Elements : Fire | Summer Collection

Inspired by the four elements this collection explores Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Fire is the soap that sparked (pun intended) this collection. 
While I was still in the planning stages for Summer I was working on one of the soaps that I make year round, Midsummer.

Midsummer is temperamental at best, and a complete nightmare to work with at worst.  It is made with Pine tar (the sap collected from pine trees and slowly reduced over fire) which is one of the most challenging ingredients to work with, extreme temperature control and delicate restraint in combining these ingredients is required during emulsion to prevent seizing.  

After lamenting a failed batch caused by slightly elevated temps and 3 extra turns of my tools while slightly distracted I devised a plan to salvage what I could so this soap could rise from the ashes as it were. 

This soap is like the phoenix that rises from the ash. Crafted from failure as a humbling exercise in patience.

Carefully cut triangles from a failed batch of Midsummer (yes, the same one if you were here last year) were laid out in geometric patterns and set into a new batch of soap, flecks of pine tar speckle the bar as tessellated triangles in deep brown, golden harvest, forest green, and charcoal tile back and forth across the surface.
Mixing the deep brown smokiness of the pine tar with warm, sauna-like scents of cedar, cypress, ho wood, and cassia. Truly a lesson in patience, perseverance, and stubbornness. Every single bar is it's own unique piece of art.

Ingredients / ingrédients

Caprae lac, Sodium Sunflowerate, Caprae lac, Sodium Grapeseedate, Sodium Cocoate, Sodium Shea Butterate, Sodium Castorate, Cera Alba, Sodium lactate, Palustris (Pine) Wood Tar, Vetiveria Zizanoides Root Oil, Cinnamomum camphora linalooliferum wood oil , Cedrus Atlantica Bark Oil, Cinnamomum Cassia Leaf Oil,  Indigofera Tinctoria (Indigo) Leaf Powder,  Bixa orellana (Annatto) seed extract,  Illite, Illite/Kaolin, Curcuma longa (Turmeric) Powder