‘Tis the season for gift giving! I LOVE giving handmade gifts, but with so many sewing projects in my queue, there was no way I could sew any gifts this year. One of my favorite Youtubers is Katie Carson from Royalty Soaps. She creates these gorgeous soaps from her studio in Texas, and although I’ve never made soap before, I love watching and buying her soaps. She recently reviewed two maker kits from Brambleberry – a candle kit and a botanical soap kit – and I decided that I was going to make candles and soaps for my friends this year! If it works out, then great. If not, well, it’s the thought that counts.
When I placed an order at Brambleberry, you got a discount if you ordered three or more kits, so guess what I did. I ordered three kits! I ordered the Emerald Agave candle kit, the Succulent Soap kit, and the Bee Soap kit. Because I knew that candles should sit a few days before being used, I decided to make the candles first. If I didn’t tell you that this was my first time making candles, you could certainly tell by my wonky wicks. It was hard keeping them centered, but they look and smell amazing. The kit makes 10 candles (I kept one for myself) and there’s quite a bit of fragrance left over for use in other projects.
Next, I made these adorable honeybee soaps. The honey soap base was a bit too pale for me, so I added a touch of turmeric to give the bars a more honeyed appearance. When making the second set of honeybee soaps, I added rose gold mica that I happened to have on hand. The soaps smell amazing and looks professionally made. For the succulent soap, I stuck pretty closely to the instructions, and they turned out great as well. There’s plenty of supplies in the kits to play around with different colors and scents, and just like with the previous two kits, I have leftover supplies. The kits all came well-protected and each kit was filled with crinkled craft paper, which I kept to use in the finished product.
Once the candles and soaps were made, I needed to figure out how to actually gift them to my friends. Remember when I said my sewing queue was too full to sew anything for my friends? Well, I decided to skip the queue. Seamwork recently published this lovely rope bowl tutorial as part of their Mindful Making series. These bowls are the perfect handmade vessel to hold all my handmade goodies and sewing them was a breeze. Once I figured out the thread color and shape, each bowl took about 30-45 minutes to make. Seamwork’s video tutorial is great, so instead of explaining the process again, here are just a few pictures of me making the bowls. In total, I made 11 baskets from 165 yards of macrame cording. It was so much fun to step out of my sewing bubble for a bit and try my hand at a different craft! Don’t be surprised if you see more soaps in the future.
