The Elf Did It

You could probably tell by the advertisements and songs on television and the radio.  Or by the decorations at your favorite store.  Or, if you happen to live in Colorado like we do or in more Northern states, you could probably tell by the layer of snow melting slower than usual.  Christmas is upon us!

Blissology has been gearing up by restocking everyone's favorite things (like Footsie Bars - no matter how many I make, we always need more!) and cranking out our holiday edition soaps.  We already have some Cinnamon Spice Soap made (we stock that one all year now since you all love it so much!) and a lovely new one called Christmas Memories.  Both of those will be ready in a couple more weeks.

Pam is about to mix up another new holiday soap, but there's a slight problem.  We don't know what to name it!  She keeps accidentally calling it "Elf Farts" which is hilarious for many reasons, but one of which I should probably explain.

See, there's a popular tropical fragrance that is mostly banana called "Monkey Farts."  You know, since they eat bananas all the time, only I'm quite sure monkey's don't pass fruit-fragrant gas.  Our supplier calls our new holiday fragrance "Elf Sweat" for the same cute novelty effect.  Only Pam merges those two together and gets "Elf Farts."  I'm not sure that it's so cute then!

Anyway, we need your help naming the new soap!  It isn't made yet, so I don't have pictures, but the plan is to make it a white soap swirled with bright happy green and blue.  It smells like candy, sweet sugar, peppermint, and effervescent soda pop.

Over there on the upper left hand side of the page is a poll.  Vote and let us know your favorite!  Also, if you comment here on why you like the one(s) you picked, we'll enter you in a drawing.  The randomly selected winner will get a free bar of the new soap as soon as it's ready!  Share this on facebook or twitter and we'll enter you again.  (Make sure to follow/like us and tag @Blissology (for facebook) or @blissmistress (for twitter) so we can be sure to count all your entries!)

The poll and contest closes on November 20th at midnight so get going!

Soap Cures

Pomegranate Soap freshly poured and swirled.

I don't mean that soap cures diseases.  I do mean that soap has to cure, or age, before it's good to use.  When we make a batch of Blissology soap, we can't just sell it the next day or even the next week.  How long soap cures depends on a few factors.

 
When soap is poured into molds, it's a thick liquid consistency - ideally.  Sometimes particular fragrances will speed up the process and make it get thicker faster so sometimes we're glopping in soap that looks more like mashed potatoes.  Even though it would still be okay to use, soap that moves too quickly sometimes ends up being cosmetically challenged or downright ugly. 

Large block of Angel of Shavano soap.

In either case, we wait for about 12 hours before we try to unmold the soap.  If we're using particular molds, we can often pop the whole thing in a warm (not hot) oven to make sure the saponification (making of soap) reaches the "gel" stage.  We prefer to do it this way because the soap seems to become usable faster.  We can shave off several days of cure time and get soaps back in stock sooner. 

Sometimes soap is still too soft after 12 hours to get it out of the mold or cut it without risking damage to the bars so we'll give it another day before trying again.  What is best is after the first twelve hours, the soap is firm but not so hard that cutting is difficult.  Once soap is out of the mold, it gets put into a tray to cure.

Beautiful Life soap cut and ready to cure.

Blissology soap ages for about four weeks before it's ready to use.  Some soap cures longer and some soap, like our Beautiful Life Spa bars, are ready much sooner.  As the bars cure, they get harder and more mild.  Very fresh soap hasn't completely finished saponifying so it can be harsh to skin.  The longer soap ages, the more gentle it becomes. 

We wait as long as possible before packaging Blissology soap because it loses water as it cures and shrinks.  If we wrap them too soon, the paper slides right off the bar.  For this reason, we generally package days before a market or show and as orders come in.  That in itself is a whole 'nother process!

What's in Your Shower Right Now?

That's the most recent question a reader has asked me.  Normally I'm not one to invite just anyone into my shower, but in this case, I'm happy to show and tell! 

