Junk Soap and a New Direction

This will be my last post on Subplot Soap. I'm wrapping up this blog and this stage of my soap making adventures and focusing on Deathbed of Roses, the first book of The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries.

I'll still be making soap, but I'll be working on recipes that will be included in the book(s) and on my new blog. 

Since I'll be making less soap, I decided to clean out my soap cabinet and make a batch just for myself using all the odds and ends, scraps and leftovers from other projects. The olive oil I used was a combo of tiny amounts I'd infused with woad, rhubarb, lady's bedstraw and charcoal. There are also small amounts of sesame seed oil, cocoa butter and lard.

Instead of water I used 100% reduced booze—sweet vermouth and sangria. Lots of sugar in this baby. The lather should be insane.

Of course, I ran the whole thing through SoapCal and tweaked my amounts of coconut oil, castor etc…

For the fragrance I used the last of my champagne from Bramble Berry, some pink grapefruit and a little patchouli. Love it. It's like a hippie pop star.

I poured the mixture over a bunch of leftovers and scraps.

It was very liberating cleaning out my cabinet—and I think it'll be great soap. It was also very liberating not to care what the soap looked like or how straight I cut the bars since it was just for me.

My goal is to have the first draft of Deathbed of Roses finished by the time my junk soap has cured.

Thank you all for reading Subplot Soap for the past two years and I hope you start following The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries. They'll be some fun soap recipes, tutorials, tips and hints. And maybe a dead body or two.

Marketing Strategy Part 2: Lavender Rave

One of the many great things about making soap is you can easily change what you call it and how you market it.

This started out as Lavender Mosh Pit, but when I realized mosh pits are as much a part of the past as answering machines and record stores, I updated it.

I'm not sure this actually reflects what a rave is like. I've never been to one. I'm much too old.

Made with olive oil pomace infused with lavender/alkanet/charcoal, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, lard and castor oil.

Fragrance: lavender, lemongrass, ho wood, may chang, sage and rosemary.

Marketing Strategy Part 1: Lavender Mosh Pit

I had this whole punk rock thing in mind when I made this batch.

It's a collage—like the posters we made back in the 80's with letters cut out of magazines and and photos of Ronald Reagan. I used all the bits and pieces of every lavender-based soap I had hanging around my kitchen (including an entire batch of lavender castile soap that was going to become this year's Be My Guest Soap, but I just never got around to doing it).

The fragrance blend (which includes rosemary, may chang, sage, lemongrass and ho wood) is more energizing than relaxing, almost aggressive. It definitely ain't Yardley's.

I cut it, cured it, labeled it using an adorable punk rock font (no more cutting letters out of magazines!), wrapped it in a ripped up black t-shirt fastened with safety pins, spent an entire afternoon trying to get the right photo (it's not a very photogenic soap)—then realized the people buying this soap will most likely not be old punk rockers such as myself. Kids today don't know a mosh pit from a Ramones picture disc. They weren't even born yet when Sid killed Nancy.

I learned a valuable lesson from my Mommie Dearest soap: sometimes you can be too clever and snarky. It results in dismal failure.

So the punk rock theme got trashed. Eighty-sixed. The soap was renamed for this generation, relabeled using a hip and trendy font and rewrapped in black vinyl (a tablecloth from the 99 cent store) and fastened with lavender rubber bands.

And so I present to you and everyone under forty: Lavender Rave

Maverick




Maverick is available at Fine and Dandy

on 49th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues

in lovely downtown Hell's Kitchen.

 
I outdid myself on the fragrance for Maverick—although I didn't write down the amounts of the different oils I used, so I'll never be able to re-create it. Perhaps that makes it all the more special.

It starts with earthy sandalwood, cedarwood, tobacco and just a touch of patchouli. There's a subtle spiciness from black pepper. Top notes of bergamot, rose and orange and vanilla to round it all out.

It's gentlemanly, but far from being uptight and stiff. Think Cary Grant and Tony Bennett. Smooth, sophisticated. An independent thinker who makes his own rules and isn't afraid to break them.

