Salty Surprise

 

  This one turned out better than expected!  My clients have been asking for a special Christmas soap, so I have been slowly designing one in my mind. As I use only natural colourants, I don’t have bright green or red.  I decided to cut up some of my silk soap and green clay soap and add it into the whitest soap I can make… my salt soap without olive oil.

The process did not turn out as expected though… it set very quickly.  I didn’t estimate enough soap either so I pushed shoved and spread the soap into the moulds.  One of the moulds wasn’t even half full.  I ended up loving the result though!

I have been making a lot of salt soap lately.  It sells quickly and I love making it.  I even have some clients with eczema who will only use the salt soap.

Lemon Sea Salt – with organic extra-virgen olive oil and coconut, castor & carrot tissue oil. A lemony blend of essential oils.

My original Sea Salt Bar – with avocado, coconut and castor oil, coloured with indigo, lavender, rosemary and spearmint essential oils.

A new salt bar, which I will make with goat milk next time.  It has my most addictive essential oil blend – patchouli, lavender and geranium.

Now this one – my Christmas salt bar.  Straight up peppermint essential oil. 

I am so pleased with how my salt bars are stamping lately…. And with just 1 simple little adjustment… fine sea salt instead of course sea salt. Note the difference in stamping in the photos - the lemon and plain white one have course sea salt.  The other two - fine. I have never found that course sea salt makes much difference in performance anyway as my salt bars get very smooth and hard when using, regardless if fine or course.

If you are making salt soap… be careful when adding the fine sea salt to make SURE that it all mixes in well.  If not, you may get salt clumps…

Happy Soaping!

Jen xoxo

Drasted Bubbles and Floods

Look at those drasted bubbles.  I don’t mean suds. I mean the bubbles that get into your soap when you pour into the mould! 

I try so hard during the mixing and blending phase to keep the bubbles out and then WHAM! as I pour into the mould, sometimes these get into my soap.  Doesn’t affect the soap quality… just aesthetics.   I think I get over anxious and start pouring too fast.  When I pour low and slowly… I get a nice bubble-free slab.  Any tips… let’s brainstorm them here.

 

Update:  Made over 400 bars of soap in the last 2 weeks and have been LOVING IT. I was almost completely out of soap after a busy summer.  As I am now getting stock back up to normal, I have begun to experiment again…. I have a pot of liquid soap on this morning.  I hope it doesn’t take me as many batches to get a really great liquid soap as it did for my soap bars!!  But I am patient (sort of) and I am confident I will get there.

On a personal and very sad note, we had a big storm on Friday in the area when I live and a flash flood of overflowing rivers took out two local bridges and swept a river of cars down to the beach. 

(Some photos I took on Saturday)

 

Destroyed many houses and some lives. 

(part of the promenade that was my morning walk)

 

The area has been devastated. We got water back this morning after a weekend of gathering buckets from our neighbor’s pool for the urgent stuff. Our neighbourhood is gathing clothing and what we can to donate to those that have been left with nothing.

I lost a friend... whose smile will always be with me.

I am focussing on being so very thankful for all that I have in my life. And living the moment, as it can all change so quickly. 

xoxoxoxo Jen

Help!? Indigo & Blogger

Calling out for help here....

 

Ingido - Can anyone help me find a supplier for this natural indigo?  Here is a photo of the little package that was given to me as a gift.  The person who gave it to me has not been able to provide the supplier either and I need to order more!

 

Blogger - I used to be able to simply "follow" a new blog by clicking on the "follow" button at the top of the screen.  But for some reason, I haven't been able to for months now.  I can't seem to post the screen shot in here to give you an example...  but instead of follow at the top, it gives me the option to "share".  Hopefully one of the tech whizzs out there will be able to help!!

 

Thank you!!!!

xo  Jen

Mistakes / Surprises – Rose Hip Soap

What the /&$/%&·(“?!???? happened to my rose hip soap?  My usually smooth pretty pink rose hip soap?  This speckled effect was completely unintentional… (love the natural light in this photo, the following 3 were with artificial light...)

