Wax Tarts + Wasabi FO

Last winter, I noticed beautiful Christmas-themed wax tarts popping up in the Facebook soap groups that I belong to. From what I learned, wax tarts are like candles without a flame. Instead of burning a wick, a piece of scented wax (the wax tart) is placed on a warming device and melted to release the scent into the air. This sounded like a nice project, so I decided to make my own wax tarts.

After a bit of reading, I ordered soy pillar wax and a wax tart mold and got to work. The process is relatively simple: melt the wax until it's liquid, add the fragrance or essential oil (I use 10% of the weight of the wax), stir and pour into the mold. In a few hours, the wax tarts are hard and can be popped out of the mold. Colour can also be added to the wax, but I like to keep them white.

This batch is scented with Wasabi fragrance oil. It's a Brambleberry fragrance that I ordered from Creations from Eden here in Canada. Despite this fragrance's name, the dominant scent that my nose picks up is ginger. It's fresh and green and I really like it. I'd like to try it in a lotion or cold process soap next.

Recent Soaps

Though I've been silent the past few months, I've probably made a dozen or so batches of soap since the New Year, playing around with design and ingredients:

Lavender EO & Tangerine FO, coloured with graduated layers of sunflower oil infused with alkanet powder and lines of smokey plum mica. 

Bonsai & Citrus Ginger FO, made with homemade oat milk that seriously accelerated trace. I barely had time to complete the design, which is a Taiwan swirl in a slab mold.

A soleseife brine cupcake soap, made with 100% coconut oil and a 20% super fat. The bottom layer scented with cocoa puffs FO and vanilla cream FO, and the top with Japanese peppermint EO. This was my first soap cupcake, and while they look pretty, I don't find them very practical. 

Lavender EO, made with Ariane Arsenault's tilted layers chopstick swirl.

Made with Boysenberry FO and Citron FO, I'm calling this one Berries & Cream. It has goat's milk powder and whipping cream, and smells fruity and fresh for spring. The little dots on the top and in a portion of the soap are cranberry seeds. 

This final soap is a shampoo soap, scented with a blend of Lavender EO, Lemongrass EO, Tea Tree EO and Patchouli EO. It contains lots of extras, including local beer, goat's milk powder, oat protein and silk.

As my soap shelves are overflowing, I've decided to spend some time focused on other body care products. I already make bottled conditioner, but I've ordered a few additional ingredients so that I can try my hand at solid conditioner bars. I've also ordered some Polysorbate 20 so that I can attempt a toner and a body spray. Stay tuned :)