FINALLY - MNS Portugal is born!

After hours and hours of work I have finally got my 5 new soaps up on line.  They have a category all to themselves because I think they are rather special.  NMS PORTUGAL is the link to the results of a lot of hard work.  As you all know, I love Portugal, its a real inspiration to me and has been, in my soap making, ever since I started, thanks to my good friend and fellow soap maker Shelly.  I have been bleating on about producing a range of soaps that reflect my love for the place and using as many ingredients I can source there as possible.  So, here they are - I hope you like them.

SALGADO AZUL (Salty Blue Spa Bar) The perfect soap for washing away malaise & irritability, especially when its cold and grey outside.  If you are a SADS sufferer, as Im sure I am!, this will really help.  Use this fantastic sea salt spa bar, emerge from your shower or bath a little lighter and feeling clean, clear, fresh and renewed.  This is the first soap I created in the range and is already a top seller for Naturally Made Soaps.

AZEITE PURO (Pure Olive Oil Castile) is fast becoming my absolute favorite soap EVER!  I love it.  Its just so creamy, bubbly, silky and smooth, I have never used soap like it.  Often olive oil soaps can feel a bit slimy on the skin and, although they are lovely and moisturising, people can find this a bit off putting.  My version of Castile soap is very different, this is almost the bubbliest soap I have ever made and yet it still leaves you feeling you have showered with a pot of moisturising lotion not soap.  Total luxury and I haven't even mentioned the scent, its Geranium with a touch of Bergamot - really soothing and peaceful, suitable for both men and women.

FLORESTA VERDE (Green Forest) A little bit woodsy, a little bit herbal, a little bit floral and a little bit piney - all these fragrances in one.  Honestly, this soap is so fresh, It's designed to make you think of a walk in a cool, green forest, on a hot summer day when the sun beats down and melts the pine sap and heats the forest floor.  At the same time you will also think of taking a plunge into a cooling forest pool - check it out!

 

CITRINO (Sunny Citrus) Dreamy Tangerine, Sweet Orange Oil and sparkling, juicy Grapefruit, one of my most captivating scents ever.  Wherever you go in Northern Portugal, unless its deep in the frosty valleys, citrus fruit trees are everywhere and there is no better time to see them than in the winter, dripping with ripe, juicy oranges and lemons, yet at the same time covered in the sweetly scented, waxy, white blossoms that will make the fruit for the next year - Magical.  Get your own hug from the sun!

MEL CREMOSO (Honey & Cream) So sweet, so full of honey, sugar and cream, a pudding lovers dream.  That's where the inspiration came for this soap.  The Portuguese just love puddings, the creamier the better, preferably full of honey and eggs too.  The warm, creamy vanilla and honey scent of this soap will, I hope, make you feel warm and cozy and the geometric shaped sides will give you the feeling that you are showering with your own slice of honeycombe.  This soap is topped with glittering sugar crystals and gold for that extra special Bollywood feel!


So now that you have been introduced to all 5 I hope that you will click on the links and find out more about each one.  I have also included a paragraph or two and some personal photos that show why I have been so inspired by this wonderful country, its natural and geographical bounty, food and countryside.  Each soap comes from two very special places - Portugal and my heart.


I really would love to know what you think about this collection, it means so much to me, I really hope you can see and feel that too XX

JURASSIC COAST SOAP!

I could not stay in bed this morning, just had to get up and cut up yesterdays soap to see what I got.  Soap making is so wonderful, nothing is totally predictable and you never know how each batch is going to turn out.  That can be good and can be frustrating too but my experience is that, even if your ideas don't turn out exactly as you wanted you usually get something good.  Its this journey of discovery that is my main driver in the business making me go on trying out more ideas and new ways of creating them.

I have been thinking about this particular idea for a long time.  I live in East Devon, very near to the World Heritage designated stretch of coastline called the Jurassic Coast.  This stretches for 95 miles from East Devon (Exmouth) to Dorset with rocks recording 185 million years of the earths history.  Quite an amazing place and I really wanted to mark this somehow, in soap!  My favorite bit is the cliffs and beach at Budleigh Salterton, the river Otter snakes its way down joining the coast here and it it a truly breathtaking place.  The beach is characteristically covered in wonderful elliptical pebbles, part of the ancient pebblebeds from the area, the cliffs are red and very dramatic and the sea is quite often stained red on rough stormy days.  I believe the cliffs are red because they were once sand dunes and form part of the Triassic section of the Jurassic Coast.  I wanted to capture a slice of this scene.

 To find out more about this wonderful part of our coastline click here for the World Heritage Site web pages http://www.jurassiccoast.com/

So how to do this.  I needed to make pebbles, lots of them!  But rolling lots and lots of balls of soap takes ages and anyway I could not then create the way the pebbles look.  They are really beautiful, reds, pure white, black, greys and almost cream.  lots have streaks, dots, lines and spots in them so how to get that effect?  I had to think hard

I decided to roll out chunks of CP soap that I had already made in advance especially for this project, goats milk soap but left absolutely natural in colour.  Each roll was coloured using ground charcoal, red oxide and yellow oxide which seemed to make sense to me as they are all natural earthy pigments.  Some rolls were split down the middle, covered with a light dusting of colour and put back together so I could get lines.  These would be placed in the soap to create the pebble effect.

I decided I wanted a mixture of warm, summer like scents evocative of suncream, ice creams and warm skin as well as a fresh, ozone kind of smell to represent sea breezes and beautiful skies.  Discolouration might be a problem as I chose to use sandalwood and vanilla, so I only scented the cliff section thinking that if it is going to go brown on me (because of the vanilla) that would not matter too much.  The Gracefruit scent "Rice Flower" http://www.gracefruit.com/ was my ozone choice.  Its really light, a bit floral and very fresh, I love it.  Like most floral scents it goes very fast in CP soap, I knew I would have to work fast and be careful, so I only used this in my last layer, the sky.

