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Category Archives: Monster Product Line

Coming back

Posted on December 21, 2019 by Georgia's Pampering

I made a decision on Black Friday. No matter what is going on with my help, and how much help I have to ask for in order to accomplish it, I’m going to end the hiatus and get back to making products to pamper and hopefully help others.

I have to admit, it’s overwhelming. The government has a lot of rules and I’ll have to redo every recipe that I have, if I want to continue any of my previous creations, since the guidelines have changed. Also, L and I had to have a real heart to heart discussion about the financial aspect. It’s no secret that I’ve always been in the red. I create products in an area that prefers to spend the same amount for a bulk package down at Walmart or the like. And my health isn’t well enough to try enticing customers at the Farmer’s Market when it’s in season. Not to mention that my time off meant that most of my ingredients expired, so I would need to replace anything I really wanted to focus on at the beginning. My therapist has been encouraging this for a while and after a lot of deliberation, we decided to invest in starting my crafting back up.

Thank goodness for online sales on Black Friday! I would have spent three times as much just to get my base ingredients replaced. It was still expensive, but it also helped me evaluate what I truly want to do with this little business of mine. I want to create. I want to be whimsical, gory, unpredictable, and sometimes a bit cheesy, nerdy, or girly. I want to make some products for kids to enjoy, so I got bubblegum and fruity scents for them. I got some *ahem* downright sexy scents (in my opinion at least) to help make more of a male and unisex friendly line. And I got some dessert and sweet fruit scents because I really want to play with making dessert-type soaps that you can just lose yourself in when you’ve had a tough day. A candlelit bath or shower, delicious scents swirling around you, and maybe your day will get just a bit better. I’ll continue to make my tongue-in-cheek monster line creations too, though, because they’re just plain fun.

I also got some micas and glitters that I can’t wait to experiment with! Unfortunately, during my hiatus suspension soap base was discontinued even with other wholesalers, so I get to learn how to suspend particles the harder way. Since it requires a lot of science and getting temperatures right, L got me a laser temperature gauge to hopefully help ease the learning curve a bit (candy thermometers just don’t cut it for me for some reason).

I decided to start small and be entirely selfish with creating just what I like to create with scents I prefer, instead of trying to get my previous decent selling products back up, since I never came out even anyway. This is going to be my creative platform instead of trying to be my money making supplement, so I realized I can do whatever I want. That was strangely a concept I never really had soak in before and it is so exciting now to get back to trying new things, and even revisiting a few others that I really liked or were really beneficial products in theory, like the goat’s milk lotion and products made with honey.

I have always struggled with asking for help, even as my illness progressed, but thankfully my therapist has finally gotten through my thick skull that it’s not a weakness or a limitation to be angry about. It just something different to accommodate new needs. I basically just needed to get over myself and my fierce desire to prove to myself that I could still do things I did before my illness became so prominent. Isn’t that a funny thought? Sometimes you have to get out of your own way in order to get where you need to go. 🙂 However, I’ve all ready set up some help and will ask for help from others if needed. I truly want to make my eclectic creations again.

I’ll have to wait until I get over whatever bug I’ll inevitably catch due to the holidays, but then I’ll slowly start to go through my supplies, dispose of outdated items and organize what’s left or newly purchased, and then redo recipes I want to play with again. And I need to change up my website. I’ve all ready changed my payment system back to PayPal, although I’ll be doing some test runs with that to make sure all goes well, and make some decisions on going more retail or keeping the site more informative, so I have the ability to work directly with the customer to make sure they get what they really want or need. I’m really not sure about having an impersonal online store where you just select how many you want of some item, click a few buttons, and move on. I kind of think the extra involvement and ability to answer questions or help guide customers is what sets me apart from the big boys.

So, look for some changes coming to the site (how long has that under construction sign been up on my site now? Lol), some possible grumbles about how stupid I think it is for some of the regulations and limitations the government imposes even on crafters instead of actual businesses, and hopefully with another month at least a few WIPs (work in progress, in case you’re not familiar with that one, which will probably be an acronym I’ll toss around a lot in later posts). *grin* And expect some shiny shinies. *laugh* My biggest inspiration while shopping were the metallic-like micas and glitters. Once I get that suspension technique down, I’ll be letting my girly side out to play, which doesn’t often happen.

