What's new? Well.....

It's been a while, but I have been busy. Going in just about every direction I can.

First, Here are some little soap bar beads I've been making to take to the Soap Bee in Ft. Wayne. I've been trying different ways to get the word "Soap" on the bar and am using some of the techniques I learned in a class this winter with Kate Fowle-Meleny. They're cute. Some are wired to be worn as charms and others have a big enough hole to be strung on snake chain and worn as a choker. In the picture, they are in various states of production. The ones on the "sticks" will be put back in the kiln so I can heat them up to add bubbles.

Then, also for the Bee, we are working on a booklet that will compliment the talk Tina and I are going to be doing about adding herbs to soap. The book wasn't hard to write after having made soap for well over ten years now. Setting up the type and layout, now that's a different matter! But, it is something I enjoy, so....

Over the weekend, we developed and tried out some recipes for the booklet and here are the results. The one in front is a rash soother for poison ivy or bug bites that we made with plantain, jewelweed, oatmeal, lavender and tea tree oil (oh, and a shot of emu oil.)
The right rear is a Baby soap with camomile added in three different ways plus chickweed and goats' milk..
The left rear is comfrey and aloe, pretty basic, but, oh, so soothing.

Finally, one of my favorite online hangouts, Wet Canvas, seems to be down for a few days and it's really killing me since I participated in a charm bracelet swap and received my charms two days ago. At least I can post the finished product here... We did this in groups of ten and each person started their bracelet and named her theme. Mine was "Must have been Moonglow". Then, we each made two charms for each of the other participants. Wound up with 20 charms for the bracelet and the work of 10 jewelry artists on one bracelet. It was a great idea and I'm so pleased with the result.


Oh, yes, the Soapworks goes on too... Making soap today!