Now, I just recently moved so my shower stock is very small compared to what it was a few months ago before the move.  So this is going to be a short list!

First, I have a big bar of Dragon's Blood by Blissology.  I was a little unsure when I chose that one a couple months ago because it was still very much summertime and I'm one of those people that just must match my scents to the season.  So even though it wasn't a "Dragon's Blood" sort of day when I chose it, it is now!  The rich, sweet, spicy, and smoooooth notes of it really make it a fall and winter kind of soap for me.  Of course, my sister and dad will gladly use it all year long regardless of the weather.

You won't find any bottles of shampoo or conditioner (or anything!) in my shower.  We use shampoo and conditioner bars made by Get Lathered! on etsy.  Some of you have no doubt heard me talk about how awesome they are.  My hair and scalp are so much healthier and feel so much better since I started using these about a year and a half ago.  Right now for shampoo I have just a sliver left of my favorite Vanille de Framboise and a new bar of the Willow scented shampoo.  My husband is using Nor'Easter which I love too.  And I have a Thai Coconut conditioner bar that has lasted me for months and months now.

For my face, I use our Au Natural soap made with goat milk and oatmeal.  It's unscented, super creamy, and very mild.  Store-bought facial cleansers completely wreck my complexion.  They're just too harsh for my sensitive face and cause me to break out.  I also used this soap exclusively when the baby was first born so she wouldn't be overwhelmed with extra smells.  Now I use it on her too but I use a washcloth to apply it to her skin because she doesn't need the extra exfoliation from the oatmeal.

My husband has another soap bar for his face.  It's a really old Christmas soap my mom made years ago for her soap business (Anyone remember Mountain Homestead Soaps?).  As soap ages it becomes more and more mild.  Often after several years the oils in soaps will start to go rancid, but not with this one!  It still smells, albeit more lightly than when first made, and my husband has found that it makes a superb shaving soap!  Since he's been using it, his face is smoother after his shave with much less irritation and bumps.  I don't have a picture of this one since it's not for sale.

That's it!  I'm sure in a few months I'll have twice as many soaps.  Now I want to know - What's in Your Shower Right Now?

Introducing Acai Berry Soap

I'm not sure I have it in me right now for a full-fledged extravagant post, but there is one thing I really want to share. Blissology is so proud to announce....

Açai Berry Soap! I don't really like having to mess with the special ç (it's called a Cedilla just in case you didn't know) so I'll just drop it for this post. Hope you don't mind!

No doubt you've heard of Acai Berries and all the wonderful things they can do for your health, especially weight-related. It's being added in all kinds of energy drinks and I suspect in smoothies very soon (if not already) too. It's been used as a flavoring in Brazil for quite some time already. I should mention, the fruit comes from Acai Palm trees which grow in the Amazon rainforest.

The correct pronunciation is ah-sigh-EE, but I usually hear people say uh-ki (rhymes with "high"). Regardless of how you say the word, you should get used to hearing it often because it's likely going to join the ranks of such fragrances of pomegranate in terms of fruity favorites.

So of course, we had to make some soap! We had grand visions of just how we wanted this soap to look. But the fragrance, as we say in soaper land, accelerated saponification. In other words, the soap got thick, FAST the moment we added the delicious acai scent.

Instead of the pretty dark purple and pink swirls with purple jojoba beads, we got basically two layers of the same color light grayish lavender color with the top layer sprinkled with purple jojoba beads.

Pam hated it at first. The color was not what she envisioned at all, and she even may have uttered the word "ugly."

After we gave it some time to change and do it's thing, unmolded it and dusted it with beautiful pearlescent merlot mica, it was done. It wasn't as we expected, but it actually did turn out quite pretty. The muddy gray-purple is now a soft light lavender color and even though the mica on top washes off after the first use, it is the perfect presentation for a gift.

