Soap, Lotion and Candles

I promised my wife I’d put this up on my blog, and haven’t got around to it yet!

As a witch and shamanic practitioner, I love scented oils and candles. Many months ago I began making my own flying ointment, and that progressed into making moisturizers, soap, candles, and other bath and beauty products.  It really is great stuff, and we love making it! So if you’ve ever wanted a moisturizer, soap, or candle in your favourite scent, we might be able to make it for you. I made an autumn scent that I absolutely adore, and we’re working on new witchy scent combinations too. Have a look: http://journeytreehedgewitchery.weebly.com/products.html

Labour Day Weekend Family Party

After months of handcrafting soaps, lotions, salves, scrubs, toners, bath bombs and more, my wife and I finally got to show off our work at the annual Labour Day weekend family party. Everyone got to pick out their favourite items in their favourite scents and we encouraged everyone to take as much as they liked…because we ended up making a lot of stuff. It was so very gratifying to see everyone excited and happy over their choices, and so much fun.

It was a hectic and energy-filled party, and a great day, which ended with a beautiful orange moon.

Recent Soaps

My wife and I have been getting better at making soap. I’m pleased with this mornings’ cuttings, which were a challenge: cold processed soap with star-shaped inserts.

And some other soaps:

Journey Tree Hedgewitchery

After a long and stressful week, my wife and I are back doing what we love — making candles and lotions, going garage-sale hunting, and tending to the spiritual side of life. We’re packing up our handmade shaving soap and aftershave for my Pa for Father’s Day. We created simple labels with the name of our “company”, Journey Tree Hedgewitchery.

I have a lot of spiritual work to do too, as I was reminded in a journey. It’s time to create inwardly as I create outwardly.

Cut Soap Adventures

We cut some of our soaps this morning, and they look pretty!

These ones below look like lemon meringue…in reality they were a rebatch gone wrong, we did NOT know what we were doing.

More soap

Soap is new and exciting…hence all the posts. This afternoon we tried a swirly soap. I think it’s very neat, but we’ll see how it sets and cures!

Offerings

We had some successful soap making and rebatching, and it was a beautiful night, so it seemed right to make an offering. We took the gristly bits left over from making beef tallow, and our small collection of little pets (rats, gerbils, hamsters) that had passed on. I should explain that we keep a lot of small animals as pets, which I will blog about someday — it can be a spiritual experience having so many critters in the house. We take great care of them, be assured! However, some had died and we were waiting for the right time to give them back to the Earth.

So we went for a drive in the country and found a beautiful spot to say goodbye to our sweet furry friends, under a near blindingly bright moon. Then we drove some more and I asked for a sign to help us know where to leave the suet-gristle. We saw tiny baby killdeers running about at the side of the road, but drove on. We went up a dead end which felt alive with mystery and spirit, and it was getting late so we left the suet-gristle there. Just as we turned around to drive home, we saw a mother raccoon and babies. This I took as a sign that our offering was accepted.

Here is the coffee-cocoa soap we made, which turned out much better than previous attempts. We’re getting the hang of it!

Soap!

Here are three batches of soap my sister and wife and I made yesterday.  We’re going to rebatch some of the very first one we made, which erupted out of the mold hilariously. The uncut loaf pan soaps below did not cut well so we might have to rebatch them too. Making soap can be tricky indeed, but great fun! We cut the other batches up and it seems usable, though not perfect.