I had to share a picture of the baskets I found today, too. Usually I use wicker and what not, but I couldn’t resist these with summer coming. I think they’ll be a fun alternative and the small ones would be really cute little catch-alls. I put in a 4 oz bottle to give an idea of their dimensions. The back one is a lot bigger, but looked better photographed on the side instead of sitting like the others.
I took advantage of a burst of energy to experiment on the ducky soaps. I admit…*hanging head* I got impatient. I knew what I should do, but didn’t know how long I’d have the energy to play, so I skipped the waiting period and a few other steps. Oops! *grin* I don’t think they’re going to turn out bad, but they won’t be as pretty as hoped. The great thing is that I can remake these, so no problem, and it gave me some much needed experience in trying to attach things to soap.
I made up a pretty batch of lavender low sweat soap (to make extra sure nothing goes funky on these) and scented them with bubblegum, plus the vanilla stabilizer, as an extra step to make sure they stay the way I make them. I don’t think a duck on a brown pond would be quite visually appealing. *cracking up* I waited a few minutes for the soap to set after pouring into round guest molds, but didn’t want to wait for them to nearly fully set. Plop! I eased the first duck into one of the rounds and it started to flip beak down, like it was alive and looking for a tasty morsel. That was one of the oddest sounds I ever heard while doing soaps. *grin* I finally figured out that a butter knife holds each one up rather well when balanced carefully. I still couldn’t resist taking a picture of the drunken duck though. *laugh* Rest assured that I pulled him back out, gave him a quick bath, and then helped him balance.
I have 3 impatiently done ducks and then one plain soap round to experiment with using the proper techniques. I shredded some leftover soaps to use around the meeting point of the ducks to the soap that will (hopefully lol) adhere with a little clear soap and give an even more festive feel to them. I admit that I never expected to grate soap. Thank you Mom for the years of sticking me with the cheese grating duty. *grin* It came in handy. I’ll post pics of the improved versions of the ducks hopefully tomorrow. In the meantime, enjoy my unlucky duck and i wish you a steady, warm wind!
I shopped in my first flash sale. *grin* I bought way too much, as usual, especially considering how much product just got tossed for being out dated. Lol. I just couldn’t resist a sale price with a rebate and a coupon. *laughing at myself*
Anyway….lol. I’ve been really amused by fish in a bag soaps. (See an example under my ideas board on Pinterest if you want.) Basically a little toy goldfish gets embedded in clear or light blue soap in a cello bag, like the fish in a bag that you win at the fair. I think those would be really cute for Spring/Summer and would be a really cute accompaniment to my Worms in Dirt soap.
I’m also going to try to make thumbprint cookie soaps. Basically the colored Shea soap has an indent in the center and a colored clear soap gets poured into the dip, looking like a jelly. The example I saw is gorgeous, so I think they’d look amazing in baskets. I’m kind of worried that the cookie will have the texture of those horrendous bath biscuits that I tried awhile back. *shudder* That is one product I am nervous about testing. Lol.
I’m also super excited, like bouncing in my seat excited, to have gotten a great deal on some one ounce jars so I can put samples in jars too, instead of the bottles. I’ve phased out bottles for lotions on my site, unless requested, since jars let the user get all of the lotion out easily. I love those tiny tester jars I used for the craft fair and am really glad that I can offer these.
I got two new colors and one is a neon hot pink that responds to black lights. I really love pink, but the pink that I have is pretty soft and turns more of a fuchsia if I use more of it, so I hope this is as pretty as the examples I’ve seen make it look.
Another super neat item I got is an orifice reducer for the 1 oz bottles of massage/body oils. I’ve tried for a long time to figure out how to keep from accidentally pouring too much oil into the hand. I had a tester pour almost half a bottle on accident when she tried to use it after shaving and it really concerns me that others might also be having trouble. This should make the oil come out in at least half of the volume that it does and the lids that I have on hand should fit on top without any problem. Yay!
