This has been a favorite soap and it was high time to make another batch and tinker with the ingredients a bit. This is a skin loving, nutrient rich, all natural harvest soap. These bars contain real avocado - pureed by me from fresh avocados! Avocados by themselves, don't add a bit of fragrance, so I've scented this soap with a combination of essential oils - lime and patchouli.

Now, there are usually two sides of the fence regarding patchouli. Either you love it, or hate it. Most people I know fall into the later category. So why am I making a soap with patchouli in it? Well I've found that if used in small quantities, it actually adds an intangible type scent to the soap. So it smells like a woodsy, earthy lime. Pretty much what I imagined for my Tijuana Iguana.

Being all natural, the soap is colored with natural mineral pigments for the deep green portion only. The rest is left in its natural state with just a tint of green from the avocado puree.

Besides the usual oils that I put in my soaps, this one contains both castor oil and avocado oil as superfatting agents. The definition of superfatting is basically 'adding in more oil than is required to have a complete reaction with the lye in a batch of cold process soap. The small amount of extra oil left over in the soap adds extra moisturizing qualities to the soap.

Rich in fatty acids and is very soothing and lubricating to the skin. It acts as a humectant and conditioner by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin. Also promotes lather and contributes lots of bubbles to soap.

Castor Oil – (ricinus communis) Rich in fatty acids and is very soothing and lubricating to the skin. It acts as a humectant and conditioner by attracting and retaining moisture to the skin. Also promotes lather and contributes lots of bubbles to soap.

Avocado Oil - (persea gratissima) Rich in vitamins A, D, E, B1, B2, beta carotene, as well as amino acids and protein, pantothenic acid and fatty acids. Known for its healing and regenerative properties. Wonderfully moisturizing and excellent for anyone with extremely sensitive skin. Nourishes and restores dry, dehydrated, and mature skin and especially helpful to skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.

My daughter, Emily, originally did the write up for this one over here.

Our Bar None Goat's Milk Soap is all natural, and is just the ticket for people with sensitive skin and people that have sensitive noses. Made with double the amount of goat's milk than any of our other bars, this soap is made to be gentle. Bar None contains absolutely no fragrance and no colorants.

We took some more pictures of the Bar None and as we all gathered around we all came to the same conclusion. The bars look just like vanilla fudge.

This batch of Bar None will be cured and ready for shipment mid April.



My ingredients are as follows:

goat's milk
olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil

Today's guest blogger is my daughter, Emily.

Haha! I have officially taken over my mom's blog, though she says she gave me permission, I say I've commandeered it. So, on Saturday of this weekend, the fourteenth for those mathematically challenged like myself, Mom and I made a batch of Bar None goat's milk soap. Well... she made it while I watched and chattered her ear off. It turned into a nice buttermilk color as we mixed all the ingredients together in her big pot of soapy goodness. It lightened a bit after that when we poured it into the wooden mold she has, giving it the appearance of some delicious vanilla pudding. She wrapped it up and put in the pantry, trying to save it from poking little fingers. We left it be after that.

The next day, Sunday, we took the Bar None out of the pantry and took the wrapping off, simply to see if it had set up nicely. To our surprise the soap turned out a nice cream color and was ready to cut into bars as soon as we took it out. Mom used her new Feral Moon soap stamp to mark them as her product, before giving them the longest photo shoot I've ever seen soap have. Backdrops and talking to them included. All I did was wield the hammer to hit the stamps. Yay me!


Jenine here again. The wonderful custom stamp done for me (great picture of it below on one of the bars of Bar None) is from Melita at Print Letterpress on Etsy.

I'm very excited about my second official Etsy order. Four soaps went out this morning. I also included some samples of both my Bar None Goat's Milk soap and my Rosemary Orange Goat's Milk soap and also a wooden soap tray.