And what does it smell like? Berry! Very few of us have likely smelled an actual acai berry and it's rather difficult to explain: try describing to someone what "strawberry" smells like! I will do my best though. It is sweet, fruity, and a bit like "tropical grape." If colors were scents, this one would certainly be "purple."

Of course, the best way to smell this, is just to try it for yourself! I promise you won't be disappointed. Personally, it's my new favorite! The scent lingers on your skin, and I know I've said this before, but it just smells so delicious! Plus, thanks to those jojoba beads, the top half is scrubby and excellent for exfoliating. It lathers beautifully and makes my skin feel fabulous. Try it!

Baby Shower Gifts for Mommy (and baby)

I've been thinking about baby showers recently because it's about time for us to start planning one for my sister. Now some get gifts just for the new baby, and that's great, but taking care of the new mother is even better!

The last shower we went to was for my cousin and for a gift we made a big basket of Blissology stuff just for her. I wanted to show you how easy and fun this can be! And don't forget - Mother's Day is just around the corner!

Pampering Gift Ideas for the New and Soon-to-be Mommy

Shea Butter

The best thing for stretched, tight, itchy skin is pure shea butter. According to the American Shea Butter Institute, shea butter can even prevent stretch marks during pregnancy. They also recommend it for "muscle fatigue, aches and tension" as well as skin rashes. So not only can mommy use it for herself during her pregnancy, but on baby too. Two-in-One!


Lip Balm

One of the most prized possessions in the hospital is lip balm. It's small and easy to forget when you don't need it. But trust me, a new mother is going to need this! Blissology offers several great flavors and we recommend getting two of them - one mommy can use now, and one she can pack ahead of time in her hospital bag.

Lotion

Pregnant women's skin can often be challenging. Her best friend at this time may very well be a big bottle of Blissology lotion. And of course, she can have you to thank for that! Any of our lotions would be great, but for extra pampering, opt for the Vita-Skin Lotion. We add extra skin-nourishing vitamins and a gentle essential oil blend for fragrance.

Massage Oil

This is another one for both mommy and baby. Blissology's Serene Slumber Massage Oil is just what mommy-to-be needs before those long, uncomfortable nights. There comes a point, not long into a pregnancy, when sleep becomes difficult and is not so restful. Serene Slumber is a blend of lavender, rosewood and ylang-ylang essential oils to calm the racing mind and hopefully call the sandman. Plus, every pregnant woman deserves a daily massage. Of course, this can also be used as a bath oil.

Baby massage is becoming more and more popular but it's often difficult to find an oil suitable and gentle enough for baby. Serene Slumber uses just the right safe amounts of essential oil to provide for the aromatherapy benefits. It is especially helpful as part of a bedtime routine after a warm bath and during and before quiet time with mommy and/or daddy.

Footsie Bar

Blissology's famous Footsie Bars are a woman's dream-come-true. They're moisturizing and energizing. When she can't reach her own feet anymore, it's quick and easy for someone else to do it for her. And a great excuse for a foot massage too!

Handmade Soap

The list would not be complete without this essential. Not only do Blissology soaps make a great addition for any gift basket, but using handmade soap is one of the best things a person, pregnant woman, baby, ANYONE can do for their skin.

Blissology has a huge selection of fragrances including essential oils and every bar has shea butter and the finest vegetable oils.

Enchanted Forest and Ripe Red Raspberry

Enchanted Forest was our "Valentine" scent this year. Not only is it great for both men and women, but it also smells simply enchanting. It's a delightful mix of deep woody smells like Cedarwood and Sandalwood, earthy Amber, sweet Vanilla, and a little bit of foresty florals if you can really pick out the individual scents. They all meld together to create a magically sexy fragrance.

As a brief side-note, vanilla is a really funny thing in soap. Most people think "white" when they think vanilla although I'm not sure why now that I think about it. Vanilla beans are a beautiful dark brown. Anyway, that's what happens in soap too - it colors it brown.