Funny, when I make soap for men, it seems like I'm making soap for men who I'd like to date. Maybe I should slip my phone number under the soap label. You never know.

Vintage Champagne




You can buy Vintage Champagne

at Fine and Dandy on 49th Street

(between 9th and 10th Avenues) in Hell's Kitchen.



Making soap with Champagne might become an end of the year tradition for me.

Last year's was made with Moët & Chandon White Star. This year's is André's Pink—although I beg to differ if it really can be called Champagne since it's from California, not Champagne. I think it should actually be labeled 'sparkling wine.' But I'm no authority.

Last year's batch was scented with almond fragrance oil that wasn't formulated to use in soap and seized the batch. This year I blended almond and Champagne fragrance oils (and some may chang essential oil) I got from Bramble Berry. The Champagne doesn't really smell like Champagne to me, more like 7UP—but it actually smells effervescent.  The blend ended up very lively and fun. A little celebration in a bar of soap. And no seizing.

I did have a happy accident with this batch though. Note the crackling effect. That's from using titanium. It overheated. But I think it's quite pretty. It gives it that real vintage look. Ironically, the titanium didn't make the bar super white. Go figure.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Citrus Bang Beach Bars

I really like the concept of using embeds with a fragrance that compliments the fragrance in the overpour. I think it ends up smelling different than if you simply blended the fragrances together—the scents seem…crisper, more pronounced.

I also like the idea of using leftovers.

Citrus Bang Beach Bars have embeds leftover from my Verbena Beach Bars (lemon verbena, holy basil, may chang, bergamot, grapefruit and ginger essential oils). The annatto-orange is an overpour fragranced with orange, may chang, peppermint, eucalyptus, rosemary essential oils and a little spearmint fragrance oil.

Quite fab.

Update on my Yet-Untitled-Cozy-Mystery: I've come up with a bunch of titles—not ready to share with you, gentle readers, but have submitted them to my writing workshop. Looking forward to getting feedback.

Winter's Kiss

The green embeds started out as a batch onto themselves, but when I cut it, I wasn't thrilled with the fragrance. I used eucalyptus, rosemary and basil essential oil and some spearmint fragrance oil and it was too spearmint-y. I kept thinking of Wrigley's Doublemint Gum. And the plain—although pretty—green (from basil) bars just didn't do anything for me.

I chopped the batch up and embedded them in new titanium-dioxide-whitened batch scented with a good dose of rosemary and a touch of basil.

Perfect. It's refreshing and great for clearing up a stuffy nose or foggy head first thing in the AM.

The name Winter's Kiss came to me on the tour bus as we drove underneath the UNIECF Snowflake on 5th Avenue and 57th Street.

Still no luck on naming my Yet-Untitled-Mystery-Novel—even after an evening of Mai Tais and brainstorming.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Chocolate, Almond and Raspberry




The little pink embeds are rejects from my (Not) Seeing Red experiment.



 

This batch is completely out of character for me as I'm not a big fan of candy-smelling soap, but I'm not just making soap for my own selfish self anymore. And I've had a few people tell me they love sweet scents.

I received a free sample of Holiday Candy fragrance oil with my order from Brambleberry, so I figured I'd use it to make soap for those with a sweet tooth in the shower.

I blended the sample (which smells like those hard candies shaped like raspberries with the gooey centers that your grandmother had at Christmas time) with some almond fragrance oil. The almond mellowed out the sweetness factor and made it a bit more sophisticated.

The soap itself is made with a big dose of cocoa butter and colored with cocoa powder. That added to the overall scent as well, made it more complex and smoother. It's still not my cup of tea for a bar of soap, but it is heavenly.

They all got packaged in pink fabric. Cute, huh?





The bathing beauty in the background is from a signed paint-by-numbers painting

I found on the street. Who could throw out art like this?





Verbena Beach Bars






Graffiti makes such a nice backdrop

 

I made a batch of salt bars—or Beach Bars as I call them and they came out super crumbly. Salt bars have the tendency to be crumbly anyway—but these were outrageous. Pick one up and chunks of salt and soap avalanche onto the floor. And if there's one thing I hate, it's messy soap. Which is odd because I'm not an anal person.

