Georgia's Pampering

I admit that I’m morbid enough that I have the funeral march as a ringtone. I’m not in that honest of a mood to confess who earned that tone, but I have it and played it today in honor of the poor Worms in Dirt Soap. I think I’ve exhausted my troubleshooting abilities and have to call the code on it. *sad smile*

The last batch of Worm soaps have been sitting at room temperature, exposed, to make sure that they would be fine once at the consumer’s. I dreaded checking them today while working on stuff. I honestly did, with good reason. Every day something else has gone wonky or wrong and today was no different. Now the color on the worms is bleeding into the soap. Lol. I am out of solutions. I have been bested. *hits the ring tone again while hanging my head* I admit that I’ve learned a lot between them and the ducks, so it was worth it. It was a damn fine idea if I say so myself. *smile*

Ah, yes, I mentioned the ducks too…I have tried every bag that I own for packaging the ducks. Nope. I’ve had them wrapped in wax paper and big zip bags while trying to figure it out, and thankfully nothing has gone wrong with them…yet. *smart aleck wink* I decided that I have to give up the idea of bagging the ducks and tying them off with some curling ribbon though. I hate to raise the prices of anything, as you well know, but I’m going to have to add the fifty cents each box cost me and stick to boxing them. (Of course I won’t charge that to orders I all ready have, although I have no idea where to write that down for the accountant, so I guess I’ll write a note and staple it to my 2013 tax worksheet for her to figure out. Mawahahaha!) I feel a bit silly because I have taped these boxes to high heaven to try to keep the soaps as fresh as I can and it kind of feels like I’m diapering the poor things. *cracking up* Seriously! Just look at the picture! The boxes have to be folded and assembled. It seems like an origami diaper. *shaking head in amusement*

Anyway, thank you for sharing in a moment of mourning the poor worms. *grin* I never expected to ever write that…hmm. I best get out of my reclining camp chair, soaking up a bit of rare incredible weather, and craft some ducks. I hope you have some beautiful weather to enjoy this weekend and have a fun, yet safe, St. Patrick’s Day.

“But the greatest love – the love above all loves, even greater than that of a mother – is the tender, passionate, undying love of one beer drunken slob for another.” – unknown

“A toast to your coffin.
May it be made of 100 year-old oak,
And may we plant the tree together, tomorrow.” – unknown

🙂

I checked on my soaps today (they’ve been relaxing in some wax paper) to make sure everything is still going fine after a few days. Unfortunately I found one of the weirdest things that I’ve seen since first experimenting with bath stuff years back. I knew that there was a risk of an air bubble around the shads in the Dirt soap when I decided to keep them upright and the tippy top breached the surface. Yesterday there was the tiny hole, but today it’s as if the soaps completely changed. I suspect that the shads dried out and shrunk a little, because there is an air bubble completely surrounding each shad. That is kind of understandable and although the presentation won’t be as nice, it’s an easy fix with just laying them down when I embed them and using these for shreds or whatnot. The weird part is that each of them sweated.

We’re still experiencing winter temperatures and I work in a room away from the woodstove, so the temperature doesn’t get overly warm during the winter, and it hasn’t been a long time, so I’m a bit puzzled right now. A soap “sweat” is not pretty to look at, but is still completely useable. Glycerin is a humectant, which draws moisture from the air, so the surface gets a bumpy white or a beaded surface texture. I realize that the sweat around the shad is because of the soak and apparently not enough time to dry out, although they sure seemed like they were. I’m just absolutely puzzled over it having stripes of sweat. *shaking head* Thankfully it’s only the one variety of soap, but I need to do some research obviously. I guess it’s good that I have been waiting a few days to check on it before posting to my site. I’m going to experiment with a difference base and see if that’s what went wrong. Cross your fingers please!

