No more soap sales + being copied

I have discontinued soap sales, at least temporarily. I have had a lot of fun over 18 years making soap and meeting so many other interesting people. Thank you everyone .
Maybe I will get back to it again later, but meanwhile I will be making only for personal use and gifting..




May 10, 2006

one of the many reasons we should not have been at Gallipoli

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sky over India


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aussie dessert late afternoon


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sky over north western Australia

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photos that son took that i rather like...all taken at 34,000 feet with a cheap digital

he has returned last week with a huge loss of hearing that is preventing him working.
hopefully that will resolve in a a couple of weeks. It is due to ear trauma from ascent and descant with a cold, on the last legs of the trip. He cant afford to have bad stuff happen to his damaged ears

he learned much, saw a lot of graves, was more touched by Gallipoli than France and Belgium despite the untold thousands of graves there (pics to follow later)
Home looks good to him right now.:-)

Apr 26, 2006

a soap with sunflower oil for a change, with a sweet honeyish fragrance

While I was shopping yesterday the sunflower oil called out to me.
It would be about 6 years since i have used it so I decided to have a go again and made up a receipe that i figured i would like

It has turned out pretty well ...even tho the photo is too dark.

I have much to learn about photograpy and need to get to a group/list that will deal with less experienced photographers. Seems hard to find

The embeds in the soap are the remainders of some soap i tried that is meant to float. ....well i think that was the purpose of it.!!! Very strange looking soap, but it came out in beautiful colours that i love... and so i have used it for embeds in a few batches now

Apr 23, 2006

Something with meaning for some

Today i remembered that i had this sitting right here where i nearly walk on it multiple times a day.

I post it for those I know for whom it has meaning...you know who you are!!

It was painted in a kids playgroup 2 years ago by my adult son... who was bored with helping me at the markets selling soap

thanks son!!

Apr 19, 2006

New soap looking for a home...Smoked Citrus





This is part of a batch that is available for sale...it is a
very complex blend of citrus EO... with the addition of few drops of a secret fragrance to deepen and enhance

Apr 18, 2006

The sea off the Victorian coast

This pic has a definition line between the sea and the sky but it is not clear

I rather like it.

It was taken along the Great Ocean Road and i wish i had a soap log that colour

Just one more plain soap with lotsa bubbles

This is my standard receipe showing all the luscious bubbles that come from the soap.

The Rice Bran oil is partially responsible for this and it is an oil i just love....probably better than my favourite Olive oil for everyday bars.
Nothing will replace Olive Oil in my Castile soap for my face soap tho.....it is the best for me

Plain white unfragranced soap...the best!!

Well...that was simple once i worked it out.
Thank you to the Mozilla team.:-)

The soap is not the right colour on the screen but I will go with that right now.....cant stretch my brain too far with all this technology.
The cut soap is Goatmilk and the uncut log at the back is some Castile

Now I even have the ability to wrap the words around the pics too....it does not take much to amuse me !!

not working

ok
i am very pinged off as i cant get any photos up here...seems like Photobucket isnt working for me to transfer here .... and they are looking into it they say.
My other way of adding photos dosnt work either.......maybe i just need to get another browser...again!!

anyway...Easter was pleasant as i got out for lunch each day and had some meetings with family and friends.
I even went to the Easter show and met up with a soap making friend there.
It would be 20 eyars since i went there last and it will be another 20 i suspect before i trit trot back again. Seems like a lot of tat with people desperate to sell it.
I am not a fan of the whole Olympic Park area actually and i suspect it wont age well.

My son is lost to the universe as he did not turn on global roaming on his mobile phone.
As a good mother I did think of everything and did ask if he had turned it on..to be met with a reply in the negative that was designed to make me feel like *well duhhhhhhhh woman what would you know...i dont need to do that*. I who will likely never go overseas again have mine turned on for years. I suppose i can live in hope, huh??
Well i was right and he was wrong and his phone company, Optus, had their employees spend a lot of time on telling me how they could be sacked and the company pay some major amount of money if they hooked up his phone at my request.
They have no concept of the revenue they are loosing because of his incapacity to SMS.
Privacy rules in some places and it is totally the opposite elsewhere... as i constantly find in my volunteer work.

I did a couple of logs of some pretty soaps tonight and hope to get the pics up here sometime.
The plain white unfragranced soap i did the other day is curing out nicely with homes to go to for all of it.

ok........well due to the wonders of Mozillas Firefox i seem to now be able to transfer some pics across.....i will go and try that now

Apr 13, 2006

A great place for a dog to roam

well the pic has disappeard from here and i cant find it on my HD so here is pic of dog getting the first part of Saturdays paper

Who believes those in power?

