Took a haitus but back in time for Christmas.

Oat & Honey Goat Milk Soap

Gearing up for the busy season with Christmas right around the corner.  With soapmaking, planning ahead is essential because the soap has to sit and dry for 4 -6 weeks.  Planning for Christmas needs to start in October, but somehow, every year, I never feel like I do enough or get enough done in time.  I can't let that be my 'spirit of Christmas'.  Especially this year.

Here are a few of the soaps I did manage to get done.  Thanks to friends who are interested in my work, I looked at my processes in a new light and came up with a much better method of producing my goat milk soap.  The bars are more uniform in size and can be cut in a flash.  It makes the system work better because once I resized the labels as well, they fit better too.  It simplifies and beautifies and that, my friends, is what Nidelva Soap is all about.  

Ginger Bergamot Goat Milk Soap

Lavender Olive oil soap (middle shelf) 
Ginger Bergamot Goat Milk (top and bottom)

Here is a peek at one of the drying racks, where the soap sits for 4 to 6 weeks.  

The lavender soap in the middle is made square (well, almost square)  and fits in a folded box I also hand make.  Perfect for gift giving.  I put two bars of 120g soaps in each box.  

I also managed to create a new product.  DIY Clay masks.  70g of floral water and 10g of dry clay.  These are great.  Teatree/green clay for oily or combination skin and Rosewater/pink clay for sensitive and/or dry skin.   Not only are they elegantly simple and beautifying, but they are very generously portioned.  Use weekly, mix up just the amount you want and need and these mask kits will last for months.  (Keep the rose water in the fridge.  It is organic and contains absolutely no preservatives.)

using a tea tree/French green clay mask
(yes, that is me)

Organic rose water with pink kaolin clay

teatree floral water with French green clay

I put them in cute little gift boxes and will try to get a picture of those posted here.  To see them up close and personal, they are currently sitting on the shelves at Pryd with a tester pot you can sniff and poke at.  ;)  

Soap Volcanos

Soap Volcanos of Nightmares

As mentioned in my last post, the volcano deserves its own blog entry.

The making of the Newton Soap Volcano: 

Helping the children's TV science show, Newton, with their soap episode was fun.  The volcano can be seen at 7:57 (you can also see Nidelva Såpekokeri in the credits at 27:54) They asked loads of questions, I demonstrated soapmaking for them and when they finally wrote their episode to include a nightmare sequence with a volcano bubbling over (soapmakers know of this phenomenon) they asked me if I could make them one.  I had to try.  It sounded like it was going to be very fun to try, even if it didn't work out.  I decided it had to be recycled and reusable, so it had to be made out of real soap.


I had several kilos of goat milk soap sitting in storage that I knew I could shred down and recook (a method called re-batching).  I had never sculpted anything with soap before, but I knew what the texture was like during rebatching and it turned out to be a rather fun medium to sculpt in.  It was hot, but with rubber gloves on, it was comfortable enough to handle.  


I put two small plastic containers upside down, smaller one on top of the larger one and covered them in a plastic bag and then covered that with a layer of rebatched, jasmine scented, goat milk soap.  At this stage, I wasn't sure if I was going to try to remove the plastic containers or not.  What I ended up doing was cutting the botton of the top container, giving me a nice, manageable space to put a decent volume of my 'lava mix' into.

The soap stayed malleable long enough to shape and held together very much like a sticky wax. 

I wanted the lava mix to be a bath and body product too, not just baking soda and vinegar, like the kids do at science fairs.  My answer?  Bath bomb. Citric acid for the low pH and baking soda for the high pH.  I tested the bath bomb mixture in a cup and added plenty of red food colouring but found the bubbles lacking so I squirted in some dish soap and got bubbles-a-plenty.  It wasn't something I would put in my bath tub, but it worked.

The first layer of soap over the
plastic containers.

Building up the base of the volcano,
giving it shape.

The top cut open for the lava mix to be poured into.

A closer look at the sculpting and design

I giggled the whole time I was making this.  It seems perfectly surreal, but I guess that was the idea.  It was for Solveig's dream sequence.  It ended up weighing in at 3.7kg and it was 26cm tall.  


























The whole, 'make a soap volcano' also led to these little beauties:  Chocolate scented melt and pour soap with and adjusted formula for the lava to make it very skin friendly.

Just add water

The lava was strawberry scented with cosmetic grade
colorant and enriched with shea butter and rice bran oil.

Keep adding water until the lava exhausts
itself and then use the soap to wash.

My son's face says it all.

If you represent a company and would like to license this idea, get in touch.  

Introducing Nidelva Soapmakers & Crafts blog

French green clay added to an olive oil soap turns a
soap into a deep-cleaning facial mask.

(above)Soap with silk proteins dissolved in it
makes an amazing difference to the texture
of the suds. (below) Salt scrub ready for
summer with the smell of jasmine.  

Welcome!

to all things soapmaking and crafts that catch my eye.


I live near the beautiful medieval Norwegian city of Trondheim, so there may be the occasional post or link in Norwegian, but essentially, this blog will be in English.


This year, I joined forces with the creative and inspiring group at Pryd in the historical Bakklandet area of Trondheim.  www.prydbutikken.blogg.no

It isn't my intention to make this blog one big advertisement for my products, but, as it happens, I am rather passionate about and proud of them.  Soapmaking has become something of an obsession with me, especially on the organic chemistry side of things.  I can literally go on and on about long-chain fatty acids and saponifiable fats and gel phase vs non-gel phase soap..... *see... I knew your eyes would glaze over...*  For those of you interested in the chemistry behind the soap, there will be plenty of that here and if I can work it out, I may even get a Q & A system up and running connected to this blog.  All that being said, you should hear a bit about who I am and what I do and what has led me to write this blog that will be bursting with crafts and all-things soap.


My name is Carol Benoit and for the past 5 years or so I have made natural body care products.  I keep things very simple and pure, making things from scratch and avoiding recipes that call for preservatives or colourings.  I combine my interest in science with making the best soap and body care products I can and making them lovely with fragrances and packaging.


As well as soap, I make salt scrubs, shea butter creams and solid lotion bars.  During the dry, cold winters here in Norway, our skin requires some TLC with loads of moisturisers and all my products are made without petroleum products or parabens.  The salt scrubs were formulated with a special store in mind here in Trondheim, but, sadly, it no longer exists.  She sold hundreds of my scrubs.  The good news is that they are still available through a new store, Pryd, in Bakklandet here in Trondheim, or you can contact me through this blog or my etsy store if you want to enquire about any of my products.  


I love simple and natural when it comes to the products I clean with and use on my body.  When I moved to Norway, almost 10 years ago now, I could not find epsom salt anywhere.  After many-a-confused phone call, it turned out, not many people had heard of epsom salts here, so I started importing it from England.  I've been spreading the good word about epsom salt soaks for aches and pains.  If you want to read up on epsom salt and its uses, here is a handy link.  http://www.epsomsaltcouncil.org/beauty/  


Link to my shop at esty:  www.nidelva.etsy.com


So, watch this space for interesting links to thrifty & essentially cool crafts, as well as learning about soapmaking.  I'll share some good formulas for making your own bath and body products and demystify soapmaking and some other crafts that might be sitting in your 'too hard' basket.