Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Catmint Experiment

Inspired by my soapin' buddies Jen of Jenora Soaps, and Ambra from NaKin who have both made green soaps recently with much success -I've harvested (actually hubby did it for me) some Catmint from my flowerbed, and am brewing a "tea".

I plan on steeping and then blending in the leaves ala Cocobong's nettle technique (after all, she is a whiz at all things soapy!)  Since I'll be using my concoction in HP soap, I'm hoping to cook it down pretty good & add it after most of the lye has cooked out...hoping that this will help the color "hold" better.

 I have ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE as to what I'm doing!  I'm feeling rather like a mad scientist about now, and it is fun!  I've read that this "catmint" (sorry, don't know the real name -would need to call my sister for that) is o.k. to put into tea, so I'm thinking it would be good for soap?

We'll see, I guess.  Here's what it looked like boiling.  I got some really wild aqua colored foam that didn't show up in the photo.  I'm hoping to make the soap tomorrow afternoon.

 I'm thinking of fragrancing the soap with Cornmint and maybe a bit of Eucalyptus. 

Please stay tuned...I'll post pics of the final result -good or bad!

4 comments:

Amy Warden said...

What fun!! Looks great so far - can't wait to see the soap!

Jennifer said...

Sounds AWESOME and FUN and INNOVATIVE! You never know, if the Zen is working for you, you just may find out that aside from producing some gorgeous steadfast colour, catmint (whatever that is!) provides some magical curative qualities for the skin! Can't wait to see photos of the finished soap! xo Jen

cocobong said...

SoapSister, not to discourage ..but I think this will give you a brown-ish soap rather than the green. Which is totally cool..just as long as you don't have your heart set on Green. You might push the brown to a greenish brown by adding green clay, preferably French Argalitz clay which comes in red,green,pink,yellow. I have no idea whether you can get it there, but soapers here in Europe work a lot with this wonderful clay...Best, cb

Amy said...

I have a lot of catmint in my herb garden that I haven't done anything with this year....I'm interested to see how it goes for you and what you think of the finished soap! Thanks for the inspiration!! :-)