So I chopped and crumpled the bars up and used them as embeds. The second batch of soap kind of seals in the salt goodness.

The first batch was made 75% coconut oil, so the bar would still lather up with the salt. I did a superfat of 20% so all that coconut oil wouldn't be drying.

The rest of the batch was olive oil pomace that I infused with flowers from Queen Anne's lace. It made a pretty pale yellow—and Queen Anne's lace (or wild carrot) is supposed to be good for dry, chapped skin. There's a ton of it growing in the garden. I was under the impression it was a native plant, but after doing some research found out it's from Europe and considered invasive. In other words, a weed.

I also threw in a bunch of melt and pour scraps to jazz it up.

The second batch is just a standard recipe with some shea butter.  The olive oil pomace is infused with the last of the lemon verbena I grew last year. Again, very pale, but pretty.

The whole shebang is scented with lemon verbena, holy basil, may chang, bergamot, grapefruit and ginger essential oils. It's a real WOW! fragrance. Very uplifting and energizing.

One of my New Year's Soap-Making Resolutions was to create the Ultimate Lemon Verbena bar. This might be it, but it's not how I imagined it at all.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Basil, Lime and Coconut Milk








Originally, I was going to name this soap '9th Avenue' because it has all the ingredients for Thai food (coconut milk and oil, basil, lemongrass, lime, ginger) and there are a ton of Thai restaurants on 9th in Hell's Kitchen—too many really—on some blocks there're four of them. But in light of this soap's appearance, I've nixed the snarkiness and am being straightforward.

It's a rebatch of soap I'd made using some of that beeswax I'd rendered last year. I made balls with some of the overly rustic honey/beeswax soap then rolled them in powdered lime basil before embedding them. The effect just didn't work. Hideous, actually. The embeds had a regulated look to them—although the embeds I made with the same soap looked great in Plan Bee. Go figure.

So everything got shredded and melted down in some coconut milk. It's still not a pretty soap, but the coconut milk makes for a creamy lather. And it smells great. And makes your skin feel fab.

To make up for the soap's humble appearance, I package it using fabric samples that a decorating store on the Upper Eastside was tossing out. My mother was a decorator when I was growing up and she had tons of swatch books that would get tossed when the fabric was discontinued. She gave a lot of them to a neighbor who pieced the swatches into quilts and cushions. My Barbie doll house also had its fair share of brocade draperies.






The look is a little clunky (so were my Barbie's drapes), but no glue or sewing was involved and it's kind of sustainable.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Shaken and Stirred




Martini glass courtesy of American Retro Bar and Grill—a lovely place to have martinis

 

I had this soap in my imagination a long time before it finally came to be—and it's not quite the way I pictured it, but I've gotten over that.

It's a soap version of a martini in the shape of an olive. I'm a purist when it comes to martinis, by the way. They should only come in two flavors: gin or vodka. If it tastes like chocolate or peaches, it's not a martini. It is acceptable (and wonderful) however to infuse you vodka with rosemary or mint or any other herb.

Anyway, back to the soap. The 'olive' part made with a lye infusion of reduced dry vermouth (recently found in my cupboard and leftover from an old, old boyfriend who made the best dirty martinis I ever had) and juniper berries (from my garden). The concoction smelled pretty…powerful when I mixed it, but I'm beginning to actually like the smell of lye and booze. I hope that's not an indication of some strange neuroses.





My lye mixture


 

I knew the vermouth was going to darken the soap and my olive oil infused with lemongrass and lime basil might end up muddy, so I added some French green clay. Essential oils of juniper, lime and may chang. This was all poured into a mold I made from a mailing tube with a paper towel roll inside to create a cavity for the 'pimento' part.

My mold

It's sort of a reverse embed. The pimento was made of melt and pour soap with Moroccan red clay (that's what my (Not Seeing) Red experiment was all about). I figured an embed of melt and pour would probably lose its shape when cold process soap was poured over it.

