Well I finally got around to making my Cherry Almond soap with my homemade Oat Milk. I must say it smells absolutely WONDERFUL. I colored the soap with Pink Kaolin clay just to give it a little pink hue. I didn’t want the pink too dark and the clay did the job. I ground up some whole oats really fine in my coffee grinder and added to the soap at light trace along with the Oat Milk. Everything soaped beautifully. Check it out below

with oatmeal and oat milk

I also made a Watermelon Soap, that smells absolutely divine. I can’t wait to get into the shower with this one. I added poppy seeds to give it the look of seeds in the soap.

I did a plain unscented Carrot soap that is good for sensitive skin

Here is our soap that we will call Joyful. This one set up too fast for me to do any swirling which is why you see the colored sugar pearls for a little color

Finally, I made a 15# batch, which yield 65 bars. This one has been selling quite well

Pictures are not that great, sorry

I started doing some research. Of course I started with the fellow soaper, by asking how do you make it. She was so kind to share. I also used my best friend “Google” to see if anyone else had made Oat Milk. Sure enough my search turned up quite a few hits. With that being said, here is how I made my Oat Milk for my new Cherry Almond soap with oatmeal and Oat Milk.
1. Add one cup of oatmeal to a jug
2. Add four cups of hot water (not boiling water)
3. Allow mixture to sit overnight
4. Drain the water into another container
5. Add oatmeal to a blender and pulverize until oats are chopped nice and fine
6. Add chopped oats to a strainer and pour the water over the chopped oats
Easy peesy.

Here are a few helpful notes
1. Take a spatula and press against the oatmeal in the strainer to get as much liquid out as possible.
2. You will probably have to strain the mixture several times to ensure all the oatmeal is not in your liquid mixture.

I have not made the Cherry Almond soap yet (will post pics), I plan to in the next couple of days. My creamy Oat Milk is waiting patiently in the fridge.

EnJOY
Rochell

Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to come back next week, when we plan to show our new Oatmeal Soap made with real Oat Milk, NOT GOAT, but Oat.

My goodness, $5.25 for a bar of soap!? Why on earth does it cost so much?

Thanks for taking the time to inquiry about our soaps and noticing that the price is a little higher than most store brought soaps. As you can see each bar is a work of art. They are handmade by me and time intensive. All of our soaps are made with real vegetable oils and real ingredients. Store brought soaps are usually made with a synthetic detergent, like Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (a lathering agent) that is blended with synthetic hardeners to form a bar of soap.

Due to the synthetic ingredients, often times lotion is needed after bathing with store brought soaps. Karess Krafters soaps contain skin-loving oils like olive, coconut and palm to produce a lovely cleansing bar of soap that leaves your skin moist, clean and soft to the touch. And, our soaps last as long or longer than the commercial soap.

We also use quality essential and/or fragrance oils, herbs and aloe in our soaps and these ingredients cost a little more. All of our soaps are made in small batches to ensure quality so that we offer you the best product for your skin. Karess Krafters soaps are made in Holly Springs, NC which allows us to contribute more to our local economy because the dollars are spent in our community. In addition, our soaps help save the environment, this is not always true for the larger soap companies. Many of the big name “detergent bar” producers have their soaps made oversees and then shipped into the U.S…just imagine the environmental cost of shipping all of that soap.

We love what we do, would like one or five bars?

Be Blessed,
Ric and Ro

Step 1
Pour 2 cups of Epsom salt/sea salt/sugar into a small bowl. Add enough oil (olive, canola, soy, etc) to the bowl to coat the salts or sugar

Step 2
Stir the two ingredients together, forming a thick exfoliating paste. Apply the paste to your skin with your fingertips.

Step 3
Massage the exfoliating paste into your skin using circular motions. In some cases a little pressure will help. Allow mixture to sit on the skin for a few moments

Step 4
Rinse, pat skin dry and apply moisturizer if needed.