No bath bombs though. I’ll let Lush dominate that area and worry about staining skin and bathtubs. *laugh* If you’d have some ideas nor product names you’d like to have me see if I can use, please don’t hesitate to comment or email me! I can always use more inspiration!

Anyway, that’s my happy little update. If you celebrate them, I wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas and a happy, and safe, New Year’s! 🙂

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Slowly Sudsing

Posted on July 24, 2018 by Georgia's Pampering

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I sorely underestimated how much effort it would take to get my business supplies re-organized and also sort through to find all of the expired ingredients.  My oh my was that an eye-watering exercise.  I honestly never knew that scents could seem  to ferment.  *laugh*  It is really nice to have an organized cabinet with a complete inventory list of what I have (I finally got smart enough to do that *rolling eyes*), and I’m about to receive an order of supplies of my best FOs to get the ball rolling again.  

 

In the meantime I’ve worked on the basics on some new recipes and am super excited to try a few out.  I’ve also been working on trying to figure out photo props and backgrounds for certain items, like Swamp Slime.  I’m not the kind of girl that has a high “ick” factor when it comes to touching things, so I don’t have gooey and gross things laying around.  I’m debating using some samples of shampoo that L will be testing for me, dyeing them neon green, and pouring some on my soap cutting mat around the finished product (or product up on a shot glass out of the much LOL), so I know I have a sterile base and he won’t care if I scoop it back up and bottle it for him.  I also can’t decide on what scent to use for “spray the bitch away”.  L came up with some fun ideas, but they were stinky, and I just don’t think that’s a real selling point unless it’s being given to the offender.  *cracking up*  I’m think of maybe something refreshing, like a light fruity scent, to cleanse the air of her existence.  *grin*  I was a little concerned at first with that duplicating a concept I had for toilet spray (you know, the spray before you go type), but then I realized having one recipe that could work for two products wasn’t actually a bad thing.  Very practical, for once.  

 

After sanitizing every item I actually got up some energy to make a gift and prepare ingredients to soap while I’m up overnight.  I’m working on a base recipe for a conditioning shampoo, so I can offer a combo of products all in the same scent (took me long enough, right?! *laugh*).  So batch 1 is a gift and so far the product itself is holding up well, but I need to see how it is in action, and I can’t condition my hair unless I want to look like I have Kid Rock’s locks within a few hours.  Meh.  *grin*  As to the soap, I have everything ready to go, except I had to wait for some beer to go flat.  So hard not to call a party foul on myself and super hard not to take a sip, but it’s my last day on my antibiotics, so I have behaved.  Just a note, a shot glass of beer going flat looks a lot like a small urine sample that got left on your kitchen counter.  It is…unsettling.  *grin*  This will be my first time soaping with a liquid ingredient outside of the soap ingredients, like glycerin, so we shall see how batch 1 of Zombie Stout soap comes out.  *nervous smile* ‘Cause, you know, it’ll either go just fine or be a spectacular disaster, since that’s the way I work.  I thought of doing a swirl soap, but I think I’m going to mostly do a naturally beer-gold base and then a separate layer of white fake foam head, although it make just end up being blobbed around into waves with a knife instead of aerating the soap, since the I’m nervous enough about the addition of liquid to the soap.  And, if I feel up to it after that, a few special soaps that are near and dear to me right now that I’ll share with pics when I can get to them.  Setting a backdrop for the pic will be the easy part of the Zombie Stout, if it works, since making product requires shot glasses and the like.  Nothing gruesome for this one, but lots of fun, gruesome ones to come, I assure you.  Mawahahaha.  😉 

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Back in the Suds

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Georgia's Pampering

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I’m going to be back in the suds, baby!  *grin*  I couldn’t resist.  I’ve been thinking a lot in the past couple of months how “I should go make a batch of soaps and then do the dusting afterward” and such, but a lot of my fragrances had gone out of date, so I couldn’t.  I kept saying to L that “maybe once we get Kiddo and if she wants to make stuff, I can get some supplies and resurrect the business”.  It shouldn’t take the adoption when there’s all ready some motivation and I have pages of ideas I’ve been writing down all of this time.  I’m going about it very differently this time.  I replaced the most popular scents, added a couple new ones and an educational set on helping to make your own blends to get more miles out of your milliliters, and some packaging materials.  If I actually get business, I’ll keep replacing and slowly expand back out.  I think I just gave way too many options the first time that it got overwhelming.  Regardless, it’s all going to be heading down a new path, just like me.  *smile*