Well I finally made my first sale on Etsy. Although my shop lists 19 other people on Etsy labeling Feral Moon a favorite, I haven't had one nibble until a few days ago. On the same day I had one person asking a product question and one person asking if I'd consider doing a trade. Well nothing came of the product question but the trade went through.

Trades are a normal thing that occurs on Etsy. It's a professional courtesy and a way of marketing yourself and getting your name out there. People will often look at other shops and items and if they have something of a similar value to offer, they'll ask for a trade. It's up to the individual shop owners if they're open for trades or not. I decided to be open for now and see how it goes.

My trade was for one bar of soap. The person asked if they could either have a coffee or an oatmeal bar. I chose the oatmeal. In return, I'd get a homeschooling magazine that they self publish. I also threw in a hand crochet heart (since Valentine's Day is coming up) that I made myself.

Just before Christmas, I finished up two more bars of soap. One was a repeat of a favorite - the all natural Rosemary Orange goat's milk soap. And the new addition was finally my BaHaBa goat's milk soap. So today I took some pictures of the bars of soap using natural daylight and a few creative elements. Both bars are now up in my shop on Etsy.

You wouldn't think I'd be making soap at this time because our move is just around the corner, the holidays are less than 3 weeks away, and the apartment is way WAY too crowded at the moment. But I did. I made another batch of the Coffee Soap - which will probably wind up to be 9 bars. I also made another match of the Crunchy Frog Gardening Soap - which will be another 3 molded frogs.

The Summerfield Craft Fair cleaned me out of the coffee soap (cleaned, hehe) and people are asking for it - including a woman that bought two bars at the craft fair and wants more. So I'm going to unmold that loaf and make another as a back up. Those should be ready at the beginning of January.

The frogs are so cute, I couldn't resist making more. Since the mold only allows me to make 3 at a time, I figured I'd make some just to stock up. Also, my parents said there's a woman in their community that apparently is crazy about frogs so I figured I'd send them one along with some coffee bars so they can show her the frog in case she wants to be a client/customer.

In any case, I've determined that even though it sounds really nice to have 'flavored' coffee soap, the scent of the flavor really doesn't come across with the cured soap, so I'll be just calling the bars 'Coffee' in the future. That will save me a lot of time and trouble making and keeping up with numerous labels.

I've also added the Crunchy Frog Gardening Soap as a new product in the Feral Moon line. The label is a bit different as it doesn't wrap around the molded soap. Because of that, the label is less than 3" in diameter and there are two tags, one on top of the other. The top tag is what you see below. The tag beneath has the description, ingredients, and Feral Moon logos. If I could find really inexpensive paper boxes with holes in them, I'd purchase those so that the froggy soap could live in his froggy house, at least until he reached his new owner. Currently though, the frog is bagged. Good thing he doesn't need much oxygen.

I've been extremely busy putting together some things to ship out for the craft fair that my parents are involved with in their community. It's going to be on December 1st and I finally got the package out to them. The package contains 71 products and 3 gift baskets. Everything looked really great when I spread them all out on the counter as I was wrapping it all up and decorating each one. Here's what it all looked like.

Newest batch of Lemon Verbena. The swirl looks nice on this one and the bars smell so good!

I got busy the a couple of days ago with a new soap idea I was playing around with involving molds and the scaling down of one of my usual recipes to make only enough to actually go into the mold.

Ta Daa... Introducing Crunchy Frog Gardening Soap! My tribute to Monty Python.



Haha, ok just kidding. Well at least about the above picture. Here's the real one below.


My god they're everywhere!


This recipe uses my basic fab five of oils (olive, palm, coconut, palm kernel, and castor). It's colored with green mineral pigments and fraganced with sweet grass fragrance oils. I've added some poppy seeds for the scrubby effect because not only do they work but they look really cool given that this is a frog. My mold only makes three frogs so that's how many I have currently, but I plan to make more.

A few days ago I made another batch of cranberry almond. The scent was making the apartment smell really good! Here are the bars after they had been unmolded, cut, and stamped.

