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.

Days of Wine and Rosehips





While helping my mother clean out her kitchen cabinets in November, I found a treasure trove of ingredients to go into soap—including a lot of neglected booze in dusty bottles.

This lovely bar contains a bottle of cheap red wine (don't ask me the name—maybe Sutter's Revenge???) that I reduced and used in place of water.

I think the scent of the wine actually made it through the lye process, there's a real intoxicating top note that hits you first followed by my pretty complex blend of lemongrass, orange, may chang, pine, cedarwood, ho wood and black pepper essential oils.

I tried to get clever and add kosher sea salt and some insanely expensive Himalayan pink sea salt as layers and as a sprinkling on the top. My thought was the salt would still do that miraculous creamy thing to the lather, but wouldn't make the bar so crumply. Also thought by doing that, the pinkness of the salt would be more pronounced.

The bars are still a bit messy—most of the salt on the top went all over my kitchen as I was cutting the bars, but I like the effect of the layers.

Ingredients:

olive oil infused with alkanet and rosehips

coconut oil

palm kernel oil

castor oil

cheap red wine

kosher sea salt

Himalayan pink sea salt

Fragrance:

Lemongrass, orange, may chang, pine, cedarwood, ho wood and black pepper essential oils

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

Baby Olive Oil Bars

Layered olive oil soap is nothing new for me, I've done it twice before, but this is the first time I did it using a silicone mini-loaf pan as a mold. I bought the pan before I found out about miter boxes and figured it was an easy way to make uniform bars—and for making Beach Bars since the salt causes crumbling when cutting.

The bars are on the smallish side, but so adorable (and alas a little rustic).

Made these the day after Christmas. Infused (from top to bottom) with wild indigo, mint and nettle. Did a 10% superfat. No fragrance. Cold Process/Oven Process, so they were technically ready the next day, but I'm curing them until February. I've read that a long cure helps get rid of the 'slimy' lather that olive oil soap tends to produce.

One bar of this batch has already gone into the shower with me. Fab.

More Olive Oil Soap




The soap looks a little raggedy here, but the photo is cool. Taken from my roof.



So maybe this soap (and its variations) will become my signature soap.

It's so easy to make and showcases the different herbs from The Readers' and Writers' Subplot. And since it's fragrance-free, it's great for people with allergies and asthma—yet it still has a slight scent from the herbs.

Do the benefits of herbs survive the lye? Who knows? I've read opinions on both sides. Plus there's the school of thought that there are no benefits from anything in soap because it's a wash-off product.

That I totally don't believe.

Anyway, I wait about twenty minutes between making and pouring the layers. It seems the right amount of time to let the soap firm up enough to hold another layer.

People say it looks like vegetable terrine. Or sedimentary rock. I'm the only one that thinks it looks like bacon.

Still not fond of the word 'castile.'



Cleaned up and in the garden.



Herbs used: hyssop, lemon balm, orange mint, lemon verbena, pineapple sage, passion flower, chamomile, lemongrass, basil, eucalyptus, Russian sage, dill and some powdered rosemary.

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



My First Request: JJ's Lemon and Basil Soap

A rather long story on how the soap came to be.

JJ is a driver I work with at Grayline. He's one of my favorites. We always have a lot of fun—even if we've got a bus load of arrogant Italians that won't shut up or cheap Americans that won't tip.  He's from the Islands, so he's very laid back.

When I mentioned that I'd started making soap, he told me that he used to buy this great Lemon and Basil Soap from a woman at the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market, but she's not there all the time.

"I'll make you some soap," I said.

"How much should I give you for the ingredients?" he asked.

"First bar is free," I said, knowing that this is exactly how drug dealers operate.  And soap is kind of a drug. "You just have to let me pick up some shea butter when we stop in Harlem."

There's a guy that sells fragrance oils of knock-off perfumes, shea butter ($10 for a whole pound), cocoa butter and black African soap on 125th Street right next to our stop. I always try to get tourists to get off there—not just for the shea butter guy, but for everything in Harlem. Most of them don't get off. I think they're afraid—the 1970's Harlem is still in their collective memories.

So, I jumped off when we got to the stop and bought some shea in less than 30 seconds.

