Spring Sale !

I'm having a sale! A Spring Sale! Both soap and jewelry! :)

My Etsy Soap Shop

My Soap Website

My Etsy Jewlery Shop

Use coupon code SPRING during checkout in any of my shops for 10% off all soap orders, and 15% off all jewelry orders!

Soap and Jewelry, Soap and Jewelry!

Howdy folks!

What have I been up to lately?? Soap and jewelry, my friends, soap and jewelry! :)

Here are some of the soaps listed in the past month or so ...

Patchouli - Oh you hippie you !! :) Scented with nice dark patchouli essential oil.



Patchouli Anise - Scented with patchouli and anise essential oils, with a touch of lemon essential oil. I added some rhassoul clay. I really like this soap and I have been using it myself .. I'm on my second bar. :)



Winter Peppermint - Scented with peppermint essential oil, with a touch of ginger essential oil. Pretty red swirls!



Eucalyptus Mint - I've done this one before! Scented with eucalyptus and peppermint essential oils, colored with green clay.



And currently on the curing rack are a couple of soaps that I made using up odds and ends of fragrances ... fragrances that I didn't have enough of to do an entire batch with. So, I just threw a few of them together! :-D I love doing that! One is a mix of Tahitian Vanilla, Tahitian Flowers, Lavender Fields, and Violet Shay. It is sweet and floral, and very dark because of the vanilla. I can't wait to get it in the shop! The other is a mix of Frankincense & Myrrh and White Sage. This one is also a dark soap, and it has a nice masculine scent. These two soaps will be ready in a week or so.

As for jewelry, I've been making a dent into the stash I got at the Tucson Gem Show, still working on perfecting the flat spiral stitch.

I made this onyx necklace for my sister



With the larger onyx beads, I made an Onyx Bracelet



I had just a couple of onyx beads left, I made a pair of Onyx Earrings



Remember the lovely copper beads from the gem show? They were a perfect match for some turquoise. Two bracelets. A Men's Bracelet



And a smaller Turquoise and Copper Bracelet



Rhodonite Bracelet



This one I like! Made with Mexican Laguna Lace Agate, a double row of flat spiral stitch



Sodalite and Copper Earrings



And, I've started making my own long earwires, using sterling silver wire. Something a little different from the all-alike earwires that everyone uses.

Amethyst Earrings with long earwires



Turquoise Earrings



Pearl Earrings



Spring Green Earrings



Buttercup Yellow Earrings



For fun and games, Ray and I have been out and about around the Tucson area, birding and photographing. Sabino Canyon, Madera Canyon, Sweet Water, Saguaro National park, the Desert Museum. Check out Ray's blog for pics of good stuff around Tucson!

Sonoran Connection

Button Clasp for a Flat Spiral Stitch Bracelet

I made a perfectly lovely beadwoven bracelet, using tiger eye and gold lined seed beads. But I couldn't find a toggle clasp for it. I have silver, antiqued brass, copper, but nothing that would go with the sparkling golden look of the tiger eye and the seed beads. I do have some gold plated lobster claws, but lobster claws on bracelets ... no. Way too hard to clasp unless you have someone do it for you. So I decided to make a button and loop for the clasp. After a couple of starts and stops, taking the "button" apart a few times, this is what I came up with...

Tiger Eye Bracelet





So, now that I have the hang of it, I made another bracelet, this one with sodalite. This time, the "button" came along much easier, and the securing of it to the bracelet was also much easier.





But, alas, as I was weaving the thread ends in, as I was pushing my needle through one of the sodalite beads right in the middle of the bracelet, the bead broke! Ahhhhhhgggggggg !!! I'll eventually take it apart, but right now I am wearing the bracelet to give the button and loop clasp a good workout.

Now I am working on a bracelet made with rhodonite (the pink beads in the middle) and fuschia colored seed beads.

Anise

Anise is one of the essential oils that I like to keep stocked up on. I really enjoy it's spicy licorice scent, and I appreciate it's ability to hold it's scent in a cold process soap.

I use Anise Star essential oil. The Anise Star plant is a small to medium evergreen tree of the magnolia family, growing mostly in China. The seeds are steam distilled for the oil.

Anise Star is not the same as Aniseed Oil. Aniseed is the fruit of the annual anise plant of the parsley family.

Both are used in cooking, both are used in aromatherapy, both are used in soap making. I use Anise Star because my research between the two convinced me that Anise Star is easier on sensitive skin than Aniseed.

My favorite soap scented with Anise is my Anise Supreme. I started with one of my most luxurious recipes ... olive oil, coconut oil, cocoa butter (yes yes!), sweet almond oil, castor oil, and goat milk !! The essential oil scent blend I used anise, orange, clary sage, clove, and a couple of drops of patchouli and palmarosa.