We really weren't thinking about the vanilla components of this fragrance when we added it to the soap. We envisioned a lightish tan base color with beautiful purple swirls. Which of course were completely lost as the soap turned chocolate brown. It's a great color and actually fits the scent (luckily for us!) but it just wasn't what we had envisioned. We're used to that by now though - it's rare anything in reality comes out how we thought it would!

Ripe Red Raspberry was our other Valentiney scent this year. It has been a main staple to the line even way back when it was just Pam running "Mountain Homestead Soaps." The colors, of course, are valentine-like, but the scent was also perfect. We've had women report to us that for whatever reason, when they wear this raspberry scent (we also have it in lip balm and massage oil candles), their husbands take it as a sign that they're feeling frisky. If that's not perfect for Valentine's Day, I don't know what is!

Of course, I likely should have made this post about this time LAST month, but I didn't have my new camera then and our pictures just weren't up to par. They still could use some improvement, I think, but they're MUCH better now. And since they really are great for the whole year, not just one day, we Highly Recommend them both!

Wasabi and Dragon's Blood Soap

Wasabi is our first Spring Soap for the year. When people ask what it smells like, we can honestly answer "green." It's fresh and bright and doesn't smell at all like the wasabi horseradish you have with sushi. Wasabi is sweet and floral and a little bit of tang.

We added jojoba beads to give the bar some nice, gentle exfoliation. Plus, it looks pretty in subtle swirls!

Of course, like all our soaps, we've added shea butter for an extra boost of luxury and moisturizer.

Even though we're introducing this as our newest seasonal scent, we're hoping everyone loves it so much they demand us to keep it around all year. That would be fine with us because we love it too!

You might remember a post I did several months ago about our Dragon's Blood Soap. It has become a favorite for some of our family members now thanks to its deep, complex smell and wonderful lather. I took some more pictures of it with my new camera.

The brown has darkened a little since the first pictures and it's really more fitting that way. Above the large brown layer is a layer of green with jojoba beads, then a layer with red jojoba beads, and finally a lucky dragonesque dark brown layer at the top.

These are our large-sized spa bars so they're almost twice as much soap for not much more money. (They're $5.50 compared to $4.25 for our regular bars.) They last a really long time.

Earthy, sultry, mysterious, woody, and sexy are all good adjectives of this Dragon's Blood soap. It's wonderful for men or women and we've even had one customer by it just so her kids would wash their hands more. I guess it might be fun to wash with "Dragon's Blood!"

Irish Mocha Through a New Lens

I am completely in love. With my new camera, that is! She's an Olympus Evolt 420, and is absolutely wonderful. Naturally I've been very busy taking new pictures! I don't want to bombard you all with random photos, so I'm going to try to take it slow, one day at a time.

Today I'll start with one of my favorite pictures from my little photo shoot - Irish Mocha Soap.

Looks good enough to eat, doesn't it? Well, it SMELLS good enough to eat too! It smells very chocolaty, and of course, coffee too!

I'm pretty sure that this is the absolutely best way to wake up in the morning. It's so smooth and decadent that it makes for the perfect night cap too, especially after a long, stressful day when all you want is something comforting.

You'll notice that the size is larger than our normal 3.5 oz. bars. These weight in at about 5 oz. and are part of our "Spa Bar" line. Since they're bigger, they are $5.50 and last a long time.

And just in case you need one more reason to have one of these beautiful bars for yourself, just say it's for St. Patrick's day! It is "Irish", after all!

This bar is best enjoyed by chocolate-lovers, coffee-lovers, and those seeking a sinful experience, without the sin.

As always, you can buy on our webpage.

Angel of Shavano

It's been hard updating lately because there really hasn't been much news. At least on the business front. Other things in every other aspect have been busy.

We've mostly just been restocking and restocking. Like our Angel of Shavano soap. If you've ever smelled Thierry Mugler's "Angel", then you'll know what this smells like. It has hints of lots of different fragrances including sandalwood, vanilla, patchouli, plus faint notes of fruits and citruses. It is meant to arouse fond memories that one cannot quite place with smells reminiscent of chocolate, honey, and caramel.

