rose floral wax

i'd been trying to find some rose floral wax for a while in the UK, but it is almost impossible to get hold of. You see, at the moment I fragrance my rose garden soap with a beautiful fragrance oil, because rose essential oil is very, very expensive, and unsuitable for use in soap making for this reason. Rose wax is a by-product (*see below) of the making of rose Absolute (Rosa damascena - which is the dogs doohdahs of essential oils!)

Rosa x damascena

I'd love to add a true, natural rose scent to my rose garden soap, but it is really hard to get a good rosey scent without using genuine rose oil, so using a little rose wax in addition to some carefully selected floral essential oils is the perfect way to do this. You only need a little, so it is a much more cost effective way to get the real deal in your soap without using rose oil.

my rose floral wax

Rose floral wax is not quite as hard as beeswax, and can be coaxed into breaking up with a little encouragement from a kitchen knife. This must be done very carefully you don't want to slip when cutting (read: stabbing) the wax, you don't want to injure yourself.  It has a strange colour, sort of khaki green, and smells amazing, a really good strong rose fragrance which I could smell through the packaging whe the postie delivered it last week!

I ordered more than I needed, and for a small fee (!) I have shared it among my soaping friends. I look forward to seeing what they all make with it. I love being a mad scientist! :)


*what is rose wax exactly? well, I've found this snippet from a manufacturer, explaining how it is made:
   "the first stage in producing the rare and lovely (rose, jasmine etc) absolutes is a Concrete...a solid (or semisolid) mass containing all the plant waxes and all the aromatic chemicals. The Absolutes are later removed from the Concrete by washing with alcohol, leaving behind the solid and fragrant aromatic waxes"