Sunday, May 22, 2011

African Bliss - a mens soap (a post by Rae)

Dino having some fun with the reflections while waiting for oils to cool
 For some time now, Dino has been nagging me to add a mens soap to our range as we have quite a few male customers that are enjoying using our soap and are conscious of what they put on their skin. We thought it would be a good idea to come up with a soap that has a strong, earthy colour as well as a spicy masculine smell.


oily reflection
 We experimented with coffee to give it a nice dark brown colour, eventually coming up with a shade that we felt was right. My husband, Dino was really keen to dabble in the blending of the essential oils for the new soap and came up with a blend of cinnamon and a variety of African indigenous oils, as he is a keen lover of hiking and nature and constantly brings home little bits of plant sprigs for me to smell.
Working with cinnamon is not always an easy oil to work with and can cause your soap to sieze up rather quickly, as you can see in the above photo. Here we had to quickly pour the mixture (you can see it has a lumpy, grainy texture ) in the hope of saving it, but although we still used it ourselves, visually it was not perfect and after fiddling with the ratio's of the various essential oils, we succeeded! Beeswax was another ingredient we used in this soap and personally I adore any soap containing beeswax as it seems to give an incredibly smooth fine finish and a really creamy lather and it also lasts just a little bit longer than other soaps. As a result, we have a beautiful bar of soap with a fantastic fine, rich lather that leaves a lingering, spicy fresh smell on your body that any woman would find hard to resist and judging by the feedback we've had, it seems that woman love using this soap for themselves as well!
Next, we had to choose a colour for our label that would compliment our soap range and the colour of the soap, be masculine and also remind a person of Africa. We therefore decided to use a colour found in African art and fabric, the ocean and the sky and the result is the above!

7 comments:

Dani said...

Clever girl :-)

My menfolk complained about the lack of smell to my soap - so, as my first batch was running out, I've just made another batch and they love the new smell! (hope it lasts...)

Wonder why the cinnamon oil made the soap sieze?

Beeswax sounds interesting...

Liesl said...

That soap looks really nice! Good idea for a men's soap and love the packaging!

garden girl in SA said...

These soaps all look wonderful. Any chance of adding shampoo's and conditioner's to your range?

African Bliss said...

Thanks for the lovely compliments! We are looking into doing shampoo's, etc.. but it's a whole other process. Hopefully by the end of the year!

mens soap said...

Hi guys,
This post is very useful and very interesting to read.
Really, this post is providing nice information, Keep it up!!!!

caroline Avnit said...

Love the mens soap - I think it is an excellent idea and the packaging looks good.
I like Dino's photos of the reflections.
Much love to you all
xx

Coco Oro said...

How sir/madam....this sounds very official.....however, how do I contact you about stocking your products please.... I need wholesale prices and a full stock list.
My Email: cocooro696@gmail.com