And the olive part came out fine—a perfect shade of green. I took it out of the mold after a day and then turned it into a mold (or so I thought) by rubber banding a Ziploc bag on the bottom.

But alas! When I poured the melt and pour into the cavity it began leaking out the bottom. Which is odd since the cold process didn't leak out...

I panicked. This was not a cheap recipe. The red clay, melt and pour base and essential oils cost the same as a night drinking real martinis in the Meat Packing District. I was not going to let this go to waste.

So I started scooping the leaked-out soap back into the cavity while adding shredded soap scraps I had hanging around. Eventually, the melt and pour started to cool at the bottom and created a seal so it stopped leaking out. I ended up with a not-so-solid reddish, pinkish center.

But months later, it's cured and fabulous. Really lush, stiff lather. I love it for shaving my legs and the fragrance is intoxicating, of course.

I might give a bar to that old, old boyfriend who made the great dirty martinis. I haven't spoken to him ages. Maybe he's been deported.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Rain



The wait is over



It took a while for me to get all ducks lined up on this batch, but it's worth it. I guess. It feels like a culmination of recent failures. And I'm too frazzled at this point to think about 'lessons learned.'

First the soap itself. The polka dots (which I hope look like big raindrops) are a rebatch of an olive oil Christmas soap (fragranced with frankincense and myrrh) that didn't look so festive. Paper mache gray just doesn't get anyone in the holiday mood.

My goal was black—and I know some of you won't think that's a Christmas-y color either. It is if you live in NYC and have a lot of rock-n-roll friends. Anyway, the charcoal infusion I made just wasn't strong enough, hence the gray. The first failure.

When I rebatched, I added a little lavender essential oil to lessen the Christmas-ness of the frankincense and myrrh.

The overpour was a bit more successful on the black front. It's made with charcoal and alkanet. Still not the black of Joey Ramone's jacket, but at least not gray. And I added more lavender essential oil to the batch.

But when I got the batch into the mold, it was shy of being normal sized bars. Size really matters with me. At least with soap. Failure #2. I whipped up another small batch using olive oil infused with mallow to top it off. Really nice green. And I've got more mallow growing in my garden this year—it re-seeds like crazy—so it'll become part of my 'permanent palette.'

Mallow

When I cut the finished bars (and they came out wonky), I was all set to call them Stormy Monday—from the old blues song—but after I thought about it more, I decided to call the batch Rain and include a story booklet with each bar.

For those of you not familiar with my writing, "Rain" is one of the short stories from You Are Here. It's a fairly dark story, but one of the most popular in the book.  The fresh, but mysterious, almost melancholy blend of the lavender, frankincense and myrrh in the soap mirrors the mood of the story.

I got my friend Elizabeth Shim to do the booklet cover. She's a very talented graphic designer and as well as a writer—in fact, I met her through Elaine Edelman's writing workshop.  Her writing has a very unique Korean/New Yorker perspective, lots of detail and humor as well.

The booklet cover by Elizabeth Y. Shim ( 심예린 )

 

She did a great job on the cover. I love it. It subtly tells the story of the story.

Laying out the booklets was a plethora of failures. Which is strange because I've done these booklets before without much issue.  Then my printer wasn't aligning correctly, then the labels I designed using Elizabeth's artwork didn't fit every bar correctly. Etc…

Today—my only day off for the next million years—the day I swore I'd get the whole shebang packaged and ready to get out of my apartment and into the hands of readers and bathers—it rained.

And the soap absorbed the humidity. And it got sticky.

And I said, "Just do it."

And I did.

The finished product.

It doesn't look like I wanted—except for Elizabeth's fab art—but it's done. And because this batch caused so much heartache, I'm giving it away—to people in my writing workshop. They in turn, will be asked to pass the bar on to somebody that doesn't know me and isn't familiar with my writing, but would enjoy the story and the soap.

