SpiritScentsSoaps

The Spooky Bath Guide

There are different levels of baths. The quick soak, the actually bathing, the nice bath and the luxurious bath. They all require different amounts of energy and depending on how you will will directly impact what bath you will take.

The quick soak– This bath is usually when you just want to be in warm water and you just need something to help take your mind off your day or however you feel. You just need a change. You may add a small product or two but you don’t have the energy to do anything fancy, it’s actually a miracle that you decided to get in the bath in the first place because you just feel drained and tried.

The actually bathing– Taking a step up from the quick soak, you actually make an effort to wash yourself off. There is nothing wrong with the quick soak bath. This bath requires more energy and sometimes it’s just been a day and a quick soak is the best you can do. But the actually bathing bath, you work up the energy and get clean, hopefully feeling better when you get out.

The nice bath– You feel pretty good and you want to reward yourself for having a good day, or maybe you’ve had such a terrible day and want to try to make it better. You light a candle or two, you pop in a bath bomb, maybe some bath salts, or some bubble bath. You feel good finally. Its a nice atmosphere.

The luxurious bath– This bath is the full stop. This is the “I’ve been waiting for this all day” kind of bath. You gather your products and head to the bathroom. You line up in order your skin care routine, with maybe a face and hair mask thrown in. You reach for nice products you don’t usually use like a face serum you got in a subscription box. You light a few candles, turn the lights off, put whatever product you want in the bath and you get some special soap that you only use for special occasions. You stay in the bath on hour minimum and you just vibe.

Baths can be so versatile and you can customize them to your needs, and it’s a great way to relax and recharge.

Photo by Ryan Miguel Capili on Pexels.com

Take lots of baths and stay spooky!

Creepy Collections

It’s getting time when the sun is out, the sky is clear, and the heat is sweltering. I have plans for a summer collection that I hope everyone will like! I don’t want to say too much about it until I have some things set in motion but it will be spooky and summery.

It took me a bit to come up with the scents and my step mom helped a lot with the names of the soaps. To give a preview of one of my favorite soaps, the name which she came up with, is Summer Goth Girl and I imagine it to be white tea, basil, and cucumber and it be a light green and maybe a secondary dark color.

I am very excited for this collection and one of my favorite things to do is brainstorm ideas for scent combinations and fun but spooky names.

My goal for each collection is to create a cohesive range of scents and names that work well together but are also unique in their own way.

The reason I picked my theme to be spooky and gothic is because that is just who I am and I want to be genuine to myself and reach other people who have the same interest as me. I love anything scary and dark and I want to share that with people and it helps me be passionate about the craft and put my soul and love into each bar I make, and each package I put together and creating collections is just another part of this.

No one is ready for the Halloween collection. Halloween will be my time to shine and I am planning on giving my all!

Stay spooky!

Frightening Failures

Starting isn’t easy, but not starting and just dreaming is even harder. When I first started making soap, it was a big experiment and a lot of research. I didn’t even know where to start. I started with melt and pour crafting, and I tried to get really creative with it and I feel like I succeeded. But there was a learning curve and so much failure before I really got the hang of it.

All my melt and pour babies that are left

Some mistakes I’ve made were not waiting for the melt and pour base cool of any after I just nuked it in the microwave, causing the end product to lose scent, used way too much scent and color for a clear base, as well as waited either too long or not long enough and ruined the soap by layers not attaching because I waited too long, or smooshing the soap that I had barley waited for. I even tried to make my own soap divider out of cardboard and tape so I could make three different bars at a time. That failed BIG time, so I ended up layering them.

And these mistakes were just for melt and pour! I’ve had so many fails with my handmade soaps, an it felt like more pressure, because I really couldn’t melt it down and start over again.

I have had ricing, seizing, color malfunctions, me being impatient and not letting the soap sit for 24 hours and causing cosmetic damage, and the one that plagues me the most, the soap not being scented enough.

