Christmas Crafts and Cake Decorating at Comet Children's Centre

December 15, 2016

Christmas Cake made with homemade mincemeat

Thank you to all the families, staff and children at Comet Children's Centre - especially Gareth, Sarah Jane and Clara. We made our own mincemeat, mince pies, mince muffins, Christmas cakes, soaps, gingerbread shapes, carrot cake muffins, chocolate muffins, lots of icings and more.

Handmade Bath Bombs or Bath Fizzies

February 17, 2016

In our final six-week soap making course we made bath bombs or bath fizzies. We've all seen these in the shops or have received some as a gift and they are fun,give great results and are luckily easy to make. You can buy all the ingredients from most shops, chemists or online. To form the shapes of your bathbombs you can buy specific shapes online that will create round ones or use silicone moulds, recyclable items like little yoghurt pots or go to the pound shop and buy a muffin tray which is what I have used for this class.

Dry Ingredients
250g bicarbonate of soda
75g epsom salts or mineral salt
75g citric acid
50g cornstarch

Wet Ingredients
2 tsp oil
1/2 tsp water
4 drops essential oil/fragrance
1-2 drops food colouring/beauty grade colourings

Bath Bombs/Bath Fizzies Instructions

Lightly grease your moulds, trays or containers with any oil.
Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl, make sure there are no lumps at all, use a whisk or a spatula to make sure there are no lumps.
Combine all your wet ingredients together in a separate container and thoroughly mix.
In stages, add a little bit of the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients, stirring all the time, until both are combined. You might hear a bit of fizzing which is normal, you just need to keep stirring.
.Your mixture will start to appear a bit damp and clumpy and you can test if it’s ready by balling some together in your hand. You want the mixture to hold it’s shape and not crumble. If it is crumbling and you have added all your colour mixture you can give your mixture a spray of water and them stir again until it holds together in your hands. Don't be tempted to add lots of water as this will make the mixture expand.
When the mixture is ready you can add it to your moulds, trays or containers. Make sure to pack it in tightly to the mould, tray or container or the mixture will crumble and not hold its shape.
Leave the moulds or trays for at least an hour and then remove. f using silicone moulds, leave your bath fizzies in over night and then take them out of the moulds.
When packaging or storing your bath fizzies make sure that they are not kept in an air tight container or they will expand or explode. Keep them in a baggie or paper bag or box until ready to be used.

Cold Process Soap Making

February 10, 2016

I've been teaching a six-week Soap Making Course at Wentworth Children's Centre and for weeks 4 and 5 we have been learning the cold press (CP) technique. We could have easily spent the whole six weeks on the CP technique but since part of the course has been family learning and we involved the children of the families there in the activities where it was appropriate for them to do so.

We had been building up to this session and this was our most technical as well as creative which explains our scales, goggles and gloves. For the first of the CP technique weeks we used the following recipe which I calculated using the fabulous SoapCalc.net:

150g distilled water (or filtered water, then boiled and cooled)
60g lye
160g olive oil
160g coconut oil
40g almond oil
40g castor oil
10 g lavender essential oil

Soaps from week 2 with yellow and green dyes

me with some of our group from the class (pic from @Wentworth_CC)

Melt and Pour Soap Making

January 20, 2016

the different layers of our melt and pour loaf soap

These are some of the soaps created by my students on a six-week soap making course I have been running at Wentworth Children's Centre in Hackney, London. We have spent two weeks on melt and pour techniques and worked with the children on decoration, colour mixing, scents and packaging. We are also a week of face and body scrubs, a week of bath fizzies/bath bombs and two weeks of cold press technique. The courses have been fun and well attended since everyone is interested in making their own products in order to know exactly what is in the products that we use every day. The students have been excited to learn all the techniques so they can practice them with their family and friends or perhaps even take up soap making as a hobby or making them as gifts or to sell.

Smy Goodness Soaps

November 21, 2015

Here are some of my soaps that I recently made. I have been teaching soap making for some time now and it's nice to share some of my personal fragrances, shapes, colours and varieties. I'm trying to make the lips shapes in as many colours of lipstick that I have. The pink lips in the center are made of a shea, mango and cocoa butters blend and smell of almond milk. The red lips on the outside also smell of almond milk and are made with a clear, moisturising soap.

The deep red lips in the middle smell of fruity chewy sweeties and are made with the moisturising clear soap while the deep purple lips on the outside also smell of sweeties but with the cocoa, mango and shea butters.

There are many more varieties to come which will be sold in gift sets.