There will be another soap/story version of "Rain" in the future. That one will be much different soap-wise and I'll still use Elizabeth's art, but instead of a booklet, it'll include a link to hear the audio edition of the story read by the author and produced by my friend Nate Cimmino at Harrumph Studios.

No more booklets! I'm going digital! You heard it here first!

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Seaweed Beach Bars—And the Mystery of Fragrance







What's in there that makes it smell so good?



I've been working on my Yet-Untitled-Cozy-Mystery lately, so I've slacked off on blogging about soap—and making it.

The mystery is going to contain a half dozen or so soap recipes. That's pretty common in cozies. Recipes or craft tips. I don't think I'll include this one—it's a little complicated and it doesn't really tie into the plot or any of the characters. Bed of Roses does. And Guinness and Ginger.

Perhaps going forward, I'll make some soap that specifically relates to the mystery. Captain Smokey, Forensics, Socrates' Shampoo Bar, Lucky Star Coffee, Woad Is Me.

Are you intrigued? Do you want to read the book when it's finished?

This soap—The Seaweed Beach Bar is a pretty standard salt bar. What makes it complicated though is I added a bunch of scraps from my Lavender Beach Bars. This made for some interesting salty embeds that become more pronounced as the bar is used.

I also didn't keep track of how much of each essential oil I used to make the blend. I never keep track. I mix by nose. In this case, I started out with a base of grapefruit, then added some may chang to anchor the citrus, a little bergamot and a little ylang ylang, then some more grapefruit—and you get the picture. There's also lavender essential oil in the embeds. But how much?

So, yea, too complicated to put in a book.

And going forward, if I'm going to create recipes to include in the book, I'll have to get some pipettes and write down my blends. And I'll solve the mystery of my fragrances.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Marketing Failure





Well, Mommie Dearest took off like a lead zeppelin. I sold two bars of it.

It might be a generational thing. A few younger people (even gay men!) didn't get that the wire coat hanger refers to the movie Mommie Dearest. Oh well. Even Apple has failures. It's still great soap.

And it's now had a make-over. Same bar, new name, new photo and new product description.

Presenting Bed of Roses:

A surprising mosaic of Arabian rose, lavender and fresh anise. Moroccan red clay and charcoal  to remove impurities. Cocoa butter to soften. And gorgeous, fluffy lather thanks to a generous dose of reduced red wine.

Hopefully, this will be more successful.

I'm still keeping a wrapped, coat hanger bar of Mommie Dearest in the soap box.  You never know…

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Mommie Dearest





The moment I put this into the mold, I knew it was going to be Mother's Day soap—mostly because of the fragrance—which I did in two parts.

The black embeds have Arabian rose fragrance oil. I did a hot process so I wouldn't have to worry about seizing or separating or ricing or whatever. I threw some scraps of soap in after the cook for a little contrast. The white is from the tops of my first Beach Bars and the pink is from an experiment using red Moroccan clay that I'll write about one of these days.

The over-pour has lavender and fresh anise essential oils which toned down the rose a bit—even though they weren't blended together. When it was first cut, I could also really smell the wine and cocoa butter I used. They've all melded together during the cure. It's a gorgeous fragrance. Unusual, yet familiar at the same time.

The final bar doesn't really have a Mother's Day look to it though. It's dark and chaotic. And that's why I'm calling it Mommie Dearest.

It's the perfect gift for anyone with a scary *mom who went ape shit over wire coat hangers or forced them to stay up all night watching old movies or eat raw liver. Or a million other things that wrecked their chances of being a normal adult.

It’s also the perfect gift for moms with a great sense of humor.

And gay men who love Joan Crawford.

Here's my sardonic product description:

Relive those painful memories you spent years in therapy trying to forget. Her cheap perfume covering up the smell of wine and Sambuca. The nights she locked you in the car while she entertained one of her boyfriends. The mornings you went to school nourished with a breakfast of Chips Ahoy cookies because she couldn't be bothered getting out of bed.

Arrives wrapped in crinkled gold tissue paper with a miniature wire coat hanger. $5

If there's any left after Mother's Day, it'll get a new name and a new description. I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, perhaps?