So how did it turn out?  I am so pleased, it looks great and smells so beautiful.  I know its going to change, I think the cliffs will get darker and the sky will change too.  I did want to get more white into the sky and swirl a bit but the Rice Flower set so quickly I only just had enough time to get it into the mold!

I know soap makers always talk about cutting up the soap, I thought you might like to see how I do this so here's a step by step for this project, you can see how exciting it is to finally reveal the hidden design inside.

The side of my plywood mold (made by my lovely boyfriend) has now been clipped off and the teflon liner slides out easily.

I then peel back the liner to begin to reveal the various layers of this soap.  I wanted to create quite simply a slice through the scene revealing the sea at the bottom swirling around a pebble beach with the lovely red cliffs in the background and a dramatic sky above - well that was the aim!

OK, now we begin to see a slice emerge, not the complete thing yet as this is just the very end of the loaf cut off to give me a good straight edge to start to measure out my bars.  It is giving an idea of the finished thing though............ I think.  Im still holding my breath at this point.

Now I carefully measure of one inch sections of the loaf which, when cut will provide me with 2 bars for each slice, 44 in total.

And start to cut, the two end pieces are at the back of the loaf, still not sure of the final look yet.........

And there it is, a slice of Jurassic Coast soap inspired by Budlegh Salterton!!  Yipee, its nice, I think.  I wish some of the pebbles were a bit darker but I like the stormy look of the sky and the swirly sea round the lower pebbles, exactly what I wanted!

I cant help playing around with the slices to make a landscape scene!  the slices to the right of the picture are the finished size.

The finished loaf, all cut up, ready for trimming and curing.  I cant tell you how nice it smells, its exactly what I wanted, the sandalwood really comes through and the ozone sky gives a sunny lift.  I really love it, think this might be a keeper - What do you think?

New soaps added to the website

Hi everyone, I have been busy today adding lots of new soaps to my site and generally tidying it up a bit, sounds easy but it has taken me the whole day!!

Anyway, go and have a look at:

Rose Garden Mini Soap Cupcakes
http://www.naturallymadesoaps.co.uk/Rose-Carden-Mini-Cupcake-p/rg2.htm
So cute and simple looking.  Its a tiny version of its bigger brother Rose Garden.  Palm Oil Free!

Chamomile Spring
http://www.naturallymadesoaps.co.uk/Chamomile-Spring-p/ch1.htm
I just love this soap, funny how Lemongrass and sweet orange essential oils smell a little like freshly grated ginger when they are put together - or at least I think they do!  This is selling very fast.  Palm Oil Free!

Vanilla Cream and Sugar Candy
http://www.naturallymadesoaps.co.uk/Vanilla-Cream-and-Sugar-Candy-p/vcsc1.htm
One for the kids, or the kid in us!  It has a lovely warm, 'just baked cake' fragrance.  Palm Oil Free!

Azure Waters Sea Salt Bar
 https://www.naturallymadesoaps.co.uk/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=Azure1
Brand new and really different, treat yourself to your very own 'spa' soap home treatment.  Palm Oil Free!  (not ready for dispatch until after 4th May)

So can you spot the obvious connection with all these new soaps?  Easy - ALL PALM OIL FREE!  I'm so pleased.  So now every remake I do will have all whole Devon goats milk and be palm oil free.  Can't better that, oh yes I can, I almost forgot, I'm about to get my first order of organic, lightly refined Shea Butter from Fresholi  http://www.fresholi.co.uk/

Fresholi organic shea butter comes from Ghana and comes from a Fairly Traded Community Project.  This is what they write about their products sourced using this route:

"Wherever possible, we source quality & sustainable ingredients that support community projects around the world.  We embrace wholeheartedly the ethic of paying a fair price in order to sustain these projects & the communities they support. 

It fills us with enormous pride and satisfaction that both our certified organic tamanu oil and our certified organic unrefined shea butter are sourced from such projects."

Click on the link below to see a presentation about their Shea Butter.

http://www.fresholi.co.uk/galleries/projects/projects-shea.htm

Do leave a comment and let me know what you think of both my new soaps and my desire to go Palm Oil Free - have you yet?

Oh My Goodness - Fab new soap evolving!

Yup, another one that is Palm free, think I must be on a roll now.  This is a soap I have been wanting to make for a long time, tried a couple of times and it did not work, but too busy to keep going.  Finally decided to try and crack the Salt Bar soap  -  Why you might ask... well we all know how health giving and healing salt can be, it makes a fantastic bar of soap,  I have used 75% natural, Portuguese sea salt in this trial batch along with lots of coconut oil and Castor oil for bubbly properties.  Its still very young - some bits hard, some bits very sloppy out of the mold - but has now hardened up beautifully.  Its like polished marble.  I have been using some already and it it bubbly, and lovely, scented with peppermint and eucalyptus essential oils - really fresh and invigorating.

Well, I need a name. I am hoping that eventually this soap could be part of a new Portuguese soap range -  have come up with lots of really naff names (Sea Breeze - see below) but need something that says it all, Atlantic coast, white icing sugar sand, lots of wild waves, very cold sea....... can you help?  have a look at the pics and let me know what you think, all comments gratefully received

A close up of the top of one bar, shows the seasalt embedded in the top

 Another picture of a collection of bars

HELP! I would really love a name that reflected everything I am trying to convey, Summer holidays, Beautiful coast, surf, fab sandy beaches etc.
A really great prize available to the best name......................
Thanks, in anticipation