A few days ago I put together a new soap - the Tijuana Iguana. This soap is nutrient-rich soap due to the extra superfatting agents. Subsequently, it took a little bit longer to firm up enough to be unmolded and stamped. I was thinking all-natural and lime and avocado when I was imagining this soap. The only problem with that is that although you can put avocado in a soap, it really doesn't have a scent. So I tickled the lime with a little bit of patchouli to give it a more woodsy-lime scent. Due to the nature of essential oils of the citrus family, the scents usually fade a bit during the soapmaking process so this soap is lightly scented. That may change in the future if I can figure out how to get a stronger scent to stay without saturating the soap.

Anyway, here are my ingredients:

pureed avocado
extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
vegetable shortening
castor oil
avocado oil
essential oils
natural mineral pigments

Made some more Rosemary Orange. This is an all-natural soap using essential oils for fragrance and mineral pigments for color. These bars have sort of a layered look going between green and orange. I made the soap 6 days ago but just got around to stamping them and photographing them today. I increased the amount of essential oils in these so they smell very good. Eddie would give them two thumbs up if he did that sort of thing. He says this soap is one of his favorites.

My ingredients are:

goat's milk
extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil
essential oils
natural mineral pigments

Here are the cut bars of How Now. Just got around to taking the photo. They look pretty neat. The bars are a nice caramel color with white dots and they smell like ginger.

Made another new soap. How Now. It's a ginger honey soap. I used the same method as Purple Cow, with the previously made white soap tubes. The How Now, however, is all natural. I used only essential oils for fragrance and I was trying to encourage the color change in this soap, rather than trying to arrest it via temperature control, so that the combination of the goat's milk, honey, and essential oils would color the soap naturally. It worked. Smells very gingery.

The picture to the right is of How Now about 30 minutes after it was poured into the mold. You can see that the soap is still a bit translucent. You might even be able to make out the white soap tube that's sitting just under the surface. When it was poured, the batter was a very light, creamy color. With the goat's milk/honey, EO combo, the soap heats up quickly. In fact, if you insulate it (which is what you normally do with non goat's milk soaps), sometimes the soaps gets too hot and people have reported lava-like effects with the soap actually bubbling up and over mold. Not a good thing. With the addition of honey, the likelihood of any strange phenomena is increased. That's just the nature of things.


The next picture to the left is of How Now just after coming out of the mold and before cutting into individual bars and stamping. This soap block, at least from the outside, came together a lot more smoothly than the Purple Cow. That's due to this one being poured into the mold and around the soap tubes while still quite fluid. Both soaps will even out in the end due to the process of hardening and evaporation but I liked the pour on the How Now a lot better. I'll be keeping it in a more liquid state for future pours of either soap.

Here are my ingredients:

goat's milk
extra virgin olive oil
vegetable shortening
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
beeswax
essential oils
castor oil

About a week ago, I made a new soap but only got around to taking a picture of it. Purple Cow. I don't know if purple cow ice cream is available other places, but that's where I got the inspiration. Raspberry, chocolate, and I threw in some mint. Smells as good as the ice cream tastes! The color of the soap was supposed to be purple, but it turned out more of a lavender/gray. I need to increase the amount of dye next time round. The white circles were created by pre-making some white soap using the same recipe and pouring the batter into lined tubes. When the soap tubes were ready, they slid right out. I let them set up a few days and then when I made the Purple Cow soap, I decreased the amount of ingredients by the same volume as the tubes. I then poured the Purple Cow batter (with fragrance and dye) into the mold and inserted the previously made soap tubes, suspending them in the batter. When the soap was ready to cut, there were my white cow markings!

