michelleB

I first ordered my Love Spell fo from Tony's (now southern garden scents) way back when, and havent been able to even consider switching because of all of the clammor over it from the ladies who wear that scent. They love it & swear it's right on the money... so I haven't ever compared it to another supplier. Personally I hate the scent whether original or duped.

Hiya ladies!

Sorry I've been MIA for a few months, been having a personal crisis for a while now and well... had to have some time to myself to cope (and to follow my own advice from my sig line). I can't tell you how rewarding it is though to finally get up the "gumption" to jump back in here & check out my long-lost friends at this forum and find out that you've been playing with this recipe I posted a while back. I know it's just something we all do here, checking out each others recipes & stuff, but it makes me feel like maybe I left footprints here that mattered & I really needed that right now. :-)

So glad you're enjoying this recipe! This is still one that I make on a regular basis and it's one of my all-time favs. Feel free to sub out diff ingredients for what oils/butters you've got on hand. Just run through a lye calc to make sure your lye amount is adjusted according to your changes in oils.

I sometimes use this same recipe with coconut milk or buttermilk instead of goat milk and the results are just as creamy. For the buttermilk version, I like to also add 1 T. Honey ppo, warmed up & mixed in at trace. Yummay! By all means, play on! And lets see some pics! I luvs soap porn!

Those are beautiful Eva!

Can you come over this weekend and show me how to swirl like that? LOL

I'm still struggling with swirling, but your pics have inspired me to go practice some more!

Oh, gosh, I've been wanting a slab mold too! Congrats on getting one! I've only done log molds (except during my first year soaping when I used pencil boxes, lol).

I just love that smooth & creamy color combo you've got going there. Looks like it's a perfect match for the scent, which sounds really great. Excellent job!

I agree about the "Son" part being hard to see. Could you maybe do it in a different color than the rest of the word? Yellow or White would show up very well against the tree background.

I absolutley love the clear and easy navigation! Beautiful color scheme going too! Can I make a suggestion though? Maybe add a product picture to your main page, or even a 'group shot' of several assorted products (or 2-3 diff pics side by side), and it'll help stir up interest to get peeps to click around and look for the stuff shown. Just a thought. Great job though! :-)

Hmmmm....good question if it's not readily stated on the container. Chances are, it's coconut 76 oil, since that's the most widely available one as far as local stores. Since the "76" would indicate it's melting point, that means it would be solid at room temps, but melt very quickly (like as soon as you put it on your skin). Now if it were the fractionated kind, I would think it would state that in an obvious place somewhere instead of just saying 100% coconut oil. It would look something like "fractions of coconut oil". I'm sorry, I'm not much help. But the coconut 76 would be my first guess. ;-)

Few different ways of adding the honey. Since I use evap GM that I add at trace, I mix my honey with that and add it all at the same time. You could just as easily add the honey by itself at trace, but might wanna warm it up just a bit to make it more liquid-y. I haven't had any trouble incorporating honey at all so far. Seems to mix in really easy (knock on wood). Especially when using the Shiznit! LOL

I second Steph's recommendations on the Snowtop ones she listed (haven't tried the ICS).

More great ones from Snowtop:

Maple Sugar

Creamy Coconut Pie

Gingerbread Cookies (OMG this stuff is STRONG in wax! Yummah!)

Snowtop's Lilac Blossom is FABBO! But you'll have to get it from ICS now.

That sounds likkity-luscious! Just like it looks!

I first used hydrovance in place of glycerin only because I needed a quick sub and didn't want to use honey. It turned out so rich & smooth feeling that I've never gone back & I hope I didn't steer you wrong by suggesting it (cuz everybody's tastes are different) but I truly think you'll love it too! That's probably the one ingredient I'd never want to be without. Everything else is just gravy, lol.

That looks very rich & creamy!

I use hydrovance in place of glycerin in all of my recipes and LOVE it. MMS carries it at a very reasonable price. HTH

I started dabbling with it lately too, out of curiosity. I love it! I haven't went above 3% ever yet, and I normally try to keep it around 1.5-2% so my soap doesn't accelerate on me (my recipe traces fast anyways), but I really enjoy the difference it's been making! More lather & a harder bar. Great stuff! I also plug it into soapcalc as part of my oils.

Holy cow! Just roll me a glass around in that stuff and pass me the tequila!! Mmmmm!

That looks amazing!

OMG I just LOVE that scent!

I've got some new oils from there & it's sorta 'hit & miss' like other places I guess. I tried some in the past that were on the weak side, but no problems with this latest supply.

Their Cherry Almond is awesome (& very strong IMO)! Soaped it at the usual amount for my soap batch & it's about to run me outta the house right now! Although it doesn't have the amount of almond in it that I've grown used to from other places...it still rocks in it's own right and I could almost drink it straight from the bottle!

