A Desert Soap

This is my Desert Chaparral Soap, which I cut yesterday



I was hoping by adding green clay that it would come out greener than it did. But alas, the powdered chaparral had other ideas. LOL What little green IS coming through now will most likely fade to a khaki brown.

Orange and Clove soap, just cut



Both soaps have been whisked away to the soap room to cure. :)

These are a couple of soaps just listed. Both of these soaps were scented with blends of odds and ends of fragrance oils I had. Not enough of one to scent a whole batch, so, I just mixed together ones I thought would play nice with each other. Both soaps have goat milk, and cocoa butter. Great recipe!

Desert Nomad - Used up the last of my Frankincense & Myrrh, and added some White Sage. Nice! To me, it's a masculine scent, just a touch on the herbal/spicy side.




Black Violets - This is quite a mix! Violet Shay, Tahitian Vanilla, Tahitian Flowers, and Lavender Fields. Yeah! Very sweet, floral, vanilla-y. Very dark soap from the vanilla. No other additives to darken it up!



And jewelry .. another flat spiral stitch bracelet. Goldstone as the core, greens, copper color, beige glass seed beads and brass spacer beads performing the spiral stitch.



This morning, Ray and I took a walk around Sweetwater Conservation Area. As of right now, he hasn't blogged about it yet. But he got a pretty good pic of a Painted Redstart, so check his blog, see if he's posted a pic of it yet.

Sonoran Connection

Green Turquoise Heishi Earrings

I made these earrings this week. They make me wish I had pierced ears!



They are 4 3/4 inches long! They are called Jacla (or Jaclaw, or Jatal), a Navajo term for these long loopy earrings, usually made with heishi beads, and with larger beads, usually some type of shell, as focals. The Navajo women would tie the earrings to the matching necklace when storing them. Sometimes, they would wear the necklace with the earrings tied to it, so the earrings would hang down like long beautiful pendants!



Now, as near as I can figure, Jacla can refer to the earrings themselves, a necklace that resembles these earrings (2 strands, exactly alike), a heishi necklace with 3 or 4 larger, usually some type of shell, beads as focals. I Googled it as much as I could! :-D

Two Soaps a-gelling

These are the two soaps I made today, setting in their molds, gelling away!



The top one is Orange & Clove, with a sprinkle of ground cloves on the top.

The other is Desert Chaparral. Scented with sage, lemon, and patchouli. I added some agave nectar, some green clay, and some powdered chaparral. Smells nice!

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