Of course I also got a few new FOs since they are on sale. *embarrassed smile* The first is Sugar & Spice, which should be like spun sugar, cardamom, and coriander. I’m hoping that it doesn’t have the dry and dusty spiciness from Naughty or Nice and Over the Hill. The second is Ooh La La, which is a fun name, so I may just use that. *grin* I’ve wanted this FO since it first debuted last month. Juicy strawberry with dark chocolate. *sigh* I’ve tried to make a good chocolate covered strawberry and it wasn’t quite like smelling one of my favorite treats, so I’m really excited to get to try out a professional version. The last FO is called Hot Stuff. *cracking up* As you most likely know I love masculine scents, so whenever the wholesaler offers me a free sample FO I usually pick a masculine one. This has peppercorn, cinnamon, cashmere, and amber. That’s an intriguing combination to me and I have a lot of hope for it. My dream Scotsman smells a little spicy, sweet, woodsy, and has a musk undertone. *grin* I mean, he needs to smell as sexy as the kilt looks…*wiggling eyebrows with a smirk*
Lastly I just couldn’t resist getting the remaining ingredients that I need to make some cocoa massage melts. This is one item that I really look forward to testing myself! Cocoa butter, beeswax (I got pellets which are supposed to be a lot easier to melt), and sweet almond oil. If they come out well, then I’ll sell a few of them in small cello bags, I think. Some people use ice cube trays for the small molds, but I think this may be the perfect time to use the small beach and flower silicone molds that I got last year.
I’m pretty happy that I was able to replace a lot of my frequently used items like jars while on sale, since they’re the same price as before the wholesaler’s price increases, and now I won’t have to raise my prices on my favorite items. *happy dance* I really hope that the new things turn out well, so I can add them to my improved site. *grin* The flash sale was pretty fun, so if I can get my helper to come back (she hasn’t been here since she went on summer break and started back to school) I might have to see if a flash sale would work for my stuff. I think it’d be really neat to market one.
If you’re going to get hit by a snow storm tonight like we are, then I wish you a safe and warm night. If not, well…then I’m jealous. 😉 Goodnight!
As many of you know I finally established a presence on Pinterest. Thank you so much to those of you that are all ready following and sharing my pins. It means a lot that I have you supporting me through new endeavors.
Other than pinning my products on there what else would you like to see there? Do you want pics of ingredients that I’m researching or is that too boring for that format? Pics from other websites of shapes I’m thinking about or scent combos?
I’ve worked hard at updating my website the last few days and it looks so much cleaner and organized now. My OCD was going nuts when I would get on the site. Lol. I have the HTML code (mostly – still needs a bit more work) to add a pin it widget to the site, but wondered if anyone would really want/need it added? I have the pin option in my viewer toolbar, but I don’t know if everyone uses one or if users would prefer it on the page. I really appreciate any input on this and on the posting preferences.
I really shook things up with my lotions. I spent days doing inventory for my end of year taxes (yeah, I procrastinated lol) and when I discovered that I only sold a couple of bottles of lotion, mostly all lotions were sold in jars, I decided that something needed to change. I looked into a drop down menu option per product, at a friend’s smart recommendation, but found that it’s just not an option for me sadly. I went ahead and removed all bottled lotion prices, except for the samples, to get rid of so much duplication. I have no problem bottling lotions if ordered that way and stated such on the site. I just need to organize and streamline a bit. I also removed items that haven’t sold well or disappointed me. For the EOY I have to take an inventory of what is on hand and found a lot of spoiled or near spoiled products. I won’t offer an item that may have quality concerns. I noticed that products with EOs added were all spoiled, so now I know to get an antibacterial or something to add to them. *writes note to self for a new research topic* Mostly I had a lot of stuff that just sat around not selling, so they didn’t get remade, and I don’t have full confidence in their quality after the time frame. I added a note to ask if an item isn’t posted anymore that people are interested in. I really hate taking away that extra bit of variety that I offered, it’s almost like hiding a child that I love *grin*, and was more sad that they weren’t enjoyed by people than the hundreds of dollars lost.
Would you like me to thin down the FO pages? Remove the ones that don’t sell? Also, do you like the basket/combo page? I wondered if I should bother with it or just list non-product options that can be selected for building a basket…?
As always I truly appreciate any and all input, plus the time to read this. In looking through the blog for pics to pin I found myself grinning like a simpleton. It’s quite awesome to have a dialogue with those that keep my little business, and me, going. Thank you and thank you for my first pin followers!! You guys rock. Yep, time to pull it out – *breaks out into my nerd dance* 🙂
This post is more of a reflection than a rambling about my excitement or another stumble in my journey. My GoPayment (aka GP) app updated and when I was entering a charge today (well, yesterday if you’ve slept, but whatever) I discovered that a new feature is pictures. It sounds so trivial, but instead of strictly selecting the product codes for an order I can now add a picture for each product which is seriously handy with my system. It took at least an hour to get all of my codes, descriptions, and prices entered originally, so I’m definitely not knocking that work, but there are a few products with close enough names that I’ve made some mistakes and love anything that I can use in a double check system.