 

I’m definitely in more of a theme frame of mind.  I really want to expand the Monster Line and am so excited about some of the new products to work on!  I don’t want to share too much in case something doesn’t work and I hope to generate a little interest/excitement.  I will let you in on what a few of my mental hamsters have been spinning around on…”Transylvania Tickle”, “–unknown– Morsels” (still fiddling with it), “Gargoyle Dust”, “Rotten Bakery”, “Dreadful Delights Pie”, “Bullfrog Slime” or “Zombie Boogers”, “Spray the Bitch Away” (excuse the curse word, but I think that’ll be the selling point *laugh*), “Zombie Stout” (that might be a bit beyond my ability, but I’m going to give it a lot of effort, especially since it actually smells like popping the top off a cold one on a hot day with bright, summery notes), and maybe a few other Zombie themed items.  It’d be pretty fun to get wild and see if I can get some yellow swirls into some black soap without them blending.  The line will be a mixture of adult and kid friendly items, so I’m thinking of making little starter combo packs with some “Monsters Away” spray and whichever green liquid hand wash I end up with (that’s the slime vs boogers debate *laugh*).  I want to do a few areas, like more feminine based humor such as the spray and a few crimson type items, plus I’ll probably add the Love Bites over in that section.  A fun Christmas gift would be a combo of the monster “sweets” soaps, zombie items, and vampire items.

 

I’m still debating some names for standard family friendly items and what I’ll use some of my top scents, like Fruity Patootie and Bubblegum, in other types of molds.  Although I’m not as excited about it, I’d really like to work on some male-friendly items that they would even consider buying for themselves, although I think I won’t hold my breath for that.  *grin*

 

I also need to come up with what would work well as slices from a loaf mold, with layers or embeds in it.  I’m not sure if I’m going Monster or standard.  I definitely think sticking to mostly Monster items or somehow making all of the products into the Monster theme would make me stand out.  I might have to make a fantasy line to it too, if I do that though, because I really want to use “Naughty Elf Oil” for a body/shaving oil with fun holiday notes.  *laugh*  I don’t know why, but I’m obsessed with that one.  Maybe because a favorite book series right now is about a Winter Elf.

 

Any which way, I appreciate any ideas and feedback, if you have any.  I also need to get my thesaurus out (hello Alexa) and come up with less discouraging names for things like biohazard, deadly, and such.  I’m also toying with the idea of sending some of the Monster products to the Irish YouTube show “Sharuf”, in honor of Rufus being a monster puppet, and the host usually is amazing about sharing the information about the person who sent items for them.  Ironically the viewers are mostly American, so it could get me some good national exposure.

 

So, cross your fingers please that I can get in there once the products arrive and get back to creating.  It’s part of my “bringing Wednesday back” challenge to myself (see the Wednesday post on July 15th, if you missed that).   I’m tired of the infection, and the antibiotic that is kicking as hard as the infection, and hope I’m getting close to being active, since I have been trying to do a little bit each day even if it’s just to change (Spoonies will totally understand how that is an accomplishment sometimes).  Although my life will be all about the beautiful blessing we adopt, once that ever happens, I really need to get back in touch with the rest of me first, and a clock might actually be ticking to get this done soon.  *big grin with crossed fingers*  Hopefully Zombie Boogers wouldn’t keep Kiddo from learning how to make product…that’s a chemistry tie in project, but I do worry that my morbid humor is going to keep people away (although few ever bought the regular stuff anyway, so I’m kind of focusing more on fun this time).

And now a little nerd humor to close this one… 🙂

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Day Two – The Monster Product Line

Posted on January 12, 2018 by Georgia's Pampering

As you may remember from last year I made some Monster Duck soaps as well as some Zombie Bait brain soaps.  A bit gory to some, mostly just funny and interesting to most people, and really interesting to work on creating.  While I was quiet on here I thought a lot about those products and about how proud of them I am (yep, I’m mixing tenses, because I’m still incredibly proud of those little beauties and the fun photo shoots!).  I came up with several ideas of products to add in the same realm, so I decided to make an actual line for these kinds of products and allow my creativity to have full reign.  

