like scents evocative of suncream, ice creams and warm skin as well as a fresh, ozone kind of smell to represent sea breezes and beautiful skies.  Discolouration might be a problem as I chose to use sandalwood and vanilla, so I only scented the cliff section thinking that if it is going to go brown on me (because of the vanilla) that would not matter too much.  The Gracefruit scent "Rice Flower" http://www.gracefruit.com/ was my ozone choice.  Its really light, a bit floral and very fresh, I love it.  Like most floral scents it goes very fast in CP soap, I knew I would have to work fast and be careful, so I only used this in my last layer, the sky.

So how did it turn out?  I am so pleased, it looks great and smells so beautiful.  I know its going to change, I think the cliffs will get darker and the sky will change too.  I did want to get more white into the sky and swirl a bit but the Rice Flower set so quickly I only just had enough time to get it into the mold!

I know soap makers always talk about cutting up the soap, I thought you might like to see how I do this so here's a step by step for this project, you can see how exciting it is to finally reveal the hidden design inside.

The side of my plywood mold (made by my lovely boyfriend) has now been clipped off and the teflon liner slides out easily.

I then peel back the liner to begin to reveal the various layers of this soap.  I wanted to create quite simply a slice through the scene revealing the sea at the bottom swirling around a pebble beach with the lovely red cliffs in the background and a dramatic sky above - well that was the aim!

OK, now we begin to see a slice emerge, not the complete thing yet as this is just the very end of the loaf cut off to give me a good straight edge to start to measure out my bars.  It is giving an idea of the finished thing though............ I think.  Im still holding my breath at this point.

Now I carefully measure of one inch sections of the loaf which, when cut will provide me with 2 bars for each slice, 44 in total.

And start to cut, the two end pieces are at the back of the loaf, still not sure of the final look yet.........

And there it is, a slice of Jurassic Coast soap inspired by Budlegh Salterton!!  Yipee, its nice, I think.  I wish some of the pebbles were a bit darker but I like the stormy look of the sky and the swirly sea round the lower pebbles, exactly what I wanted!

I cant help playing around with the slices to make a landscape scene!  the slices to the right of the picture are the finished size.

The finished loaf, all cut up, ready for trimming and curing.  I cant tell you how nice it smells, its exactly what I wanted, the sandalwood really comes through and the ozone sky gives a sunny lift.  I really love it, think this might be a keeper - What do you think?

Bye bye Tea party soaps and HELLO Cream Teas!!

I'm both excited and sad today.  I have been working like a trojan to get my new soaps put together and I'm really annoyed with myself that I did not take step-by-step photos, I think they would have been fun, oh well, next time.  I was sad as I had to say goodbye to my "Mad Hatter Tea Party" cupcakes.  Its funny how I get attached to my soaps, but I really do!  I am just hoping that their new owner and bride-to-be is as happy as I am.  Her wedding in at the end of July and I wish her all the best for a beautiful and sunny day.  Here they are for one last time nestled in their new special cupcake boxes, don't they look snug?  I'm so glad that the corners of the tablecloths just fit above the holes for the cupcake bases - pure luck! (by the way, they are all CP soap apart from the jam)

So now to the exciting bit.  My lovely daughter Aimee had the idea.  "Mum why don't you make some cream tea cupcakes?"  To which I replied "Great idea!!" (because I stupidly think I can make anything in CP soap and I love a challenge)
We live in beautiful, sunny Devon, England and a tradition both here and in Cornwall is to have a cream tea.  For those of you who don't know what that is I will explain.  You order a cream tea, and it has to be at a proper old farmhouse with a lovely garden full of roses, and out comes a tray groaning with china teapot, milk jug, cups and saucers and a serving dish full of handmade, just out of the oven that morning, plain scones.  (am I making you hungry yet?) - also on the tray is a dish piled high with homemade jam, full of fruit and smelling delicious and then the main event - Rich, golden and scrummy clotted cream.  If you don't know this wonderful stuff you have never really lived.... its gloriously stiff, never really runny, with a crust that breaks as soon as you put your spoon into it - my sister, who now lives in California - can eat it straight off the spoon!!  This is what a table usually looks like.....

So today I put them altogether.  For those soap makers among you, I had already made the fruit using rebatch CP soap scented with berries FO and had made a basic goats milk and olive oil soap with added honey and poured this into my molds the day before.  I cut the "scones", sponged the freshly baked look using natural oxide pigments, made up my special whipped clotted cream CP soap and put them all together.  I am so pleased with the results!

STRAWBERRY JAM AND CLOTTED CREAM

BLACKBERRY JELLYLICIOUS

So, the end of a very busy but productive day and that has to be good.  Now I want to go and look up lots of other countries national, favourite sweet/pastry dishes and see if I can make them in soap.......  Oh my, I think I'm on a roll........  ideas please?

Bad blogger but Good soaps!!

I have been such a bad blogger lately and I am very sorry!  No really I am, life has been so hectic, we finally made it to Portugal in the plane as you know and then came back to lots of orders and full on work mayhem.