Anyway, my iPhone had died a few weeks back and although channeling my inner nerd helped bring me back from despair (thank you iCloud and ioS 4+ for allowing me to save directly to it all of this time), I still managed to not upload all of my business pics to my new phone. When I saw that I could use pics on GP, and face palmed a bit once I noticed I didn’t have the pics, I realized that most things would be on my site or blog and that I could just grab them there. I know, I know…it’d really have been quicker to just go drop my pics from my computer into my cloud, but that took a few hours to dawn on me and wouldn’t have allowed for my insomnia-fueled thoughts. *ahem* Soooo….I hit the sites and starting grabbing pics. The neat thing is that little bits kept jumping out at me and I found myself reading through things as if I hadn’t been the one to write them. (It’s true that an intriguing side effect of a few of my medications and my illness is to spontaneously seriously suck at remembering stuff, regardless of my former IQ, but it is really surprising to have no recollection of something. It’s kind of like the whole Jekyll and Hyde thing without all of the nasty story lines thankfully.) It makes for an interesting look at yourself and your creativity though.
I realized that my business (any business really, but I’m being totally self absorbed here, so we’ll stick with me and mine for now *grin*) is more like a living thing than I could have ever predicted or expected. The more attention I can give it, the more it thrives. The thought that I pour into all aspects shows as each part develops. The more that I “water the garden” with my energy, research, and vulnerabilities, the more it blossoms. When I was self employed as a medical billing consultant I was very proud of my accomplishments, but never had this awe of what could come from my hard work. It was simply something I was good at and I could sometimes help others through it. This business, this tiny business that started with a couple of soaps and a ziploc of bath salts, is completely about helping others in some way while also learning how to be creative again. Consulting was never a beautiful flower just waiting to be nurtured, growing with me as I made my way. It just existed. It certainly didn’t celebrate any of my creativity.
It’s a magical moment when a person can read months of experiences and smile because they can suddenly see how far they’ve come or become excited all over again about an idea. Being creative has helped me learn to not be so critical of myself and to let others see some of the vulnerabilities. It’s actually incredibly hard for me to admit to my failings, which helped me push myself so hard to excel at billing and to overcome some of my limitations. Sharing my experiences behind making the products has made me see that it’s okay to make mistakes and have bad days, while celebrating the amazing moments in the journey.
I never would have guessed that I’d spend hours researching EOs to help with Rosacea or oils that work as anti inflammatories, or the even more previous hours spent making perfectly imperfect creations. I never knew that growing a business could help me grow too. Because of you very wonderful and important people that have encouraged me with my venture I have learned that I can still have a good impact on others even when I’m stuck in a wheelchair or a walker. That means a whole lot more than a perfect looking soap.
I hope that everyone gets to experience a chance to stand back and see how far they’ve come, what they’ve learned, and cheer over their successes. Even more than that I hope that we all learn to love our imperfect selves. While we’re all being thoughtful we can also enjoy a relaxing bath and then lather up with a rich and healing lotion. I have a great connection with someone that can hook you up! 😉
Just a quick note that didn’t really fit with the new FOs post. I found an iPhone app called “Total Recall” and I recommend it for anyone that finds idea mapping handy. I do it a lot for my business ideas, especially since my mind has a habit of going freakzoid when I need to go to sleep and comes up with a ton of ideas that I want to sift through later. The app is pretty easy to use, fun to look at the results, and is the best idea mapping program I’ve ever seen. If you get the app and get stumped, I’m happy to help if I can. I’m using it for scent combo ideas, a map for actual product ideas, different maps for projects and ideas I’m working on for customers or family, and I even have one for my writing (for those that don’t know, I write poetry and short stories too). It’s the most impressive app I’ve found in the past year, which is saying something since I’m the poster child for “there’s an app for that”!
I don’t mention it much on here but I have a chronic, disabling illness that I have to work around in order to work on my creations. Usually I only work on things on the few “good days” or when I have a “good” hour. Yesterday I was itching to work on soaps, especially with the craft sale in just a few weeks and I’m addicted to the feeling that I’ve accomplished something. Lol.