This is a nice, deep, complex blend, and I find it very satisfying.

But then I wanted to make a less complex blend. I wanted to keep to 2 or 3 essential oils. Anise is a strong smelling oil, and tends to take the lead in a blend. So, I wanted to see want happened when I mixed it with another strong scent. So I did a blend of anise and patchouli. Now there's a battle of the scenses for you! :-D I also added just a touch of lemon. Yeah! I like it! I used the blend in my mild mild mild recipe of olive oil, coconut oil, sweet almond oil, rice bran oil, and avocado oil. I added some Rhassoul clay for texture. I'm very happy with this soap! Of course, after 6 weeks on the curing rack, the lemon has pretty much faded (as I thought it would). The anise and the patchouli are no longer in a battle and they have blended quite nicely to a deep earthy licorice scent.

Patchouli Anise

The Tucson Gem and Mineral Show

I did indeed take a foray out to the gem show. :) I went to the Best Bead Show at the Kino Veteran's Memorial Community Center, one I haven't been to before. Very nice! Lots of very pretty lampwork, lots of seed beads. I spent most of my $$ at Dakota Stones. I have been hooked on doing some bead weaving, mostly in the flat spiral stitch. So I was looking for stone in the 6mm - 8mm range. They had plenty of what I was looking for! :) http://www.dakotastones.com



A couple of different sizes of onyx. The pretty faceted ones will be used in a necklace.



Tiger eye and red tiger eye



Sodalite, white howlite, rhondonite



Goldstone, pyrite



Mexican laguna lace agate, apple jasper, iron zebra jasper



I also found some very pretty copper beads from Avian Oasis




Then I zipped across Ajo Way to the Tucson Electric Park. This show is always fun, because it is huge, and there is a lot of variety. Tools, uncut stone (buckets full of uncut lapis and turquoise!), minerals and fossils, beads, jewelry. I got a good fist full of faceted glass beads. :)





AND .. I've already finished one project with some of the glass beads.

Golden Poppies Bracelet

Smells

Yesterday I was lurking on my favorite soap forum, and was reading in the fragrance section a post about the essential oil palmarosa, and how this person does not like the scent, and wonders now what she is going to do with the amount she has left. This brought on a discussion of blending with palmarosa, and also a discussion about other essential oils that some folks find have a definite "yuk" factor. The entire thread actually has quite a humorous note to it and had me giggling quite a bit.

But it also had me thinking about smells, and how some people like a certain smell and others will find the same smell disgusting. I was born and raised in Western Massachusetts, where there is a bit of farming. I LIKE the smell of cow manure, although I'm sure there are plenty of folks that will say "yewwwwww" to that! And I also like a faint wiff of skunk spray ... not the in-your-face-the-dog-just-got-sprayed overpowering smell, but just a faint wiff is good.

As for essential oils, I like palmarosa, and was a bit surprised to find so many folks think it has a certain yuk factor to it. In fact, one of my favorite soaps is my Palmarosa Lavender soap, which is a blend of palmarosa, lavender, geranium, and patchouli.



One other essential oil always brought up in these kinds of discussions (and yes, there are plenty of them in soap forums!) is patchouli. To me, patchouli by itself has a definite stink factor. In blends, used lightly, patchouli is wonderful. But whenever I make a straight up patchouli soap, I can't wait to get it off my kitchen counter and into the soap room, away from my nose. Funny thing, though. I have been using up a scrap piece of straight up patchouli soap at my kitchen sink, and I LIKE it! Don't ask me what happen, but I like it! Has my nose changed? Has the patch mellowed in the soap? Did I use JUST the right amount of patchouli in that particular batch of soap? I don't know! I do have a newer batch of straight up patchouli soap curing on the curing rack, just about ready to go into the shop. I think I need to try a piece of that batch, see if I like it or not.

So how about you? Do you like certain smells that others think are "yuk"? :)

Valentine's Day Sale at Jewelry From Tucson

I am having a Valentine's Day Sale at Jewelry From Tucson! Find the perfect gift for your special Valentine. :)

30% off all jewelry. Use coupon code VALENTINE during checkout to receive the discount. Remember, you MUST use coupon code VALENTINE during checkout to automatically receive the 30% discount!

Jewelry From Tucson

Some of the lovely pieces for sale ...

A Turquoise and Red Coral Bracelet
Regular price $109 With discount $76.30



Citrine, Red Aventurine, Carnelian Necklace
Regular price $48.00 With discount $33.60



Red Garnet Earrings
Regular price $20.00 With discount $14.00