Then I had to come up with a real great recipe. The basil part was easy. I bought a big bag of dried basil from this market near Port Authority. I only had a smidge of Thai basil that I had grown last summer left and I wanted an infusion that would be really basil-ed out.

The lemon however was going to be tricky. Lemon juice and lye don't mix. Lemon juice neutralizes lye, so you end up with a pot full of oils. I didn't want to do lemon peels either, so decided to rebatch. I found this lemon juice that's ironically from Italy (and I should say that any generalizations I make about any nationalities are based on my experience with tourists—and people on vacation—no matter where they're from are always on their worst behavior) and it actually contains lemon essential oil. Bonus.



If you see this in the store--buy it!

Last problem was fragrance. Citrus is fleeting. I'd been reading about how may chang works as an anchor and a boost on citruses. My normal fragrance guys (Exotic Fragrances, Scents Elate, and Gold Star Fragrances) didn't stock it—and hadn't even heard of it. I really don't like ordering things online. I don't have a doorman, so I have to have stuff shipped to my local bar, Perdition. PLUS, I live in the center of the center of the universe. I believe everything I need or want can be found somewhere in the five boroughs.

After some internet sleuthing, I found Enfleurage in the West Village. They have a ton of amazing essential oils. Some I didn't even know existed. Shell oil, rice paddy herb, artichoke, mak nhieu. I ended up spending about $60—but have got some very fun essentials to play with.

So, basil-infused olive oil was rebatched using the lemon juice and scented with holy basil, sage (to green up the spiciness of the holy basil), may chang, bergamot and lemon essential oils. Then a top layer with a little more shea that added a light lemony color. And some corn meal for scrubbiness.

When I gave a bar to JJ, I told him he had to wait about a month before he could use it since it was still curing.

He looked pretty disappointed, but then held it up to his nose and sniffed. "This smells so good," he said.

Ingredients:

olive oil infused with basil and Thai basil

shea butter

palm kernel oil

cottonseed oil

soybean oil

castor oil

distilled water infused with basil

Polenghi lemon juice

cornmeal

powdered basil

Beach Bar

Fragrance of vetiver, patchouli, clove and lemon essential oils. De-vine!

I love this soap and will definitely make it again and maybe tweak the recipe a bit.

The bottom layer is made with olive oil infused with sage and charcoal. And kosher salt.

Salt doesn't add scrubbiness to soap. It makes the lather lotion-y, so I added cornmeal to do that. Good for those rough, dry spots—knees, elbows, feet etc… Salt in soap is wonderful. Really makes your skin feel fabulous and sexy—like it feels after spending the day swimming in the ocean.

The top part is just a basic lard soap with some shea. Smooth as buttercream frosting—no scrub, so it's like two bars in one. The lovely whisper of yellow is brought to you by a smidge of marigold infused olive oil.

Next time I make this, I'll use ocean water to dissolve the lye and add some seaweed to the bottom layer. Maybe swap sand for cornmeal to make it more beach-y.

Re (Batch) #2: Pomegranate and Mint

More re-batching with my basic recipe of olive oil (infused with mint), palm kernel oil, coconut oil and a tablespoon of castor oil at trace. I also made a mint tea for the re-batch. That was for the top layer (which was the bottom layer in the mold when I re-batched) and for my log embeds.

Those were a lot of fun to make. And I like the way the look. I rolled the logs in some crushed mint while they were still moist and added more crushed mint over them. I love texture! And I love layers!

The light green is just a regular cold process.

I'm a little upset about the fragrance. I thought I was buying pomegranate essential oil at Michael's since that's what it said on the package. It turns out there's no such thing as pomegranate essential oil. There's pomegranate seed oil and pomegranate fragrance oil—but not pomegranate essential oil.

 I'm a little peeved. I didn't even want pomegranate but it was all that they had and I'd schlepped all the way to the Upper Westside. Sorta feel like complaining, but threw out the packaging (I think it was a company called Party Time).

Lesson learned. Will only buy essential oils from the places I really know in NYC—Exotic Fragrances in Spanish Harlem, Whole Foods Market, Westerly Natural Market and Scents Elate—which is right in Hell's Kitchen.

It smells nice at least. I'm just a stickler about using the real thing.