Classic Lavender Soap

I've only worked with a few essential oils and only blended them once. Straight peppermint is always popular and it's an affordable option. Another popular choice and one of my personal favorites is Lavender. This is more expensive but no where near some of the top shelf essential oils out there. Both of these essential oils play really well in soap! Another I have tried (and love) is Bramble Berry's 10x Orange essential oil. I blended this with clove essential oil for the Pomander Soap.

Being woefully inexperienced at essential oil blending in soap use I thought: Time to get on that. Essential oils are more affordable to pick up online at a soap/candle/B&B supply store than places like brick and mortar health food stores. So I went a little essential-oil-crazy on Bramble Berry's website and ordered a wide array.

I don't really buy into to the multitude of (often invented without any substantiating evidence) health benefits ascribed to essential oils. I'm not saying they are all false. Of course not, that would be false in itself! However I will not be using them for any health benefits they may or may not posses since I am not FDA approved to make drug or medical claims.

While some essential oils do contain helpful medicinal properties, they are not all benign. Certain oils (or too much of an oil) can be dangerous to the skin, certain conditions, pregnant women etc. There is a lot of reading to be done before playing with essential oils.

Soap is a good place to start learning and experimenting because it is not a leave on product. Therefore I can use citrus oils and small amounts of oils that could otherwise burn or irritate the skin such as clove, mints and black pepper oil.

I'm thankful for the wealth of information on soap blogs and forums I can learn from and e-books a plenty! Not to mention Bramble Berry's fragrance calculator! 

To start the essential oil revolution, a Lavender Goat Milk soap! I wanted to try a simple drop swirl again but avoid the 'tongue' look. I wanted a dark purple and a light purple to play against the white uncolored soap. Making a dark purple proved harder than I thought. I'm fairly sure I created a staining soap for the first time.

I darkened the purple mica I have with some natural indigo and activated charcoal from Bramble Berry. I have to try this indigo on its own, it is a really pretty and intriguing color. It smells very strange, but I don't think the odor would transfer to the soap.

I left the base uncolored because I've realized that my soap always comes out fairly white without titanium dioxide! Ok I'm embarrassed to say, the free-style quality of the drop swirl technique just stumps me! This time I set aside too much colored soap and have a layer of dark purple on top... But I'm getting there!

On thing I was able to do was flip up some peaks for a nice top. Usually my peaks don't hold!

Way better than before! But (hilariously) I got a tongue looking thing again. Check out the middle bar, doesn't it look like a drawing of a tongue licking something? Hahaha!