 

A few ideas I had to throw out because they’re were too gross even for my macabre and sarcastic sense of humor, and then a few just weren’t logical enough for me to tolerate.  Which seems ironic to most people I tell that to, since it’s all about implausible things anyway.  I have no idea why, but some things have to be logical to me.  For example, I thought about making “Grandma’s Roadkill Pie” soap slices.  At first I thought of just embedding a bunch of different colored soap cubes and chunks of brain soaps, etc., but then I thought about how that would be more like a pot pie for the roadkill embeds to fit in, and all I could picture was how that first crack with your fork of the pot pie always makes the contents pour out almost like a stew inside of a crust.  That just did not work for me with having a pie slice mold and I became obsessed with how it wouldn’t be logical for the roadkill to stay in pie form.  *cracking up* As a result I went a little further down the rabbit hole and want to try formulating a “Dreadful Delights Cake” instead.  It can have things like goblin syrup, eye of bat, rotten pumpkin, and swamp scum in my small bundt cake molds.  Just like with a regular cake you have liquids and then your flour gives it a binding, cake-like texture.  I don’t have any good excuses for why that is so much more logical and reasonable to me, but my brain works in mysterious ways and that’s where it settled.  *grin*  

 

I also came up with some other concepts to play with and hopefully make some successful formulas for.  I’d like to do a Vampire-themed soap that’s black and red.  I haven’t decided if I want to swirl the colors in guest rounds or if I want to try a new technique I watched a tutorial about where you make a loaf of soap with straws making open holes through the soap that can then be filled by another color of soap and it makes a complete stripe of that color.  I could either make it look like bloody veins where a vampire’s fangs had fed, maybe even with those cheesy fake vampire teeth stuck into the soap.  Who knows where this concept will take me.  *laugh* I also want to actually make a product I thought of ages ago called Vampire Tears, which will be a red bubble wash.  I’m debating Vampire Ashes as a name for some bath salts, too, but my mind battles over which genre of vampire lore I’d go with – some depict the ashes as grey ash whereas some (albeit mostly B movies) show it as a reddish substance, which would definitely be more attractive than soaking in grey bath water.  *grin*  I have the same problem with the name/idea of “Gargoyle Dust” salts due to the whole dirty water look.  It might work for a new formulation of the mechanic soap that’s less abrasive.  Rotten Sweets will probably be mini bundt cakes in chocolate for the cake and either cherry or strawberry FO drizzled over as blood or some other gore.  I think I’ll let the drizzle be an unshaped pour, too, instead of having shaped pooling at the base like I did for the brains and ducks.  Partially because shaping hot soap really hurts and I try to limit how often I purposely do stupid things to myself.  *laugh*

A few other product names I am playing with and need to develop some product concepts for are “Deathly Morsels”, “Devilish Delights”, “Swamp Ooze” (or Scum) for a bubble wash probably, “Zombie Stout” (a colored bubble wash using the Ale FO and it even calls for using stale beer in it that theoretically has the liquor part burn off during the heating phase – that’ll be an interesting experiment I suspect!), and some version of a Zombie Repellent, although I need a different name for that, since I found an actual soap made by a crafter named that, so I need to play with the name because I’m not giving up on that one because I love the concept.  I’m also wondering if a “virus” or “zombie” combo would be of interest to customers.  I personally would be incredibly amused to get a basket with that type of theme, but, then again, I’m not the normal kind of girl, as we know.  *laugh* I’m also debating if Zombie Boogers bath salts or bubble wash is too gross or just gross enough that it would really appeal to kids, and in honor of the pride of Kansas, I want to make a product named “Melted Witch”.  *grin*  The great thing with the monster line is that I can have all of these wild things and use any scent that I fancy, instead of actually trying to make a logical connection, like if it’s red people expect a red fruit or a rose scent, etc.  Monsters are a free zone of creativity.  Mawahahaha

 

I’d love to hear any of your ideas or even creative criticisms if you have some. Do you have a name that you think would make a fun addition?  Have any ideas of tweaks on the names I’m toying with?  Or even what kind of product to match to some of these names maybe?  I think it would be a lot of fun to try to make some products inspired by readers, so please bring them on…*in a fake, deep, creepy voice* if you dare…

😉 

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