The gallery I manage the Thelma Hulbert Gallery in Honiton had its official opening on 29th May which was great, it went really well with over 200 people attending, Peter Randal-Page the brilliant international sculpture and Graham Liverton Chairman of East Devon District Council officially opened the newly refurbished building and it looked spectacular.
Since then its been all hands to the pump, working round the clock to keep up with everything and settle in to the new offices, shop and cafe. My team have been great, I am so lucky to have such a wonderful bunch and we have 35 new volunteers who have signed up too!

Soap is going well too, I have signed up with a company called "It's Cold Outside" who specialise in Google adwords and they have helped me to put together a new campaign which seems to be going well.  I will keep you all informed as to their/my progress regularly, if they are good I will be sure to let you know.  In the meantime, you can find out more about their work by following this link http://www.itscoldoutside.com/

And finally.... for the moment anyway, I have been working on a fantastic wedding cupcake commission, the theme of the wedding is the mad hatters tea party and I was asked to design 12 special guest soaps using the theme as inspiration.  These are the samples I sent off to the bride- tiny cupcakes on a plate with jam tarts, on a table cloth on a mini cupcake, all made out of soap!!

Dirty Dog saves the day!

This is why I invented Dirty Dog Soap!! 

Perdita (Perdy) my German Shepherd, who is normally quite clean showing me today just why she needs Dirty Dog soap and that she is about ready for a bath.  Picture number 3 shows my Springer in the background (Blue) who is about to get up totally black as always!  I love Woodbury Common, I always say Woodbury Common and Dogs go together like fish and chips but boy do they come back dirty!!

This is how she normally looks

A very special (clean) and beautiful GSD - well that is after using by lovely Citronella and Tea Tree oil Dirty Dog soap full of lovely good ingredients including olive oil which is why, I swear, she has such a lovely glossy coat. Go on give it a go, you know your pups deserve a real pamper!!

HOME SWEET HOME - Well ......... manic work and madness

This is why I came home

My beautiful girls - Aimee and Lola May.............

Home is really Portugal (in my heart these days).  Anyway, we did it, flew there in our wonderful little Europa and it was totally fantastic!  I will be posting the photos soon and got some really good soap leads for Naturally Made Soaps while I was there.

Glad to be home, selling and working hard, got Exmouth Food Fest for the Bank Holiday weekend so will be putting in a full blog appearance after that.  But while Im here Im so enjoying being with these two nutters!!!  Can't you just see why?

FLY ME TO THE MOON - WELL PORTUGAL ACTUALLY!

Yes everyone the time has come, we are going to fly the newly completed Europa to Portugal and stay at our Quinta for 3 - 4 days, weather dependant, then fly back next week YESSS!!
This is what we have been waiting for, the build took Rik almost 5 years and a lot of stress but we now have a beautiful little plane to be proud of and we are so close to realising our dream of flying ourselves to Portugal.

G-CEIW passed all is flight testing with flying colours, we have already done quite a lot of time in her, we flew up to Suffolk a couple of weeks ago to have lunch with Riks Mum which was lovely.  A car journey would have taken us over 6 hours but we did it in an hour and forty minutes!

Above with Riks Mum in Suffolk ready for take off back to Devon

This trip is the biggie.  We will take off from Dunkeswell in East Devon and fly over the channel to the Cherbourg peninsula.  We then make for the west coast of France and fly down to Le Touquet where we will land, stretch our legs an clear customs.  Then on to Spain touching down again at San Sebastian to re-fuel.  The last leg is the longest from Spain to Viseu in Portugal, a high and often windy airfield 2000 ft above sea level.  Our lovely friends will come and pick us up and we should be home in our Quinta in an hour!  How great is that?  I will be reporting back with a couple of photos I promise.  This is all dependent on weather however, so please pray for good clear skies on Thursday.................Thanks

More New Cupcakes on the curing rack

The curing rack is groaning under the weight of soaps waiting for that special moment when they are ready for sale.  A lot of prodding, poking and close inspection goes on before that, the soaps are stacked on their ends with a small amount of space between them to allow the air to pass round every surface aiding the drying/curing process.  As its still cold and damp here in Devon the rack is up in Ryans room and it makes the house smell so good!
 

Those of you with eagle eyes may be able to tell what my rack was in its former life......... 
An old GPO, or post office for those of you a lot younger than me, set of sorting shelves!  It works a treat, I line the shelved with greaseproof paper and stack, the whole thing is made up of strong steel mesh covered in black plastic so the ventilation is fantastic and soaps cure nice and evenly.  Each shelf even has its own plastic label for me to add dates etc with a white board marker.  Ive just to find more though - these ones are full!

New cupcakes include my sweet butterfly cakes, sample mini lovespell cakes and some really gorgeous pink roses on white and white roses on pink (see the trays below the racks).  I cant wait to get them out on the stall.  They will be ready soon, watch this space.  Ive also got a lovely new gardening soap bar with Portuguese coffee, I used to make this a lot last year and a whole load of people have asked for it back so Ive made more!