Here are my ingredients:

goat's milk
extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil
fragrance
natural mineral pigments



I also made some Strawberry Lip Butter. I don't have labels printed for these yet and pictures of lip balm tubes without labels are really boring but I'll put a picture up when the tubes are labeled. I was going to make the lip butter without cocoa butter but Eddie suggested that I put it in because if I could taste the chocolate, then I could call it Chocolate Covered Strawberries. However, I can't really discern any chocolate so it's just straight strawberry. I didn't color these so they're just a neutral lip balm type of color.

Ingredients:

sweet almond oil
cocoa butter
shea butter
beeswax
vitamin E
flavor oil

Here's a followup on the Cake Soap. I was a little concerned when making this soap that the whiteness of the soap would discolor because of the fragrance oil. When fragrance oils contain vanilla, they are known to do this. When I cut the bars, the insides were white. So I thought my concern was unwarranted. However, several days later, the soap settled in to a tannish color. Aha! I knew it. It was just a matter of time. So here is what the bars look like now. Still pretty, just not looking like a white cake. And they smell really good. I just hate adding additional coloring to a soap when it isn't needed, but I might in future batches with this soap to try and keep the whiteness of the soap bar because I liked the way it looked before it darkened much better.

I wanted to make a fun soap that can be used for any occasion. One that you can just pick up a bar to use or get a bar as a gift for someone celebrating an event.

Enter 'Cake'.

I thought of all sorts of cliches that I could use for this soap, but well, none of them had the ring to it that I was happy with. So 'Cake' it was and 'Cake' it is.

This soap has all of the 'good for you' ingredients as all the other soaps I've made. I did, however, use liquid dye (FDA approved for the soapmaking process) instead of mineral pigments to get pastel colors. The bars are supposed to resemble a piece of cake that's been frosted. Oh yeah... it smells really good. Just like a buttery cake. Go figure. :)

Here are my ingredients:

extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
palm kernel oil
castor oil
fragrance and color

With Emily's help, I made another batch of Pumpkin Patch bars. I showed Emily my soapmaking process and tried explaining a little about why things work they way they do. We made the soap a couple of days ago. I had my fingers crossed because the first time I made the pumpkin bars, they needed to be redone due to the excessive moisture caused by the water content of the actual pumpkin. With these bars, I initially gave it a water discount to compensate for the additional water in the pumpkin and these bars turned out great and they smell just delicious! Yesterday, the soap block was cut into bars. And today, we stamped them. Here's some pics of the bars and Emily stamping them. Emily told me not to be surprised if she accidentally packed them all up in her suitcase.


Here are my ingredients:

extra virgin olive oil
palm oil
coconut oil
vegetable shortening
pumpkin
castor oil
fragrance

No additional color needed on these. The pumpkin was enough.

Made another batch of Flaw Bars over the weekend. I refined my technique just a bit by experimenting with the herbal infusion. There are so many terrific herbs that are supposed to be great for blemishes and skin imperfections that I want to cram as many as I can in the soap - but that leads to a filtering problem. I want the infusion but without the bulk of the herbal matter. I tried a sequence of coffee filters hoping to screen the herbs that way and no matter what I tried and how many filters I used, they always wound up breaking and leaving a mess. So now I create a little packet of herbs in a fine mesh (like a big tea bag), and use that to infuse the herbs with the green tea. Then after it's finished I remove the mesh and filter it again, several times, in a tea strainer. That takes out pretty much all of the matter and leaves a nice infused herbal green tea. I also refined the amount of ingredients used and increased the superfatting to make this bar just a little bit more moisturizing than the original. This is a 100% all natural soap. Anyway, here is my extensive list of ingredients:

saponified oils of:
extra virgin olive
palm
coconut
palm kernel
sweet almond
rice bran
grape seed

in an herbal infusion of:
green tea
chamomile
calendula
peppermint
spearmint
rosemary
jasmine
comfrey
slippery elm

with superfatting oils and additives of:
castor oil
jojoba oil
aloe vera
french green clay
allantoin
lavender essential oil
tea tree essential oil
natural mineral pigment