I can’t think of anything I did differently other than make larger quantities (a full 48-bar mould) and maybe add a little more rose geranium essential oil than previously.

Right at the end as I was adding the trace ingredients, it started to set up on me in globs, actually one big glob, like a rock!!  Oh no… this is an expensive soap to make and I was determined to save it so I pleaded, attacked, sliced, blended, mixed, begged, coerced, chopped, bludgeoned, and blended and blended some more. Then I manipulated it into the mould.  Phew!

Note the irregular size logs.. hmm.. hmm.. the guitar string on my log splitter broke on me while cutting... another surprise!!

 I have some ideas on how to do thing slightly differently the next time, but in my smaller experimental moulds first.

Update:  Making making making soap again (Yippee yahoo!!!!), after a summer setting up the studio & shop, selling, packaging till the wee hours and 7 nights a week at markets. At the studio till 1am Friday and yesterday, tweaking my goat milk soap process and making tons of it… a rhassoul shampoo, a new salt soap with patchouli & geranium… with my husband near me in the packaging room, packaging away…  Both he and Aurora, my daughter, have really jumped on board this summer and have taken over most of the packaging.   And they are good at it!  I love that my work now incorporates family time.  Both are begging encouraging me to improve the packaging process – we are currently waiting on quotes and samples for customized boxes for soaps and stickers for the tins. So many things on the go, each one keeps me even more busy… WONDERFULLY BUSY.  I have never thrived on monotonous routine, as normally, I get bored easily.  I don’t even usually take my coffee the same, I change it up, sometimes with honey, sometimes with sugar, sometimes black, usually with milk, sometimes tea instead.  In university, I never understood why on the second day of class each student would go back to the EXACT same seat they had the previous day, and desperately hang on to that seat for the rest of the term… I would regularly change my seat as it was an opportunity to meet new people.

But now, I can’t seem to ever get bored doing what I do… it’s always so full of surprises and changes.

Coming up: More about my latest mistakes surprises.

Good vibes to you all.  Thanks for following!

Xo Jen

Catching Up & Blogging

So, the busy summer season has come to an end and I have begun making making making soap again!! And experimenting!!  Oh how I love making soap and experimenting!

Soaps I did for a wedding recently…

Some laundry soap I made…

A wonderful beach afternoon getaway in the Cabo de Gata natural park nearby…

 

And a reminder that my Website is up live and running! 

www.naturalmentemediterraneo.com

Wow… I can really get lost in all this computer time… I have to limit myself in order to get other stuff done!

About blogging… for personal blog browsing other people’s blogs, I love big colourful photos with new things to learn.  I don’t have time to read through wordy blog posts so I skim…  and I get annoyed when I realize that a blog is a business plug.  So with this blog, I try to do those things I like – big colourful photos… keep the words down… and not try to push my business… just offer and connect with other people with similar interests.  That said… I am going to focus my other blog, my Naturalmente Mediterráneo blog, on keeping followers up to date about my business and new products and what is going on at Naturalmente Mediterráneo and this blog, my Jenora Soaps blog, for more personal stuff and my experiments.  Hope that’s okay with you all.  Don’t want to change things too much.

So coming soon – a post about my recent experiments / mistakes / surprises!

Happy blogging!!

Xo

Jen

Evening Market

As the hot busy summer draws to a close, I know I will miss the colourful evening market I have been fortunate to be a part of this summer. It ends next Saturday. Some photos for you:

 

 My Stand

Morrocan Artisan Stand

 

 The wonderful Siberian Painter's stand

Some of her work...

 

To be continued... (seems I have run out of photo space?)

 

xoxoxo

Happy Soaping.... Happy Summer!!

Jen

 

Shaving Soap, Dish and Brushes

Some photos of the shaving kit I offer...

