Spring Giveaway!!!

Before I talk about the spring giveaway let's talk about soap. I always get lots of questions when I announce a giveaway so maybe I can give you some answers right now.

First, lets talk about ingredients. For many of you this is a primary concern. If you are like me and you are sensitive to lots of things, you need to know what I put it in.

Every bar has a label on the back.

The oils I use the most are olive, coconut, palm, canola, rice bran, avocado, sesame, sweet almond, safflower and castor. From time to time I add a splash of wheat germ and hemp. When I do I put it on the label. I also always add hard butters like shea, cocoa and mango.

 I add a lot of milk powders. Coconut, buttermilk, goat and soy are my favorites. I also add a few spoonfuls of yogurt powder and sometimes a squirt of honey. They make the lather creamy.

 For even more slip, I add kaolin clay. For color I use titanium dioxide for white and cosmetic grade micas for the rest. Everything is FDA approved for soap.

One of the weird things you will see on the label is sodium lactate. It's a salt solution which helps harden the bars and add to the lather. I've tried dissolving my own salt but it's harder than you think to get it right so I use a commercial product instead.

I used to try to clean the naturally forming the soda ash off the top by steaming but now I just go along with it and add a lot of sparkle.

 After some cosmetic glitter I add a sprinkling of sea salts. It's pretty but it's probably a good idea to wash it all off before use especially if you use it on your face first.

The most iffy ingredient is always the fragrance. If anything ruins a batch, it's the fragrance. I look up the FDA approved amount per batch and then use a quarter of it so all my soaps are barely scented because fragrance can make me itch. It's why I make my own soap in the first place and that's why I test them all before I send them out. If they don't meet my very high standards they become kitchen soap. So far, no duds in this batch. Brambleberry makes excellent fragrance oils.

 Now.....as for the giveaway. Pick FOUR of your favorite soaps from this post or this post or this post and I will see that you get TWO of them. Pick from the photos and descriptions that look like this one. The strongest scented ones are Waterlily Bluebell and Blue Agave Sugar. The other ones are all on the mild side with Jasmine Dream the mildest of all.

One of your soap picks can also be the glycerin soap that I posted about on Friday. Pikake is the strongest scent. Cherry Blossom is the mildest. Tropical Vacation is somewhere in the middle.

You also get to pick ONE "ride along". You can pick a yummy night time lip balm in the Pineapple Colada flavor OR......

...... a full size lotion bar in the Creamsicle Cybilla scent OR a sample of my newly formulated Whipped Pineapple Butter that I have been using as a cuticle cream on my poor wood ravaged hands. It's lovely and does not smell like my first attempt using the natural shea and cocoa butter that ended up smelling like chocolate covered pineapple.

OR you can pick a small pot luck sample of the glycerin soap.

You old timers know the drill. Go to Ravelry or araigneessoapshop@gmail.com and send me your choices and your mailing info and sometime in April you will get your soapy surprise package....

...that includes the bunny card-no strings attached.

The last question I always have to answer is....NO. I don't sell the soap. I know it's crazy but I love making it and I can't use it all up so I have to get rid of it. I factor mailing costs in with my hobby allowance so it's all good. I love making up your packages as much as I love making the soap. It keeps me busy for months so it's worth every penny.

So stop reading......and go pick your soap. I've got 150 lovely bars and they ALL need a good home.