Marvelous Marvis

I got this fabulous toothpaste as a Christmas gift, and can't get enough of it. It's the Jasmine Mint flavor from Marvis, who apparently is an Italian Apothecary company. It's imported from Italy, and sold at Anthropology for a ridiculously high price, like $11 a tube or something. I checked around online and I think you can get it for $8. What price luxury. But it's so damn yummy I want to eat it. So euro delicious, like those little floral candies in tins, but way better. I'm going to link the official website, even though it's totally whacky. Basically no content except their new ad campaign, and they like to call it "thootpaste" (hello Italian proofreader.)

Anyway, I decided to try to replicate the flavor as a scent in a bar of soap. I made a teeny batch of a few bars as a test -- just to be all matchy matchy. I used the soap for the first time this morning, and it's heaven. I combined my Jasmine fragrance oil with corn mint essential oil, which is a nice delicate mint. Not as powerful as peppermint and not as sweet as spearmint. It came out perfectly, and it's a pretty little lavender color too, just like the tube.

I didn't get very far on the summer scents yesterday, as you can probably imagine. But I'm very much leaning towards doing this Jasmine Mint thing. I'm going to do another little test batch with Wintergreen or Birch essential oil. Both of them are pretty close to the corn mint and I happen to have a stash of it here, without having to buy another go of some new kind of essential oil -- ever the frugal gal. Heck, you can still have little luxuries, even if you're broke like me.

And I forgot to mention, if anyone out there has a real hankering for something I haven't done before, or maybe I have but not for awhile, shoot me an email or give me a jingle. I'm up for suggestions. Now is the time to holler.

ETA: sorry for the edit, i needed a second stab at it, more coffee, hope it doesn't screw up the bloglines, feeds or other techonocality that I am unaware of . .