I have had countless batches be ruined because after a few days, the scent wore off. And that’s when I realized I was not using NEAR enough scent that I needed too.

I have since remedied this problem but I went through a period when none of my soaps were sellable because they were not up to my standards.

My most recent failure has been my first rebatched batch. Rebatching is when you melt down your cold process bars. Now this isn’t the same melting down as melt and pour, that would be too easy. You have to melt it down to this goopy consistency, and slap it in a mold. Which is what I did. I wanted to try to salvage a batch that looked very nice, but you couldn’t smell anything on it. It was basil and pomegranate.

It didn’t rebatch well, and now I have this goopy, ugly, and frankly over-scented loaf that I have no idea how I could salvage it.

One thing I have been trying to make is whipped soap. It sounds magical, doesn’t it? Well, I am still nailing down a recipe, which means failures are going to happen. But I’ve been using non-sellable bars to start the base.

I am still learning, and still relatively new, but I am working my hardest and constantly learning new things and I can’t wait to share this journey!

Spooky Soaps

This blog contains affiliate links that I may get a commission from.

I’ve only been making soap for a few months now but it is hard. Especially at the beginning when everything is new and overwhelming and you just have no idea where to start. That was me when I started, but lucky for me I liked to researched topics I’m interested in and I quickly became obsessed.

I first started with melt and pour soap to see if I wanted to invest all of that money into soap making. And I fell in love with it. I felt like I needed more customization than melt and pour could give me so i started my journey here.

At first, I thought I needed all these fancy oils and expensive butters and scents and equipment, but in reality you don’t.

You really don’t need all this but I have it anyways

I know, that sounds crazy, and its not cheap but its more accessible than you’d think. You need some basic equipment like a thermometer, kitchen scale, silicone, rubber, rubber, or stainless steel utensils like spoons, forks, and spatulas, and an immersion blender. It is very important that if you use silverware or bowls that you sue stainless steel as other metals can have a weird and possibly dangerous reaction with the lye. Also a side note, if you use lye then you need vinegar to wipe things down after you measure your lye water, because it neutralizes the lye.

Next you need colorant and essential oils, if you so choose. And I did. All you need is to make sure that the oils and colorants are skin safe and won’t stain. I personally sue P&J Trading company essential oils because they are skin safe, perfect for soap crafts, smell wonderful, and in my opinion, reasonably priced compared to other brands. They also have such a wide variety with the scents and they have sets that can make it easy to pair scents together.

Now, I had no idea about this issue before, but you need to be careful where you choose to get your colorants, mainly if you choose to use mica powders. This is because of some controversy with micas, and that it is unethically sourced using child labor, which we do not support. However, you can still support brands that source it ethically like Mad Micas, who are super nice and do not use child labor to get their product.

Here is the most shocking (for me, anyways) part. You can get all the oils and lye you need at the grocery store. Royalty soaps is a soap youtuber I highly recommend you watch because she is so fun and has a great personality, but also has very good information and was the person I learned almost all of my knowledge from. Her and The Soap Queen herself from BrambleBerry.

All you need to start making soap is a good amount of pure olive oil (I don’t use extra virgin olive oil because I read somewhere that it can turn the soap green and I’m not about that) and pure coconut oil. You also need sodium hydroxide which sounds scary until you realize that it’s just lye (which may or may not sound even scarier) and that you can get it in drain cleaner! (I’m pretty sure this is the part that scares you the most.) Yes, you can use drain cleaner to make soap, BUT only if the drain cleaner is 100% lye crystals or flakes. That means no liquid drain cleaners, and no drain cleaners that do not say that they are 100% lye. I got a lot of my containers and spatulas from the dollar store and Amazon. You can find a lot of great stuff on a budget!

Now that you have all your stuff, you’re ready to make soap!

Hopefully I didn’t miss anything, but check out BrambleBerry/ The Soap Queen and RoyaltySoaps for information and basics!