[Mekatra]

I'm impressed, Den, backstrapping isn't super easy. I would let you borrow my extra loom if I could. :/

Santa's Sprout sounds... ahem...

[Damies]

What kind of seasonal smells does Kaderin like for lotions. ;D

And it's Santa's SPRUCE, like the variety of evergreen tree but STILL YOU GOT MY MEANING XD

[Kaderin Triste]

I mean, mainly for winter, I love the smell of peppermint, but I know that is problematic for you. But I like pine or balsam smells as long as they're not too strong. And cranberry is also really good. Oh, and vanilla or almond...kind of baking food smells.

Spring tends to be all floral type stuff, which is ick mainly so generally nope on that.

Summer for me is all yummy fruit and citrus scents.

And for fall, I love kind of coffee, tea, or kind of autumnal spices (ginger, cloves, cardamom, light cinnamon, etc) and pumpkin.

[Damies]

Yesssss. Now I know the secrets... huhuhuhuhu....

(you'd like Santa's Spruce ;D )

[Kaderin Triste]

Lol...probably, yes. XD
The one think I've discovered that I don't like is a really strong spicy cinnamon smell. We have cinnamon scented pine cones at work and they make me sneeze. A lot.

I actually ordered some perfume samples from Etsy that are Christmas seasonal scents...and I'm really curious to see how they are. The shop I ordered them from seems SUPER professional and seriously has probably 6 or more Christmas themed sample sets. Each with approximately 5 scents each...and none are dupes... Plus countless more non-Christmas scents.

[Den]

Mom burns cinnamon-scented candles... so it's not my favorite scent... I like more floral stuff, and woodsy stuff, unisex scents, that sorta thing...

[Kaderin Triste]

I feel like, with a lot of scents, I never got the chance to experience them because my mom was seriously allergic to pretty much everything except vanilla, that I don't really like anything because I never got to really be around them much. Like, I really have a hard time finding a floral scent that I like or a lot of stuff like sandalwood and patchouli just kind of make me gag. Unfortunately, a lot of the Etsy scent/perfume makers seem to put sandalwood, patchouli, and dragons' blood in a lot of their scents, so even though the rest of it sounds good, that one scent makes me not want to buy it. And very few of them seem to actually offer sample options.

Sorry, kind of went off on a slight tangent there...
XD

[Damies]

Mom and I are making towel toppers now. xDD

[Mekatra]

Towel toppers?

Kaderin, I understand that, heavy floral scents like lavender and artificial rose give me really bad headaches. I always have to be careful when I get dragged to soap or candle shops.

[Kaderin Triste]

Oh man, lavender and rose are totally the worst for me, too. I don't usually get headaches, but too much time around strong florals can really bother my nose. I don't mind lighter and sweeter florals too much though.

Also, got a perfume roll-on that I ordered from Etsy in the mail yesterday. It was supposed to smell like Earl Grey tea (bergamot, tea leaves and sweet herbs I think is what the discription said). It smelled like my citrus febreeze swiffer wet cloths. And faded to a musty book smell (which I didn't hate, I love the smell of old books) but still had the cleaning product undertone. Bleh. I wish they had offered scent samples. Wouldn't have wasted money on it if I had known it didn't smell anything like tea.

[Damies]

Rose is among my favorite smells but it has to be JUST RIGHT. Lavender is usually too strong but I like it in itty bitty doses. My favorite floral ever is lilac. <3 Growing up my mom liked scented candles, potpourri, and incense, but never was over zealous with them so I never got burnt out of liking one smell or another. She was good at not using too much of one thing and not mixing smells that weren't complimentary.

TOWEL TOPPERS! Mom crocheted granny squares, I sewed them on, we experimented with attachment angles and we made them to prevent the cats from pulling the hand towels off the stove.


ALSO SOAP UNDER HERE! (spoiler cuz maybe big pictures)

I AM SO HAPPY WITH THIS SOAP I MADE YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

Right after I poured the colors and swirled them I KNEW this was gonna be my first soap batch that I would love and not complain about.


This morning I woke up to my beautiful soap covered in soda ash which was disheartening but I fixed it with steam!


The after steam look. ;D


Popped it outta the loaf mold and was still super happy with it. * w*

...
Then I realized I wanted to cut it straight and not with my crinkle cutter so I was like "Well shit how am I gonna do this without making crappy diagonal lines?" because I have a thing I can use as a guide for the crinkle cutter but I didn't think it would work with the handle shape on my regular cutter. Enter my wood working tools! No I didn't use a table saw silly, I used a miter box!


Miter boxes are intended for cutting perfect angles or straight lines in lumber but it lent itself perfectly to my needs in soap making! Except my loaf of soap was a little tall so it was hard to line the knife up perfectly in the guides every time but I GOT CLOSE! Only had a few goofed cuts near the end when my hand were getting tired.


All sliced up!

LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL SOAP GUYS!!


It still has to cure for a while, and then I get to test it for lather and such, and I may stem it again to get rid of knife lines and generally polish the look. But yeah. So happy!

[Kaderin Triste]

I like actual real lilac, but not lilac scent because it's never quite the same or is always too strong. But I do like spring because the people next to my apartment have lilacs, so with my windows open, I can smell them faintly.

[Mekatra]

Oh wow that soap looks great! That's one craft that always fascinated me but I have never gotten around to trying. Maybe when I get a bigger kitchen. Yours looks great, what scent did you say it was?

OOOOH I've seen the towel toppers, but I have ever heard them actually called anything lol. My granny had them all over her house.

I like natural lilac but not artificial... actually I hate most artificial scents now that I think about it. Usually they come with an overpowering industrial chemical smell.

[Den]

one of my favorite sites for perfume oils is Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. They don't use alcohol to make the perfume last, because a little dab of whatever scent you choose really goes a long way.

[Kaderin Triste]

I have mainly been hunting down stuff on Etsy because a lot of them use coconut oil just as a carrier oil for the fragrance, but not all use alcohol.

[Damies]

The soap is cranberry fig scent! And I usually make it on a 6ft folding table in my bedroom. Having a murphy bed is a life saver for space issues. xD

I reallly wanna throw stuff at you guys and be like "IS THIS LILAC SCENT ACCEPTABLE?!" because the fragrance oil I have is really nice imo. But it is a fragrance OIL not a perfume or finished product in it's self. Straight outta the bottle it is potent but in lotions and soaps, depending on the usage rate, it is soooo nice. I did accidentally make my mom and way too strongly scented batch of lotion over summer with the lilac scent oil though... it's definitely headache worthy for me, but my mom loves it. xDD

And I am in my room at my desk, and I just looked around and realized I need to put away my various ingredients that are all over my room. Doing so many projects this summer has my room looking like chaos with bits of different things all over. If I ever want to find things again they really need to go to their homes. But remembering that when I am cleaning up after a project is hard. xD