I’ve had some ideas for new soaps. This week I will attempt to make a salt bar. I’m going to test a small batch to make sure I can figure out the process. The salt bars you see in the picture are ones that I received in a soap swap. They are very nice! The one on the left was made by Cindy Buttles of Oh Loverly Soaps in Arcadia, Ohio. She used a regular sea salt in her soap. The other was made by Rosie Bennett who used Hawaiian red sea salt and pink sea salt. The idea is that the soap is made from all or mostly coconut oil because it is the only oil that will produce a lathering soap in salt water. The salt creates an extremely moisturizing soap, believe it or not. Many claim that you won’t have to use lotions when you bathe with a salt bar. Other soapmakers have had difficulty either with having the salt settle to the bottom of the bar, or with it setting up so hard that they were unable to cut it. Hopefully I am prepared for both. Wish me luck!

My friend Bekka was so kind to offer to try the sugaring technique after all the awful things I had to say about it. I gave her the recipe I found on Spa Index. Here is her feedback:

Similar experience to yours. However, I had the warning of not burning myself…heh. Anyway, I heated up the mixture and waited almost 30 minutes before it was cool enough to try on my legs. It was starting to thicken up and if I could have spread it more thin it might have worked better. It only pulled up about half the hair covered by the strip. I tried different tools to spread it to see if I could get it a bit thinner without, of course, heating up the sugar. It just didn’t work very well. Not worth the hassle. It smelled good though.

I’ve always wanted to try home waxing but even the store bought kits don’t do much for me. Oh, well. Maybe one day I’ll bump into a money tree and be able to just go to the salon for waxing when needed. Or, better yet, get laser hair removal done!

I couldn’t agree more!

It was the end of 2004, and I had been doing business as Amy’s Handmade Soap for about a year.  I decided that it was time to have a business name that would reflect my faith in God.  After consulting some of my closest friends, the choices had been narrowed to three: Luscious Latherings, Something Soapy, or Great Cakes Soapworks.  On December 30, 2004, I woke up at 5:30am and it was as if God said, “A great cake of soap can cleanse your body, but only a great God can cleanse your soul.”  Some of you know that I use I John 1:9 as the Scripture to back this up.  It says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  At that moment it became very clear which name I was to use, and it has been Great Cakes Soapworks ever since.  (And I might add this was already my favorite of the three!)

Woo hoo!  I am so excited to share my blog with you.  I wanted to give you a glimpse into my life as a soapmaker.  My hope is that you’ll see my heart for Jesus as I create, write, and share.  This isn’t my soap business, it’s His.  In my next post, I’ll be sharing some of the history of how Great Cakes Soapworks came into being.  Be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed (at the bottom of the page) so that you will be notified of any new posts, and feel free to leave a comment whenever you have something to say.  My plan is to offer some information about soapmaking, a few skin care recipes you can try at home, and insider information on any new products or specials I might have.  Stick around – I promise to keep things interesting!