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A message for @etave, @onstraysod, @nothinghamshire, @solitaryjo and @cakesandsnouts

So I don’t know if you ladies recall back in early December I asked for your addresses so I could send you a Christmas gift? Well this is what this post about. First of all I’m going to apologise for not actually sending you anything, I’m so sorry to have gotten your hopes up. Secondly, I’m going to explain why I didn’t send the gift and what I actually wanted to send!

I gave a couple of you some clues about what it could be but mostly that it would take time and was something I was making. (I was so secretive about it that Nina thought I was making a bomb!) Well, I was trying to make soap. I love the idea of fandom scents (etave may recall me asking on several occasions what Jonathan might smell like) and was planning on making a Team Peninsula soap! I DID actually make a Team Peninsula soap (which I hoped to label as “Redcoat Soap - gunpowder and tobacco officer’s soap with a dash of brandy!”) but... let’s just say soap is very hard to make!

Besides the basic ingredients for soap (spring water, shea butter, sunflower oil, coconut oil and sodium hydroxide) everything that went into it was specially chosen and I had a lot of fun gathering it all up.

This is what went into the mix:

Activated charcoal as “gunpowder” (good for your skin, I hoped would also turn the soap a dark black colour)

Gold leaf pieces as the embellishments of the uniform

Christian Dupre “Napoleon” fine brandy ;)

Birch tar essential oil as the officer’s tobacco

Juniper berries as little canon balls

I was then going to wrap the finished soap in its own redcoat (with its own little red sash around the middle.) I have had some artillery buttons for years too and each one was going to have a button attached. Each soap was going to come with a handwritten label and a little letter from Wellington written with my quill :)

Unfortunately, and I didn’t realise this at the time, soap requires a long “curing” period as it has corrosive chemicals in it that need to evaporate out of it. This process can take up to six weeks. It’s now been over seven weeks since I made the soap and it still hasn’t cured :( I’ve tested a small chunk of it on my own hands and have found it irritates me so I don’t feel safe sending it to you guys.

Here are some slices of it in the process of curing (you can see the buttons I wanted to use and the labels in that little box, I was also going to cut up little bits of that map too for decoration.) As you can see the edges are turning paler, which I believe is a good sign, but the middle is still dark. I will persevere with it, but I’m thinking I must have done something wrong in the process of making it. I guess I should have practised a few times before diving into something I have no experience with!

I took some photos while I was making it to show you guys, which I might as well put in here too.

This was the shea butter and oils being mixed together.

This is the smelly part of the soap! It was lemongrass oil and birch tar mixed together (because birch tar on it own doesn’t smell that great!) and it did smell really nice. Those little bits are the gold pieces.

The canon balls are added to the mixture (after two hours of stirring!)

(Bad photo sorry) The activated charcoal going in. It looked good enough to eat!

So that’s it basically... I wanted you to know that I did try hard to make you something special and Team Peninsulary for Christmas but it didn’t go to plan and I don’t want to hurt any of you by sending you soap that will irritate your skin. Sorry for taking so long to tell you about this too! If by some miracle the soap does cure I will of course send it to you in its full uniform!

I hope you had a lovely Christmas <3

#christmas present shizzle #journal2016 #kinda #for onstraysod #for etave #for nothinghamshire #for solitaryjo #for cakesandsnouts