Workshop was Kickin!!

My conference weekend was sa-weet! Won a great raffle prize, scored a super duper swag bag, chatted with some cool guy and gal soapers, then and stayed home all day on Monday and - what else - made soap! I had planned on making a beer soap this weekend for the first time, and guess what the first demonstration of the day was?? Yep, beer soap... So I tried it today - here's how it turned out:

If any of you have ever attempted this type of soap, you know that the beer smells absolutely horrible when mixed with the lye! Seriously - it's BAD. But..I have been assured it will cure out and I will be left with a "nutty wheat" fragrance. I added some Bay Rum and black cherry (just a touch) to the batter, hoping for a nice rich and fruity scent. We shall see, because it's still pretty stinky (my hubby said it smells like an old dirty wash cloth! Nice.) I have to say, the soap batter was a silky smooth caramel type consistency and was a dream to play around with.

This is what I turned out of the open lab portion of the workshop. We had a little instruction on the "drop swirl" and I like the result. The fragrance is "Rhubarb Sugar Cane" from Majestic Mountain Sage, who had several reps present and donated many of our soap lab ingredients. You should check them out - they have some cool and unusual items in their catalog.

I had an idea I want to try, along the "soaping with alcohol" theme. We have a little local winery close by and I'm wondering about trying a soap with one of their wines. If it turns out I might bring it in with a little sales pitch. So I want to know - have any of you tried experimenting with wine in soaping? Or any other type of unusual liquid or alcohol product? I could use some sound advice on this!

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