So that's the Angel part. You might wonder what "Shavano" is though.

We live at an elevation just under 8,000 feet, surrounded by mountains in all directions. Out of our kitchen and living room window is the perfect view of the Collegiate Peaks in the Sauguache mountain range. It's one of the "Fourteeners", mountains above 14,000 feet, and has an interesting visual feature to it.

On the eastern face of the mountain is a deep crevice that forms the shape of an angel usually for most of the spring. Can you see her in the picture? (Picture was taken by Steve at ColoradoGuy. I couldn't take one myself right now because the whole mountain is covered in snow and the angel isn't visible.) Look for a big "Y" just below the summit. The legend goes, that there was once a great drought and the Indian people of the valley were suffering. A Ute Princess went to the mountain and prayed for her people. She was told that she must sacrifice herself so that her people could have water again. She did, and now every spring when the snow melts, it is her, crying for her people and renewing the valley with fresh water.

In our soap, we added calendula petals too. It looks pretty, smells pretty, and has a nice story to go with it. Needless to say, it sells very well locally! We think you should have a piece of our beautiful mountain too - every time you wash!

The last picture I wanted to share is what Angel of Shavano looks like when it first comes out of the mold. It's so smooth and pretty-smelling!

Soap Good Enough to Steal

Yesterday was our Holiday Bazaar Craft Fair and it was excellent. So many great people came out to do some Christmas shopping (and shopping for themselves!) and made our day great.

Whenever we do any kind of craft show, we always try to put a bar of soap in the bathroom. For one, we really hate using any other kind of soap and the liquid soap in bathrooms is so drying. So we put it there for us, but also as a sample for everyone else that happens to wash their hands that day. We always get positive comments and frequently people buy our soap that never would have given it a second glance because they got to try it out first.

Yesterday's show was no different. We chose our Cinnamon Spice soap for the bathroom and we've nearly sold out of it in large part because so many people wanted to buy "That one from the bathroom." But a few hours before the end of the show, one of the other vendors approached us and remarked that our soap was gone. Someone had stolen it!

I guess they just really needed some soap and couldn't or wouldn't buy it. We took it as a compliment though. Now we know that our soap is good enough to steal. Not that you need to, really. It's quite affordable and a person would probably feel a lot better every time they used it if it didn't conjure feelings of guilt, but oh well.

And lest you think our town is full of soap thieves and criminals, let me assure you that this is one of the last places I would have expected this from! But here, I'll let "The New York Times" do the talking. They did an article about Salida today.

NaBloPoMo

If that title makes you wonder about my sanity, let me explain. It stands for National Blog Posting Month. In an effort to make more regular posts, I've joined up to dedicate myself to a blog post every single day for an entire month. Even weekends. Now that I've explained, you may STILL be wondering about my sanity.



On the soaping front, we've been intermitantly busy with periods of slowness. We've made several new batches of soap, some restocking, but a few new ones too. We've got our seasonal Cinnamon Spice, Caramel Apple and Plum Spice, and a new spa line bar, Dragon's Blood. They're all really wonderful, but the Dragon's Blood was really a nice surprise.



Here's a picture of it:

The pinkish layer there and the green one above it are colored with jojoba beads. They give a cool visual effect, but they also gently exfoliate. And the smell is WONDERFUL. There's hints of vanilla and patchouli and a sweet, exotic musk.

We have it for sale up on the website already for people who want to order it now, because we know this one is going to sell FAST. We have a big craft show the day after it's ready to ship so if you order it now, you can be sure that we'll save yours.

Other than the soaps, we've also been working hard to keep our stock up for all this holiday buying! Our lotions are selling like crazy and everyone that's purchased a small moon cream is coming back for the larger sizes!


Now then, to keep me encouraged, I want people to please comment on this post! If I even suspect that someone might be reading this, it will be so much easier to keep this thing updated!