Ummmmm a sad day for our country.
We are seriously meant to believe that no one, including our PM, knew of the AWB mess.
Seriously???
The same country that can let all this money go drifting by... and cant manage to adequately care for the mentally ill.
They are allowed to *live in the community* and if they are lucky they get a roof of some kind.
If not...they get to have a cave or a park bench.

Sure the Government is belatedly telling us they are going to put some money towards this in the future......but right now I cant imagine how they will even train enough *personal helpers* to assist these people who simply do not manage on their own.
Our PM is a man who lives in another world to that which is inhabited by the less able.
Does he ever try and look and see or wonder about how it is for those who live not well, let alone those who live badly and sadly ?
Has he got a clue?

I am finally making some soap and that is a lovely soothing thing to do as I had a less than optimal day today ...which leads to my musings about the mentally ill.
I was truly concerned with, and by, one person i met with .
And really totally helpless to do anything of significance to assist.
I was afraid

I will go back to my soap that is, tonight, for my lovely web page man, who like me, only likes unfragranced soap.....and to some for a great lady who, also like me.... likes plain Castile.

Apr 12, 2006

Just a joke that someone sent me that made me laugh a lot

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calendula soap with Lemongrass EO




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Brain is fading

Well having achieved this much i feel like I have run a marathon.
I thought it would be easier somehow but i am still having...as you can see... problems of wrapping words around pics. Maybe it will become clearer later...maybe ??
I still hav'nt made the soap I was going to last night and the house is still mainly looking like a dog kennel.
I suppose it dosnt matter really. ..but i do have some orders for some soaps that i MUST make.
It is really quite hot here still and I dont like to soap in the day.

Compared to some of todays headlines in the news it all seems insignificant.
Alexander Dower says that he is forgetful about the AWB scandal and we are supposed to think it is ok for him to be still helping to run the country.
Muhammad Ali sold his name for $68 million and Jessica Simpson is being sued for $137 million.
Meanwhile "detainess" at Villawood are being moved to Baxter. ...and elsewhere.
Iran continues to defy the West about its uranium program.
I am not sure how many died in the last 24 hours in Iraq....i was too self absorbed with creating this space to get that info.

One of my favourite soap pictures....these are scrubby soaps


the black one has vanilla fragrance with coffee grounds.
the white one has poppy seed and tapioca with lemon floral fragrance



This is a photo of my mother aged about 8 years.
It was given to me recently by newly found relatives who we didnt know of before.
It the only photo we have of our mother as a child
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Dog explaining that she has lost her licence again

This is the worlds most loveing dog
A rescue dog who chose me for her
She would chew
your arm off to
protect me i suspect
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Apr 11, 2006

Son at the airport on his way overseas

This is my son on his way to France and Turkey for a wonderful 3 week holidayvisiting the battlefields of WW1. Right now he is in Turkey and I hope for him as much a learning experience as i had there well over 30 years ago....and maybe a bit less bread...love Turkish bread.
His main difficulty will be his dislike of the national drinks of tea and coffee!!

Image hosting by PhotobucketA HUGE thank you to Sandra and Brian

Why is this blog here?

I am not really sure
I just know that I cant update my own web page and somedays I feel like putting some soap pictures here when i make the soap and before it leaves home.
I should be learning about web page design I suppose.
Maybe next year..maybe
So I am thinking that I will eventually point my web page to this blog and eliminate most of my web page
http://www.dianesnaturally.com.au
But who knows??
I am not making soap as much as I used to as last year I gave up the markets I had done for the past 6 years.
It is more a fun thing for me now and there is no need for so much soap to be created.
I do wholesale accounts and some retail and that seems to be as much as I want to do.

Here people can maybe come and have a look at some soap I have in stock at any given time... and decide what they want and I can just make what i feel like making.
That is if i work out how to put in a photo...I think my Netscape is seriously ill despite so many new downloads. Mind you the computer is no better.
We shall see what we see i suppose. I may not even keep this blog up.
I already spend too much time on the internet talking with other soapmakers.
A blog is not going to keep me off my computer is it??

Soap has been the one creative thing i have managed to do in this lifetime, so I need to keep doing that as I really do enjoy the pleasure of creating colours and fragrances that will bring pleasure to other people and be so wonderful to use. I cant knit or sew or mend or paint and cooking bores me ...so i suppose i had better keep making soap !!

My main problem is that i dont write with capitals and it pings people off no end to have writings with no capitals ...so I guess I am going to have to change my ways
Ummmmmmmmmmmm