Until next time be blessed,
Ric and Ro

Tips for Dry, Cracked Feet

1. Soak feet for 5-10 minutes in a warm foot bath (1 cup of milk, Epsom salt or Karess Krafters Spa Botanical Foot Soak with 5-6 cups of warm water)
2. Make a homemade foot scrub (1/2 cup of oil mixed with 5 tablespoons of salt, sugar or pumice or use Karess Krafters Foot Patrol Soap)
3. Massage scrub/soap in a circular motion into bottoms of feet and heels
4. For stubborn areas use a pumice stone. Rinse and dry feet (don’t forget between the toes).
5. Right before bed thickly apply a moisturizer to your feet (cocoa butter, shea butter or Karess Krafters After Hours Foot Cream)
6. Put on a pair of cotton socks and keep them on throughout the night for at least 4 hours.

It has been a hard-working week in the Karess Krafters shop. Hubby decided to build a horizontal wall in the garage to officially separate my work area from his. According to him, my section was inching little by little into his space. Now that the wall is up, there is no way for me to steal any space of his…little by little. Here is a list of things that he did in addition to the wall:

1. He added cabinets to the wall he built as well as the existing back wall.
2. He cut my work bench in half
3. ½ of the cut work bench he made me a packing station
4. The other half he made my logistic area or computer station
5. He also built a tall wardrobe type cabinet from the left over wood and used our old closet doors as doors for it. I keep all of my cured soaps in boxes in this area.

We only have to paint the walls white, get the electrician to finish adding more electrical outlets and figure out how we are going to do the floors. We need to do something that can withstand oil spills and cleans up easily.

Check out the pix below

We will offer a heavier discount to our newsletter subscribers one week before the actual sale week. If you have not done so, be sure to sign up on our Facebook fanpage. Once you like our page you will see the email sign up icon.

Make your own slideshow with music at Animoto.

Until next time be blessed
Rochell

Well our luscious lip balms have returned. We are not sure why we did away with them from the start as we have received a great response to them from the time we offered them back in 2006. We did do away with our vegan formula for now as the beeswax version out sold it 6 to 1. Chai Tea returned as well as Simply Herbal but it is now just called Herbal. We have 3 new flavors, Buttercream and two essential oils flavored, Licorice Anise and Grapefruit Mint.

Our Olive & Honey Botanical Facial Wash is our favorite. It is a surfactant based product that gave us some challenges during the creation part. A lot of eliminating, adding, etc. during the formulating phase. I believe this one is our favorite due to the challenges it gave us. It is has a silky, creamy texture that removes grime from the facial tissue and leaves your skin soft and clean.

Our Lavender & Chamomile Toner has been around before. This is not a brand new product for us, but it is a treat to use. It balances, tones and hydrates your skin. Here is a little secret, we sometimes skip the facial wash step and go straight to the toner. Disclaimer: We are not recommending that you skip the facial wash step as it is a very important step. We are just saying what has worked for us.

Our Blooming Flowers Botanical Facial Lotion is just that, blooming with flowers. It has some of the most marvelous extracts in it that really hydrates the facial tissue down to the deepest layers. Extracts such as Calendula, White Willow Bark and Red Clover to name just a few. It even has the anti-aging ingredient of Oat Beta Glucan. We love the creamy texture and off white hue. Our most favorite ingredient in this blooming facial lotion is the Olive emulsifier. It is very silky and emollient. It is so nice that we have plans to create an all over lotion with it. We LOVE IT.

Well there you have it, a limited facial line, but a line that is effective and can be appreciated by normal, dry, sensitive and mature skin types.

Until next time
Be blessed, happy and worry-FREE!

The recipe for the holiday scrubs is slightly different from our regular scrub. The holiday scrub has glycerin, coconut and castor oil added to the mix. We wanted to make sure we didn’t just offer a new fragrance but also a new formula as well. Here are photos of our Candy Cane, Hazelnut Mocha, Orange Clove, Lavender Bliss and Warm Vanilla Sugar scrubs: