The BIG Reveal - Traveling Soaps

I love to travel.  I love home, too - my bed, my cats, my own kitchen.  But with being home so much, I really welcome the opportunity to get away, to see new sites, new parts of the state, or even to have that moment of seeing a familiar site in a new way.  Whether it's a day trip, a weekender or a major vacation, I like exploring.

Our last family trip was a weekender in December to Beaufort, NC.  It's an absolutely lovely little coastal town, and the people in that area are just so friendly, too.  In fact, I was driving through the town leading to Beaufort when one of the police officers pulled me over and issued a personal invitation for me to return to Beaufort next week, actually.  Well, he issued me a speeding ticket, but he was really nice about it.  Since getting that ticket, I learned that one of the pilots on the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger was from Beaufort, and as many times as I've been in that town, I've never paid attention to the memorial to him.  I'm going to go check that out next week after I'm done at the courthouse.  I have a friend with a shop in Beaufort, so I'll stop in and see her, too.

Of course, with all this traveling, I absolutely MUST have good soap with which to bathe, so I always take a small bar of my own soap just in case my only other option is the dreaded "deodorant bar."  Thanks to my mother-in-law, I decided it's time to make these small travel-sized soaps available to my customers, too.  My soaps want to travel!  They want to see the sights!  They want to travel the world!  Will you give them this opportunity?

Lovely little 1-ounce bars of travelin' soapy goodness

These lovely little gems will be ready to own by the very end of February, and they will be ready for you to tuck into your travel bag and take with you as you hit the road this Spring and Summer.  As you travel, I invite you to take pics of your soap and you and email them to me (please, no naked pics) to be featured in an upcoming blog post.  Let's see where these soaps find themselves.

Where will your travels take you this year?

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Valentine Heart Soap Petals - DIY Project

This is a great, fun project you can do in not a lot of time, and it's kid-friendly, too!  Woohoo!  Win!  My daughters and I had a lot of fun making these today.  And since it's soap, clean-up of all those inevitable messes is a breeze.  Let's go!

First, create your design on water-soluble paper.  I did 2 dozen hearts in two different colors of pink.  I have an inkjet printer which worked just fine.  Cut them out carefully, leaving a little tag on the side for holding and pinning.  You'll cut this off at the end.

Cut-out paper hearts.

 Next, melt a half cup for clear melt & pour soap base.  I absolutely love this clear soap base from Brambleberry, but you can also find it at big-box craft and hobby stores.  Using a microwave-safe container, heat soap in 30-second increments until the soap is melted.  Once the soap base is melted, add 1/2 mL. of fragrance oil.  For these, I used Fresh Cut Roses from Nature's Garden Candles, but Brambleberry also has a fabulous Passionfruit Rose fragrance.

Clear melt & pour base

Adding fragrance to the melted base

Using tweezers, hold a heart by its tab and dip it in the melted soap base, being sure to cover the entire heart.  Let the excess soap drip off of it and set it aside to dry.  We used straight pins on a piece of cardboard.  Repeat until all the hearts are dunked.  You may find it necessary to remelt the soap.  Microwave again in 20-30 second intervals, stirring in between intervals, until the soap is fluid and easy to work with again.

My 4-year-old dipping a heart in the soap.

Sometimes one escapes.  It happens.

Soap petals setting up.  Note how we left a little space between the petals and the cardboard.

After your soap petal hearts have set up, take them down and carefully cut the tabs off.  Set them in a bowl or dish by your sink.

All done and trimmed.  Aren't they precious?

To use:  Take one soap petal and use it to wash your hands.  Each soap petal is good for one hand washing.  These are also great when you're out and about and don't want to use that stuff in soap dispensers.

Do you want the sheet of hearts in a .pdf?  Leave a comment below, and I'll be happy to upload it.

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Meet Mary

I am so excited to have the opportunity and privilege of introducing you to a very special big girl.  This is Mary, and she is the Vice President of Marketing and Product Development here at Sara's Soaps 'n Such.

Help me pay for college. Buy soap!

 She's also the Chief Operating Officer of Girly Arts Made by ME, a line of products Designed by an elementary school girl for elementary school girls ™.  Mary is the mastermind behind Sun on the Go, and is the creator and designer of Victorian Heart Soaps.  She's so talented and so creative!  I'm fortunate to have her on my team.  Her boundless determination and enthusiasm are infectious; nothing is not-doable in her world.

When she's not designing and creating new products, Mary is either tearing down the soccer field, designing and sewing clothes for her doll, or reading.  She loves mysteries and, as is typical for most young ladies, girly novels.  Currently, the Harry Potter series has completely engaged her.  In the summer, Mary spends a lot of her time at the beach, playing with her sister and boogie boarding with whoever she meets there.

You are going to have the opportunity to get to know Mary better through her writing.  Starting next week, Mary will be contributing to this blog at least a couple of times a month in a feature called "Mary's Thoughts."  She's going to be telling you all about the new products she has in the works, as well as give you glimpses into the things she learns and discovers in her everyday life that will impact how she serves her customers.  Her first article will post on Monday, 20 January, so be sure to keep an eye out for it.

Random Musings

Last week was crazy here, dear readers, which is why I'm so far behind on the weekly blog post.  My weeks lately (in addition to the typical homeschooling) have included running some test batches of soap for Nature's Garden, potty training and putting together a large order for Duplin Winery.  It's almost Autumn.  I was thinking earlier today how it is that so many of my fellow Indies have time to keep it current on Facebook, Twitter and the Indie Beauty Social Network.  In fact, I'm feeling left behind, because I barely have time to read posts, let alone post a whole lot.  Then it dawned on me.  IT'S FALL!  That means... SILLY SEASON!!!  And, absolutely, the silly season is upon me.  My stockists want their Holiday merchandise and I have my own shows for which to prepare.

I have several random thoughts to toss out there for this week's blog post.  I apologize if they don't seem very cohesive.

First there was the bottle of Christmas red acrylic paint that my toddler spilled all over the living room.  My living room looked like a crime scene.  No kidding!  One of my friends said that the chalk outline was the only thing missing.

Really, Officer, it's NOT blood!

The soaps I've been making to test the Nature's Garden fragrances will be offered for a limited time.  If certain soaps go really well, then I'll introduce them to my regular inventory.  There will only be 2-3 bars of each soap available, so quantities will be limited and likely to go fast.  There are some delicious fragrances in the bunch, but I think the most fascinating one I'll be calling "Fizzy"; it smells exactly like Dr. Pepper.  I could even smell the carbonation bite.  I made this one with French green clay.  There are also two new beer soaps - one for men, one for women - on the rack, as well as several others.

Fierce Beer Soap - One of the best men's fragrances EVER

Orange Chiffon Cake Soap Cupcakes - Smell divine!

Two shops here in Burgaw will be carrying my soaps by the end of September.  The Nifty Place will be selling a selection of all-natural soaps, as well as Sub-Lime Sandalwood beer soap (just for something for the fellas).  Courthouse Coffee will be selling the following soaps:  Green Tea, Coffee Mocha, Goat's Milk & Coffee and Fresh-Brewed Coffee.  I'm honored and privileged to be working with these two awesome small businesses!

Fresh-Brewed Coffee Soap - What a wake-up call!

I don't like loud dogs early in the morning.  I mean, does anyone, really?  Yet we have these neighbors who let their dog out every morning at 7:00, and this dog barks at anything and everything.  Of course, he often wakes my baby, too - sometimes before she has the first interest in waking up.  I know that's random; just tossing it out there.

Last Wednesday, my firstborn was telling me about her handbells practice at church.  She said, "Two kids were playing incessantly, even when Mr. Clif was talking.  They got their handbells taken away."  Yes, I'm darn proud of her for knowing how to use "incessantly" correctly.  Or, that might come from all the times I tell her she's "talking incessantly."

In addition to last week's potty training, soap-wrapping, soapmaking and homeschooling mega-bonanza, I found out from one of my lovely Facebook fans that my site had been hacked.  I'm not talking the rather diminutive hack of two years ago where someone embedded a (bad) link for cheap ED drugs out of Mexico. Nooooo...  This was a full-out hack job that took over my entire site - in both English and Arabic and with music (in English).  It was ugly.  And just in case I didn't fully catch that my site had been hacked, under the red and black image of the grim reaper was the word "hacked," just to make sure I was fully aware.  So, here I am on Friday evening, texting my web guy who was in England working with an asphalt crew on the side of the road late that night (that's a five hour time difference), posting to the Zen Cart forums and initiating a chat with my host's tech support folks.  Donal texts back that he'd be done in two hours (gotta love that kind of dedication!), but in the meantime, the tech support guy at Hostmonster and I explore the hack.  One of the dates of the script changes was 9/11/11.  The significance of that wasn't lost on me, and it made me slightly sick.  In the end, though, the tech support guy got me debugged and unhacked in half an hour or so.  I could see where all the bad files were; I know my cpanel that well (that came up as my website on one of the hacked changes).

My web guy is going for the full deep-end dive, starting his own business thing.  His name's Donal, and he's fantastic. We've worked together for almost 2 1/2 years.  You've really got to appreciate a web guru who'll respond to a panicked text and be willing to work for however long it takes on top of working until the wee hours of the morning doing road work.  He's the best!  If you're interested in making your site work yourself (being able to add your products, add coupons, make script changes, etc.), then he'll also teach you that stuff, too.  He's completely trustworthy; I also have him man my site when I'm on vacation, hunkered down for hurricanes and so forth.  (Click his name; it'll take you to his FB page and you can message him.)

I'll stop blathering now.  Some of my friends and I are talking food!  Yum!

Feel free to post comments.  They don't have to apply to anything in particular since I was pretty all over the board on this week's post.

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Non-Soapy Adventures

While I adore making soap (obviously), there are times when I simply must break away from soapmaking in order to be better at it.  My favorite non-soap craft endeavor is sewing.  I really like machine sewing pillows and gift bags, though I'll also cross-stitch on occasion as well.  I had three sewing projects in queue going into this week, and I'm proud to say that I've knocked out two of them.

The first project was a pillow for my husband - a late birthday present.  I found this fabric remnant on sale, the price was right, so I got what I needed to make a pillow for him.  I have to tell you, being an N.C. State fan, this pillow was painful to make.  I finally found the time to finish it late last week and am really pleased at how it turned out.

Peter's ECU pillow

My second project was a baby doll sleeping bag for my older daughter's baby dolls.  I'd bought some of the material for project #3 (which I can't disclose at this time) and had some left over.  My daughter jumped on it and was very excited to have something just for her dolls.  It also gave me a great chance to review how to sew in zippers, something I hadn't done in many, many years.  It was a success and one or two of her dolls sleep very snug and warm each night.

One of my daughter's favorite dolls tucked in all cozy

Today I was back over the soap pot.  I made a test batch of soap for a great supplier and prepped the lye mixture for a batch of green tea soap.  I was excited about soapmaking again, telling me that taking a break to sew was exactly what I needed.

What do you like to do to refresh your creative juices so you can work better and with more enthusiasm?  Share it below in the comments.

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Summer's End

It hardly seems believable that Summer vacation is drawing to a close.  We're doing a year-around schedule for homeschool this year, so we've already been back to school for a month.  Yet, my Facebook news feed is buzzing with tears and joy from parents whose children are going back to school this week or starting school this week.  Those moms I met in our kindergarten year are wondering how they suddenly have third graders.  I'm right there with them, remembering the excitement my daughter felt about her first day of school and then wiping tears with the moms of her classmates in the parking lot.

I have friends whose children are going back to school and who are delighted.  It's been a long summer, especially here in Pender County, with forest fires polluting the air to the degree that it's been unpleasant being out for long.  We endured weeks of 100+ degree temps and are chillin' with temps around 90 (cold front!).  Our neighbors have dismantled their pool and put it by the curb for trash pick-up, we battled the traffic around UNCW during freshman move-in weekend and amongst my colleagues - fellow soapmakers - the soap pots are brewing up warmer soap fragrances, those that are more autumnal.  Yes, Summer is well and truly coming to a close.

Image by Sara's Soaps via FlickrA part of me is sad to see it come to a close, yet we'll be enjoying weeks more of summer temperatures.  After all, Summer doesn't officially end for almost another month, and with homeschooling, we have the freedom to hit the beach pretty much whenever we wish.  My own soap pot will soon be producing Christmas spice soap, in conjunction with festive Autumn and Winter lotions and lip balms.

If you want to carry a bit of Summer with you, why not grab a Sun On The Go set to take your mind back to that tropical paradise where you vacationed?  You could also pucker up with a delicious fruity lip balm in some awesome flavors!  To celebrate being back at school, pick up some Literary Lip Balms in such fun flavors as The Grape Gatsby, This Side of Paradise and Lip Balm on the Orient Express  Finally, for the parent who's dealt with Summer restlessness followed by Summer boredom followed by more restlessness, treat yourself to a mini-spa at home.  After all, you now have 6-7 hours a day all to yourself, and my Mediterranean Spa Collection is a great way to pamper your body and your senses.

Do you have children going back to school?  What's different for you in your home now?


Don't forget, Free Shipping Friday is happening in TWO DAYS!

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How Are You Marketing Your Brand?

Image via Wikipedia

I read a great book this past Spring called The Various Flavors of Coffee, a delightful book by Anthony Capella, about - what else? - that black liquid ambrosia that gets so many of us going in the mornings.  Coffee!  It's a fascinating, fun read with delightful characters and, as a person who lives by the nose, amazing descriptions of the nuances of scents and flavors in coffees.  There's one section where Pinker, the owner of the coffee warehouse that sells and distributes Castle Coffees, is in a meeting with two advertising men.  I loved this dialogue:

"How are you marketing your brand at present, Mr. Pinker?" he inquires genially.

"With methods you yourselves, I believe, pioneered in America," Pinker answer promptly.  "Every packet of Castle Coffee has a voucher on the wrapper, which can be redeemed for a ha'penny off the next purchase."

"That's all well and dandy, sir.  But I think you misunderstood my question.  I did not ask how you were selling your product - I asked how you were marketing your brand."

Her father looks confused.

"The product," Mr. Cairns explains, "is what you sell.  The brand is what people buy."

Mr. Cairn goes on to explain that the brand is the expectation people have of a seller's goods and the importance of creating an "expectation of superiority."  It all comes back to a psychology of marketing and doing business, wooing consumers with how wonderful the products are, not bribing them with coupons.

What do you think of these assertions?  Would you agree or disagree with Capella's summation of how to market and sell products?

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Steps

I've been looking at feet lately - namely, those of my girls.  (It's crazy where I'll find inspiration for blog posts sometimes!)  What I've observed has some good guiding principles for business.

Observation #1:  My baby likes to walk around in her big sister's shoes and in my shoes - mainly her sis's.  How can one apply this to business?  Have shoes in which those coming behind you want to walk.  In a literal sense, if you're a shoe fashionista, you're not going to want to put your feet into a pair of grungy, beat-up shoes from three seasons ago.  Likewise with business.  People don't want to walk in the footsteps of business owners who are behind the times, irrelevant to the current market and treat their customers poorly.  They want to emulate businesses who change and grow with the times, who treat their customers like royalty and who are somewhat adventurous in how they approach business.

Observation #2:  When my baby and I go down the stairs, she'll sometimes let her foot hover over the next step for a few seconds before stepping down.  She'll let it hover, pull it back to the step, giggle, let it hover again and then finally step.  It reminds me of when I had to take my deep-water swim test in college to pass P.E.  I didn't learn to swim until college, and as I stood on the edge of the pool down at the deep end, all I kept thinking was, "It's over a one-story drop from here to the bottom of the pool."  Never mind that I'm buoyant and would never have gone all the way to the bottom; all laws of physics were moot at that point.  Besides, the water never studied law or physics.  Well, my baby makes it down the stairs and I passed P.E. (and, therefore, college), but it takes a giant leap of faith.  She has to trust that I'm going to hold her hand, not let her fall down the steps.  I had to trust that the water would, in fact, hold me up.

Business often relies on these leaps of faith, too.  While there's a lot to be said for planning and drafting ideas, creating a budget around those ideas and so forth, eventually you've got to stop planning and just do.  It's scary.  What if the plan fails?  What if an unexpected expense pushes you over budget?  What if the plan succeeds?  What if you come in under budget with a perfect execution?  Sometimes, success can be just as scary as failure (but in a good way).

Observation #3:  Sometimes, my baby tries to go down the steps too fast and ends up falling.  She takes a step and almost without pausing, she takes another step with the other foot, feeling so successful that she wants to take a bunch more - more steps and faster than she's ready for.  As it is with business, it can be easy to ride on a success and suddenly want to do more, faster than for which we're prepared, with miserable results.  Then we need to fight the temptation and stop, proceeding through our next steps slowly and cautiously, being careful to make sure we are firmly stable on one step before going on to the next one.

What are some important steps you'd recommend for someone just starting out in business, taking those initial baby steps?

I've got the Blues... Blueberries, that is

Saturday's the day - my biggest show of the year.  This Saturday is the North Carolina Blueberry Festival.  Peter and I are busy putting the finishing touches on production, and tomorrow will be the mega-wrapping day.  Much of our wares are already wrapped and labeled, but there's a little bit left to go.  What's new and great this year?  We'll be selling a limited edition Blueberry Festival soap featuring the Blueberry Fest logo and a yummy blueberry fragrance.

Image by Sara's Soaps via FlickrWe'll have a variety of the much-loved flip-flop soaps, including a newish one that looks like last year's Blueberry Flip Flop soap but with a great scent I'm calling Beach Bound.  There will be many Blueberry and Blueberries & Cream homemade soaps there.  These are wonderful soaps and are a delight for skin.

We'll also have some new lip balm flavors from which to choose.  And, last but not least, we'll have a number of my daughter's Sun On The Go sets.

The biggest deals will be FREE Blueberry Lip Balm with a $10.00 purchase, and the Bargain Box, a full box of great soaps that are less-than-gorgeous and on sale for $2.00 each.  Get 'em while you can; after this show, leftover soaps will be donated to Clean The World.  We'll be there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., booth #72, near the intersection of Wilmington Street and S. Walker Road.

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What's your beeswax?

For those customers who don't mind if their body care products are vegan-friendly or not, I like what beeswax does for certain formulations, such as lip balms and lotion bars.  It gives it a silky glide that's incomparable.  There are many places online to purchase beeswax, but since the North Carolina state insect is the honey bee, then I personally prefer buying my beeswax from local beekeepers.  My favorite source for this is my friend Rick Coor, a beekeeper out of Goldsboro and a member of the Eastern North Carolina Beekeepers' Association.

When I get my beeswax from Rick, it's golden yellow and in a hefty 2-pound block of refined goodness, bearing that lovely warm scent that only beeswax can have.  However, it's not completely refined, so I have to give it a little extra refinement.  I thought I'd share that with you.  This is what it takes before I can even begin to put this luscious wax in my lip balms, lotion bars and bug repellents.

One pound block of beeswax as Rick gave it to me.

I wrap the block in a double layer of cheesecloth

Into the boiling water it goes.

The beeswax will melt in the hot water, but all the debris on the wax will stay in the cheesecloth.

Beeswax beginning to mix with the water

Checking to see how much of the wax has melted.  There's still a good chunk left.

All the wax is melted now, and all the residual debris (flecks of dirt, bits of wings, etc.) clings to the wax on the cheesecloth.  It'll go into the trash.

Melted wax and water.

Now this will sit for several hours while the whole mixture cools down.  The wax will harden and float to the top.

Wax hardening and cracking - a good sign.

Back to that beautiful golden yellow of the block initially.

After the beeswax and water mixture cools completely, the beeswax is now completely hard but will need to dry out for several hours before I can use it in anhydrous formulations.

The solid block of pure beeswax, nice, clean and ready to use.

When the beeswax gets dried out, it gets brittle, making it very easy to chip apart.  From here I'll chip it into smaller bits for body products.

If you're a soapmaker or chandler, what's your favorite ingredient to use?

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They're coming!

Tomorrow's the day!  Oooh, we're sooo excited!  I simply must make room in the living room - dump peanuts, crush boxes (thank goodness tomorrow's trash day), pick up some clutter.  The cute guy in the brown uniform is coming!  He'll be grateful that this week's box will be light - mostly lip balm tubes, caps and replacement items from an order mix-up (not like last week's huge pail of palm oil and some bases).  The fairly cute guy in the blue uniform is showing up, too.  The poor FedEx guy, though, has to haul up three boxes, one of which containing soap base.

Yes, tomorrow is box day.  I've got shipments coming from two separate suppliers and there will be enough goodies in those boxes to do all sorts of wondrous creating.  Lip balm tubes to finish a large order for my private label customer.  Strawberry lip balm flavoring so I can make delicious strawberry lip balms for a festival I'm doing in a couple of weeks.  Strawberry seeds to go in a strawberry soap I'll be making.  And white soap base to finish a wedding order and to make more flip flops.  You bet I'm thrilled!  I have a light weekend and will have lots of time to create!

I'll keep you posted on all the new goodies that will be hitting the rack.  It'll be good having some of my old favorites fresh and back in stock.

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Spring Preview

About two weeks ago, as I was preparing for that big show at Camp Lejeune, my daughter walks up to me where I was wrapping soaps and says, "Mommy, I want to add a lip balm to my line, and I want to name it this, flavor it that and package it like this."  Once I picked my jaw up off the ground - I was very impressed by her well thought-out presentation - I said, "Sounds like a great product!  Let's see what we can find."

After several discussions, she decided to extend it to a set that would include products that would be scented to complement the lip balm.  Last Friday evening over dinner, we hammered out some of the details about the specific products.  Saturday over lunch, we browsed online for the packaging elements.  I placed the orders Saturday afternoon and most of them arrived today.  My goal is to present these beautiful creations at Bee Fest in Kinston this Saturday.

Since the timing was so tight, we decided to go ahead and make up our bases on Sunday.  That'd save us some steps and a lot of time once the fragrances and containers showed up.

These are the bases we created. The top one is lip balm base, a luxuriously silky, nourishing treat made with beeswax from North Carolina bees and premium oils. The second base is homemade castille soap base. This soap is fabulous! It has a nice fluffy lather and leaves skin so silky smooth.  Finally, the white base is our homemade aloe vera lotion base.  This lotion is the best treat for your skin after being out in the sun all day.

Sooo...  What are we doing with these bases?  Well, that, my dears, is a big ol' wait and see.  We should be ready for the big reveal by week's end.  Yeah, we're really stoked about these incredible products and just know you'll love them, too!

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