Guilt Free Cupcakes

I offered my mum a bite of delicious cupcake the other night.

She declined, saying ‘I don’t want to eat soap’. After seeing a series of food like soap in my stash, including pine tar soap that looks like a brownie, she now automatically assumes everything is soap!

Meanwhile, someone finally used my cupcake soap. I say so because I honestly think most people keep these soaps to decorate and fragrance their bathrooms. If I didn’t make ’em I probably wouldn’t use ’em either.

So this made was gifted the cupcake soap by a mutual friend and she liked how it made her skin feel {woot woot} so she immediately called to order a batch. She didn’t want to hear about my regular soap of the same formula…she wanted cupcakes, 4 week wait notwithstanding.

Before these go out, they will get a gentle brushing of 24kt gold mica. It’s fragranced in a Chanel No5 dupe. Yum.

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Marbling HP Soap & Breaking Soaping Rules

No, this is not a cookie 😀

I almost exclusively make HP soap now but I was secretly missing the design possibilities of CP. Then this happened

This time, I was paying attention to EVERYTHING so I should be able to duplicate this marbling effect.

Also, this is a ‘rule breaking’ soap because it’s 100% Shea Butter. I’ve done 90% before and it made a hard, creamy long lasting bar of soap. In order to introduce some bubbly lather to this soap I added milks, honey and ABS. It worked beautifully.

I’ve left this un-fragranced so it’s a natural smoky nutty scent. Truly yummy and totally guy friendly too.

French Red Clay facial soap

I gifted a bar of French red clay soap to a dear lady who called shortly after to ask what was in the soap because ‘it’s cleared the stubborn skin issues around my chin’.

I’m always pleasantly surprised at feedback like that because the primary reason I make soap is for the love of real soap {not detergent bars}, not for medicinal or dermatological reasons. Second is that I like to be able to pronounce what’s in my soap and body products 😉

She’s asked for her own batch 😀 which I’ve fancied up with Camwood infused coconut oil and crumbly black soap (that’s my thing at the moment) and scented with Lemongrass EO.

Clay Herbal Milk Spa Salt Soap

Yeah, it’s a mouthful but it’s a beauty 😀

I ran out of salt bars {gasp} around the time I had a conversation about facial acne. Add that to the herbal ideas already brewing in my head, a dash of clay, a serving of milk and a heap of salt and this soap was made.

Of course I made it hot process and confess to using the first cut in the shower before the soap was cool :D.

The star herb in this soap is Neem leaf. I blended it in the milk to make a loose paste. I also added in bentonite clay for slip and beneficial qualities. This soap is fragranced with Orange EO and after the cook I added a sprinkle of crumbly African Black Soap.

The finished soap looks like granite. Can you blame a girl for not waiting to use it?

Soap Cakes

Soooooo….I like piping soap!!! I’ve literally crossed the road from ‘meh!’ to ‘bring it on!’

These soap cupcakes are made with real dark cocoa powder for the base and I left the top uncoloured to mimic vanilla.

They are for a fundraiser and I hope the person who takes them home actually uses them. It’s good stuff 😉

Clay facial mask for normal to oily skin

Do you ever think of your skin as a living organ? Because that’s exactly what it is. It’s job is to filter what comes in and helps us get rid of ‘waste’ through our sweat.

Because it’s alive, skin keeps growing and renewing itself. However, unlike some creeping reptiles, humans don’t visibly shed old skin periodically and we often need help it out. That’s why we bathe with sponges and scrubies, use salt and sugar scrubs etc.

If we don’t exfoliate, our skin can become dull and reduce its ability to function normally. Facial skin is perhaps the most common place that problems first show up: blackheads, whiteheads, pimples etc. dry skin gets flakier and oily skin gets more, err, oily and pores more congested.

Facial masks are a great way to deep cleanse our pores, reduce excess oil {not remove all oil} and tighten pores, revealing brighter toned skin.

My recipe for my ‘pore vaccum’ mask includes

The neighbors are starting to wonder…

For the past few days I’ve been doing the same thing every morning: exit the kitchen holding mason jars, head for the nearest window ledge, set the bottles down, give them a gentle shake and set them in the abundant morning sunlight of the dry dusty harmattan season. I’m usually aware of eyes boring into the back of my head {or maybe it’s my overs tube imagination} and I’m just waiting for the first person to ask if I’ve taken on herbalism full time 😀

I find this season is the best time for slow infusions {steeping the herbs in oil for six weeks or more} and I’ve currently infusing neem leaf powder and camwood powder in coconut oil, and calendula in sweet almond oil.

I’m really excited about the camwood because it was sent to me from the village so it’s authenticity is verifiable. I gave it a gentle pounding and I like how it’s coloured the oil.

Final products to be revealed in the following weeks. Excited!!!