Ceramic shaving dish, hand-crafted by a local ceramic artist

Brushes, 3 different qualities, from left to right - 1) beechwood with synthetic bristles, 2) beechwood with badger hair bristles and 3) Olive wood with badger hair bristles

I have been working a lot this summer, but for the most part it hardly feels like WORK because I enjoy it so much! Both my husband and my daughter have been helping a lot with packaging. I wish I had more time for blogging as it is something I love as well... ah well, there's always the winter for that.

I have been working hard on my website, which you can check out if you like:

www.naturalmentemediterraneo.com

There is still a lot of information to write, create,upload...photos to take... etc... but it is up and running now!

Studio and shop are a thrill and the night market, which I work at each night is a great place for promoting my products, meeting people and selling.

My new Silk Soap with Tussah silk, red clay and argan oil.

Hope you are all enjoying your summer and are happily soaping!!!!!!!!!!!!

xo

Jen

Special Order Soaps

Some soaps I make for Casa Las Yeseras  http://www.casalasyeseras.com/, a gorgeous, local, rural hotel pearched upon a mountain-top like a castle, overlooking our entire area, all the way to the sea. 

As an anniversary gift to their guests, they offer a locally made Naturalmente Mediterráneo soap.  I provide an assortment of half-size bars, each with a little explanation card tucked under the label band.

Happy soaping, happy summer!

xo

Jen

Goat Milk Green Tea Spirulina

This is a remake for a friend who suffers from eczema on her hands.  She has tried out all sorts of my soaps but says that this one is the only one that really soothes and helps her eczema.  I don't make it as a part of my regular line, as I would prefer it to have something local rather than green tea.  I will probably experiment with Nettle and Rosemary again.  

Oh how I wish this beautiful elusive Spirulina green would stay.  The only difference in the photos was that the second one was taken with the curtain closed... I didn't edit them at all.  What a difference lighting makes! It is a lovely green in real life... just wish it would stay!!

Essential oil blend:  Bergamot, Geranium, Lavender, Frankincense

Happy Soaping!!

xo

Jen

Studio and Shop Opening Day

What a wonderful day!   So much support from friends, clients and my husband.

  We had so much fun at the opening.  It was one of the hottest and most humid days and I couldn’t get the air conditioning working… didn’t matter.  I felt so excited and proud.

I realized that apart from being a place to make and sell my products, it almost seems like a shrine to this corner of the world that I adore. 

I realized how much I have souced locally… as it is so important to me to support the local economy, friends and fellow artisans.  I look at the walls and see the small local contractor who did the renovations… my husband and I have worked with his sister and his father in a previous job.  Then I see the painting that my husband spent so many hours doing… he painted the entire place. 

 I see the carpenter, who also previously worked with us, who made the shelves, my new molds, my market stand, the round display unit and the little sales area/ desk… 

I see the ceramicist who made the studio sign, some wall hangings, soap dishes and shaving mugs (which sold out)! 

I see the lovely stain-glass artist who made my mirrors.  

 I see the photographer who took photographs of the local ingredients I use… looking at the bare walls only 7 days ago, I called him and explained the project I wanted him to take on.  He and his wife tracked things down, even setting up a bowl of sea salt on the beach… and got the printed photos to me within 3 days….

I see the local 92-year old basket-weaver who made my baskets for me.

I see some of my suppliers as well… Pepe who supplies my local organic jojoba oil, Rafa who supplies the local organic extra-virgin olive oil, Juan who provides the local beeswax and honey…

My husband, the detail freak, insisted that I label things in each of the storerooms, with nice printed labels with my logo.  I love the result.  

(Curing room)

(Packaging Room)

People that came to the opening brought plants, good luck charms, well-wishing cards and great company.   We were overwhelmed and surprised with all the people who came.

We shared drinks and paella outside and celebrated!    One of my friends and her darling daughter won one of the baskets I raffled off.

We only wished our families could have shared this moment with us, but I don’t complain because it was our choice to live so far away.

So thank you again for following my story and being a part of this special moment as well.

Love and inspiration to all!!

Xoxo

Jen