*My mother, by the way, is not a scary mom. She's very cool and I appreciate the terrific job she did raising me—although she did wash my mouth out with Irish Spring for being sassy (you can read about that here). And I think that's why I make soap today.

Son of Cardamom

   

I have a confession to make. Even though I now own a miter box, I still have issues cutting soap. I blame my silicone loaf mold. The soap is just too wide to fit into the box, so I have to cut the sides off first.

When I was doing this with the Cardamom, Coffee and Oatmeal, the knife hit that fun googie embed and went crazy. I ended up with quite a few bad-looking bars. And with the price of cardamom essential oil, I wasn't going to let those bars go to waste. (You'll find most soap makers hate waste. Not sure if it's a genetic thing or something that happens to you when you start making soap.)

I cut the wonky bars up and used them for this batch. Which I like even better than the first. I love the rich, chocolaty brown of the over-pour. That comes from using a stronger brew of coffee (Café Bustelo). I also used more coffee butter, but other than that the recipe is the same.

I ended up a little short when I poured the new batch over the embeds, so added that light brown strip with a good amount of coffee grounds for extra scrubbiness.  I think it looks like foam on a latte.

Last week, I found cardamom coffee in a dollar store up in Harlem. It smells great, but doesn't taste so good. Kinda weak and just off. No matter—it'll make great soap. Can't let anything go to waste. Even dollar coffee.

Cardamom, Coffee and Oatmeal



This came as a suggestion from Brian Vinero. And it's fabulous! After it was cut and hanging out in the kitchen I had to stick my nose in its scent every time I walked by.

Cardamom is known as the Queen of Spices. It's been grown Asia for ages, but when the Vikings raided Constantinople, it made its way to Scandinavia and became quite popular for baking.

It's a stimulant and an aphrodisiac (gotta love that). Its scent is warm, spicy and very, very sexy. And the essential oil is very, very expensive.

To make this soap, I infused some olive oil pomace with cardamom and then created the googie-looking embed by tilting the mold. There's some oatmeal in it. And a half-assed swirl using coffee infused olive oil pomace.

The overpour was done with coffee infused olive oil pomace and twice-brewed coffee added to the lye with some trimmings from the embed, more oatmeal and coffee grounds.

Showering with this bar is like showering with a big, sexy Swede. It feels great in my hand, running it over my body, producing this creamy, fluffy long-lasting lather.

Afterwards, my entire apartment is filled with the cardamom scent and my skin feels soft, dewy and pampered. I feel energized and oh, so happy.

It's my favorite soap so far. As the Scandinavians say, "Uff-Dah!" 

From the lips of  Brian: "Ah, the scent of Scandinavia! The Scandinavians love their coffee, their oat bread and the scent of cardamom...and it is all here in Heather's latest lathering masterpiece. The coffee exfoliates, the oatmeal softens the skin and cardamom is an exotic tonic for all that ails thee..."

 

Neroli and Black Pepper





Miguelina! was insanely popular—I think it was mostly because of the fragrance. Who can resist neroli?

Neroli (Citrus Vulgaris) comes from the bitter orange tree. It's said to have gotten its name from the princess of Nerola, Italy, Anne Marie Orsini who used the essential oil in her bath and to fragrance her gloves. Neroli is thought to be an antidepressant, a sedative and an aphrodisiac. It's also said to help regenerate skin cells and promote smoother skin.

And of course it smells heavenly—spicy, honey-ish and very floral. In perfumery, it's used as a both a base note and a top note.

When I created (that word sounds a little pompous here, doesn't it?) Miguelina's fragrance I blended the neroli with some vetiver, clove and tea tree essential oils. Since I was out of those when I made this batch, I used ylang ylang, may chang, orange and black pepper.

Black pepper (Piper Nigru) added a dry, warm pungency that I think makes the blend more sophisticated.  

Soap-wise, I played with melt and pour embeds again, but this time I let the embed go through the whole loaf of soap. I like the effect and how the light comes through. And it made it easier to cut. No whacky splintering.