Anyway, I got in and decided to finish making a second batch of the sandwich cookie soaps. I had poured the wafers a few days previously, plus I had left over “frosting” from the last batch that I just had to figure out how to make reusable. I had thought out a few techniques that might work for reusing it and happily the first one worked perfectly. I was all gloved up, wafers lined up like little soldiers beside the scale, had the first wafer on the scale, and the piping gun in my hand when I noticed a tremor starting up. My good time frame was up just from the prep work. I knew I had about 5 minutes for the frosting to stay soft enough to pipe though, so I started to frost the bottom wafers. I try to get exactly .25 oz of frosting on each wafer. Holy smokes! The more I did and tried to stay steady the more pronounced my tremor got. About halfway through I was cracking up because they were starting to look like a drunk person had put the sandwiches together. *grin* Some went a bit over the amount, frosting ended up all over the place, and I shook so hard at the end that one almost flew into the mixer’s bowl! Rofl. Thankfully I got them all done, even if they look a bit more whimsical than realistic this round, but had a dash bit more frosting in the tube. As little as there was I wasn’t going to store it and try to freshen up to reuse yet again, so I grabbed a mold really quick and piped the frosting into two gingerbread men. I figure they’ll do a soft set and I’ll just enjoy the odd little soaps. They’re still incredibly mushy today (maybe because they don’t have as much surface exposed to the air??), but what cracked me up is how rough they look. Hopefully you get a chuckle out of the following picture too. 🙂
I got some awesome news today that I’m so happy about. Do you remember the Sunset Stroll back in September that I donated a basket for their raffle and last year made ribbon soaps for the swag bags? Due to the success of last month’s event they will be writing a check to The Race Against Breast Cancer for $4500! That is so awesome, especially for a small town in rural Kansas! I had to share such wonderful news. 🙂
Hi. My name is Georgia and I’m an addict. I think I need a support group to help me stop buying FOs. Lol. It definitely isn’t an addiction I ever could have predicted. *grin*
I’ve been needing to order a few supplies but waited for a big sale. Last night I noticed that there was a really nice sale on my wholesaler’s site and I ended up spending an hour oohing and ahhing over the sale items. Lol. I tried super hard to keep a little distracted when I read the blurbs about new and sale scents, but I have in on one holiday scent just because I don’t have anything with a similar scent profile. It’s mostly baking spices commonly associated with Christmas and rum. I’m betting that combo ends up smelling like eggnog, but we’ll see. I love that scent profile and think it’d be fantastic as a layer in another scent. I’m so excited. *grin*
I was pretty happy to find a great price on itty bitty jars with attached lids. I think they’ll be perfect for holding samples at events and people won’t have to struggle to get goat’s milk lotion out of a bottle to try. They’re like a quarter ounce container if I remember right and actually pretty adorable. *goofy smile* You know you’ve gotten to an odd point in your life when you find jars adorable…
To too it off I found nearly perfect shrink wrap bags for the tree soaps. *happy dance* I’m really excited since they’re such an odd measurement and the only thing that will look right is shrink wrap. I got 100 of them for $4 I think. Wow! I’ll make some more trees now that I know I’ll be able to package them. I’ve put them off because it seemed really stupid to keep making something I couldn’t sell just because I have a lot of fun making them. *grin*
The wholesaler had mica powders on sale too, so I’m going to give them a whirl. I experimented with a powder oxide pigment when I made the sandwich cookie soaps and really liked that the colors came out richer. I know that the micas will have a shimmer to them, but in theory they will lose the shimmer if used in white soap. I figure that it’d be a fun new addition to my options, especially now that I’ve been dabbling in glitter soaps. At a little over a dollar each color sample I figured it was a great time to try them.
**In the meantime I did some research online to see if there was a part of the bath cookie recipe that didn’t make it to the ebook. I found a site where several crafters had tried it and also had troubles. Apparently there’s a bit of trouble with them dissolving and crumbling. There are a few tips they discovered for improving (with a note to flatten the scoops if you’re making them like cookies – it wasn’t just me that got puzzled by drop biscuit looking ones lol). I will try out several of the “biscuits” tonight instead of the mini test I had done and see if I even want to try to fix the recipe. It’s always disappointing to have something you’ve been looking forward to turn out pretty underwhelming. I’ll swallow my pride some more and let you know how the full test goes. *grin* Happy Friday!