Their Green Clover & Aloe is another strong one & I really really like this one, especially in soaps and b&b stuff. Very nice, clean 'soapy' scent.

Only one I'm still undecided about is their Cannibus/Pot fo. To me it just doesn't smell like it much. Has more of a "men's cologne" scent, but it's strong. It might just be me though, cuz my testers say they can smell the 'pot' scent just fine.

Yep, I've been confused by this before when I saw it on a store-bought body wash (wally-world I think). Claimed to have shea butter in it, and it very well may have...but it would've had to be such a small percentage to even work...right?? I'm just thinking out loud while I try to wrap my brain around this so bear with me.

I know it's a difficult thing to balance when making scrubs & such because the addition of any fat/butter/oil is going to interfere with your lather. Period. Just like using a really high superfat % for soaps. So to me, it just seems to be about label appeal, and adding a teensy-weensy crumb. I'll go into stand-by mode now though, and watch to see if anyone has a success story on this to share.

That's friggin AWESOME!

And doesn't it just figure that it'd happen that way? LOL! When it rains it pours.

Give me a good bar of OLD handcrafted soap over a freshly-made one ANYDAY.

Amen to THAT!

I've got a whole big box full of my favorite scent that I soaped about a year and a half ago...I'm hoarding em up like they're gold!! I think there's about 19 bars in there, and NOBODY'S gettin em but ME! I just can't bring myself to touch em yet cuz I know that if I leave em alone today...they'll be even better tomorrow. Problem is, thinking like that, hell they'll never get used. :rolleyes2

Holy Crap! Way to GO!!

I'm tickled pink for ya!! Woooohoooo!

I tell my daughter it's called "Fun at the Beach". Sorta caught me off guard when she asked & that's the first thing that came to mind. :-)

Those are BEAUTIFUL!

Great job & congrats on banishing the soap gremlins!

OMG, I've had a similar happening and chalked it up to it just being ME. So glad I'm not the only one!

I'd been waiting and waiting on a box of wax to arrive. Normally I'd have it within the week, but it had been over 3 weeks and no news. I'd have noticed sooner, but there was a lot going on around here and I got distracted. Anyway, I call & it was confirmed that it'd been delivered some 2 and a half weeks ago. Hmmm. Ok, so I go through the red tape at the post office to track it down and their little note from the driver says "Nobody home, left it on tailgate".

Wha...TAILGATE??!!

So outside I go, looking all over the vehicles for a big box of wax. Now understand that my hubby has 4 trucks (don't get me started) and they're parked all over the property (14 friggin acres!). 2 down at the garage, 1 in front of the house, 1 behind the house. I got plenty of exercise! But still NO BOX anywhere.

Aggravated beyond belief, mostly from the useless excercise I'd just been forced into, I call the post office back and let em have it. Then I call my supplier back & get another shipment on its way.

But here's the best part! Okay 2 more days pass and then a strange car pulls in my driveway. An elderly man gets out and introduces himself as principal of a nearby elementary school. He then reads off my name & address from a little notebook and asks me if he's at the right place. Yep, I say, wondering what he's selling. He then opens his trunk and hands me a smushed up armload of soggy cardboard & plastic. It WAS my box of wax! Apparently it'd been on the tailgate of hubby's work truck & it'd fell off while going around the curve in front of the school. The principal estimates that 3-4 school buses ran over it before it was moved out of the road by a teacher and carried in the building. There were prolly a dozen or so wax flakes left and they were stuck to the wet plastic.

I have a new mailman.

Absolutely GORGEOUS!! I love everything! You will certainly achieve the WOW effect! lol

You've gotta tell me about your colored sugar! C'mon, spill it...what'd ya do to it, where'd ya get it, etc etc?? (yep, i'm real nosey) It's just STUNNING & I keep going back to the pic just to look at it over and over. Makes me wanna go eat a bowl of cool whip with candy sprinkles!

Oh you betcha! There's gonna be insurance on the boxes, insurance on the contents, insurance on the mail truck, the airplane, the mailman, his shoes...you name it! LOL. I'm gonna take every precaution. :-)

Thanks a bunch!

Good point about them perhaps being friends & such. I've done the same thing with friends of mine. We get on 3-way phone calls while surfing & shopping, often buying from the same sites.

Ok I just checked paypal and the money is in there, from both of them. Everything looks fine to me, truly. Guess I'm just being overly cautious. ;-)

They're listed as "ineligible for seller protection" though, because of their location. <sigh> I can't afford to lose a sale any more than I can afford to give up free shipments to a scam. But in this case, my gut tells me they're ok. I just wanted to run it past plenty of people...publicly...so that if this is a scheme others have fallen for, maybe I can get the info before it's too late.

Thanks for your reply NoOneSpecial! I appreciate it.