I’m kind of stumped and would love to hear some ideas, pretty please. I’ll share my chocolate with you. Well, virtually, but the thought is there! *grin* I totally love the Worms in Dirt name, but realize that the shads/tadpoles can’t really masquerade under that name. I’ll forever be confusing customers and myself by asking if they really want a worm or the other. Sooo…Any ideas on a good name for them? I’m torn on keeping Dirt in the name, but my creativity is broken now apparently and I’m at a loss. Lol. Larry tried to be helpful, but Shads in Mud doesn’t sound too whimsical or…well…pleasant. *grin* Off on a tangent I’ll mention that I was trying to decide what pics to use to go on my site and Pinterest, which I still haven’t decided on, and the “tadpole” (can’t help myself) reminded me of a shark swimming around in the side view. Anyway, I appreciate any and all ideas!! At $2 each I think they could be a good little novelty item and want to start marketing. 😉

So you don’t have to scroll to the previous post, here are the little creepers. *grin*

Worms, ducks, and shads, oh my! Yeah, I got a correction that my “tadpole” creatures are actually shads. *shrugging with a grin* I honestly don’t know if I care to use the correct term, because a tadpole sounds cuter, but I guess it’s payback for being a “spelling nazi”. Lol. Thankfully today’s projects went a lot better than the last few days, so I have some pictures to share. So sit back with some Philadelphia Indulgence chocolate (here’s a spoon – we’re going to eat straight from the container because we deserve it) and enjoy!

I ended up scrapping the one completed duck soap from yesterday because I got in a good groove today and it just didn’t look quite as good to me as the new ones. I have to admit that I can’t decide if I like the original barely-blue or the soft blue tint of the splashes. Either way I love how some were perfectly pliable and I shaped the bejeebies out of them. *grin* I can’t decide which picture I like the best, so there will be a few slightly different ones at the beginning of the pictures below. *cracking up* Can’t tell I found a new toy that edits my pictures, can you? *teasing wink*

I didn’t want to make the soap gods think I was getting cocky at making the ducks, so I played with the worm and tadpole (mawahaha) soaps half way through. I really don’t like how the first two attempts turned out, so I scrapped them, literally, and opted for clear soap. (I had to include a picture of a creepy crawly moment I had with breaking the soaps to use another time – the worm left a really cool imprint and looked a bit realistic coming out of the “earth”.) Since I didn’t like them I put them together and there’s only one picture of the first two attempts. I decided that they’d look better without so much soap encasing them, too, so I switched from the bar mold to my guest rounds mold. They looked kind of cool and it was a total mad scientist moment, so I snapped one of them before I poured the soap. Lol. Now, this is where I pause. I’m usually the girl that looks at the weird and gory stuff, I admit it. I used to read the doctor’s journals when I worked in a neuro office and loved looking at the example pictures. I also love wicked Halloween decorations. However, I literally jumped back when I poured the soap into the guest molds and those doggone worms started moving around. *cracking up* Freaking creeped me out! Anywho…Lol. I put on my big girl pants and attacked them with my stirrers to get them back into the shapes I had originally put them in. Nope. Nada. Ain’t gonna do it. They were evil enough to make me use “ain’t”, that’s how stubborn they are! I couldn’t keep them from moving back to the edges and I didn’t want to totally ruin the soaps with holes from my stirrers holding them in place. I don’t know that I’ll ever forget those things moving like I had animated them, though. *Note – I noticed that my app is moving the picture order around. Sorry! I can’t seem to make them stay in order. Look at this as a game of memory – match the description to the picture. *grin*

All in all I’m pretty proud that I didn’t give up and I have soaps scattered across a whole cabinet top. The animals aren’t as impressed and really didn’t care for the lengthy conversation I had with the soaps instead of praising them. *grin* I suppose I should take a last spoonful of Indulgence and wake the dog up to play a round of fetch. Or vacuum. Or laundry. Hey, I swear I hear a new book calling to me and I don’t know if I can ignore that as well as the housework. 😉

We ended up at Cabela’s since we were near KC (anywhere in the region and Larry will say “since we’re in the area”) and we spent about half an hour looking through tons of plastic worms and similar stuff. I’m too tired to do my happy dance, but can cheerfully tell you that I found two options there to try. I totally broke my own rule of not opening products until they’re paid for (several years at the Walmart Service Desk and doing defective/ruined item tickets make me a little tense when shopping lol). I felt both versions and they’re not treated, don’t have any unexpected smells – they’re lures so they have some funk of plastic, and they look so neat to me. I’ll soak them anyway in a plain water bath and then in a weak EO bath just for my peace of mind. I’m not sure what the second one will be named, but they were too cute to pass up. I can’t believe how realistic the worms look. They’re going to look wicked in the soaps. *big grin* I can’t wait!! I’m posting pictures of the packages and will post more interesting ones once I start working on the projects. Booyah!