I had an “interesting” work time and it left me a bit disgruntled. Lol. I made a bunch of Goat’s Milk lotions, but while I was preparing containers, mixing FOs, and writing down the recipes I ended up doing something weird to my bubble wash. I still haven’t figured out exactly what went wrong. I figure it got a bit too warm without stirring often, since I was distracted. The really weird thing is that it made a film in the middle that would not melt, like it was cold and setting up. I let it cool and it is in the same state, so I put some Saran on the pan while I think about it. Thankfully I wasn’t going to make very much, so if it’s a lost cause I’m not out too much. I’m still annoyed and frustrated with myself, and I’m irritated that I’m still puzzling over how to fix it. Lol.
In addition I blended up the maple pumpkin lotion that I was considering the other night. It didn’t turn out the way that I wanted, that’s for sure. It came out as a softly spiced pumpkin scent, which is probably what I’ll name it (minus “scent” of course). I really wanted that strongly sweet note and it’s actually surprising that it came out so soft. The new FO limitations have really weakened some scent profiles unfortunately, although thankfully I have plenty of them that were all ready within the new guidelines. I like the spicy note to this compared to the buttercream and creamy pumpkin pie profile of On a (Pumpkin) Roll.
I had to work fast to fix a few issues that came up from trying to do too much multitasking. The lotion got a mite more warm than I usually let it and although the emulsifying wax incorporated better than usual everything else had issues. Lol. When I added the FOs the oil tried to separate and some of the components of the lotion did too. I had the brilliant idea that my handheld immersion blender would work pretty well at blending these layers together. In theory it is a good idea and would work well. However…after lotion exploded across my cabinets and I had to wipe it off of my face (*embarrassed smile*) I realized that it doesn’t work well with small portions. Rofl. I don’t often find myself wiping lotion from my glasses, so it made me pause for a few. I went back to my whisk and aggravated the sore muscles (I’m enjoying table tennis on the move P3 a bit too much lately and keep overdoing it), but I got the layers incorporated a bit. As I continued to work and the portions began to cool I was startled to see two tones to the lotions. Lol. I ended up with a liquid section on the bottom with separate oils and a perfect top. *rolling eyes* Back to the whisk, although I admit that I’ve never whisked product inside of the small 4 oz jars. *cracking up*
Despite my hour of snafus I made a few awesome lotions and I’m really close to being fully prepared for the craft event in a couple of weeks. I made a few jars of A Moment in Time (AMT for short) and Arabian Nights. Both have spicy profiles which are a nice change from the food and delicate scents I often work with. AMT has a complicated profile, as I’ve written about before, but it fits in with the holidays well because of some of the deeper notes. I can’t decide if it’s more like an old school Avon perfume or more holiday. I seem to get a different profile with each sniff. Lol. We will see how it does, but I really do like it. My favorite of all that I worked with tonight was definitely Arabian Nights. *happy sigh* It’s so unlike anything else I have and is so exotic. It’s perfect for those days when you need that extra boost to help you feel like a total femme fatale. *grin* I wouldn’t use it as my daily scent, but it really feels special whenever I test it.
Top it off I tried to package the tree soaps. The press & seal version of Saran has a more frosted look, so that got scrapped. The trees totally eclipsed my soap bags. I tried a cello treat bag and although the trees fit really well in them with tons of room to spare for tying off the patterns detract from the paint job that I really want to show off. My salts cello cones would work well except they’d be tied off at the bottom which would look rather odd. Until I figure it out I have them in a gallon storage bag, so at least some of the pressure I’m putting on myself has eased.
Did I mention that I forgot to write down how many soaps I ended up with when I made the recent batch of mechanic soaps? I sat down to do all of the figures so that I could tag the packages, and post on my site, but I can’t remember if I did a single or double batch. Lol. That much variation makes for massively different prices, so I’ll make another batch. With all of the additives I can’t just go off of how much soap is in them. *rolling eyes at my forgetfulness* Did you know that you can get a headache from facepalming too much? Lol.
Anyway…I hope you have a less complicated time with your projects and enjoyed a few smiles with me over the unexpected troubles I had. *grin* I still haven’t figured out how to package those soaps though. 😉
Georgia's Pampering 