Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
A big thank you to my new favorite employee of the day – Adrienne – who just got back from a one week trip to NYC. She brought back some amazing chocolates from Vosages with flavors like Hungarian Paprika Chocolate and Anise Fennel Dark Chocolate.
They were so dense and rich that none of us could eat more than one at a time. Tomorrow, I’m planning to devour the Sweet Indian Curry Powder Coconut truffle.
Hi,
I didn’t get your name but you rushed up to me after my last talk at the Soap Guild show, disappointed that you had missed all of my talks due to airline travel.
In a moment of empathy, I gave you both of my speeches, complete with handwritten notes and little pieces of paper stuck all akimbo for you to review.
I also gave you a self addressed envelope for you to send the speeches back. I remember distinctly telling you that I really needed the handwritten scribbles back because I would be giving the talk on Growing Your Business a few more times this year.
I leave in two weeks for my next speech. And, I still don’t have my copies back. It’s officially been one month, which is plenty of time to review the talks and return them.
Can you send them back, please? I’d really appreciate it. The people that have to listen to my speeches would benefit from all those little scribbled notes.
Love,
Anne-Marie
Building on the bacon theme from Friday, I was delighted to find seller SunBasilGarden on Etsy. Check out her creative soap art … including this unexpected soapy pairing.
You can see this bacon and eggs soap and her other work here.
Memorial Day is traditionally a day to consider the sacrifice of those who have lost their lives during times of war. It’s also a time for family and friends to come together with BBQs, gatherings and sporting events. I hope that you were able to enjoy the day with friends and family.
Here are some of my favorite Patriotic Etsy items:
Memorial Day Oil Painting $299
Memorial Day Mixed Media Art $110
If you want my money, please make it easy for me to give it to you.
I recently tried to renew my membership to a national organization. I tried to log in on the web site last week but found I couldn’t. At this point, I suspect most people would have quit trying to renew their membership. But, I tracked down the “Contact Us” and wrote a quick note to the Organization to ask how I could give them my money for another year.
When I wrote the administrator, I got this in response:
“If you were having trouble logging in, it’s because your membership expired on May 13th. If you were expecting a reminder email, I’m sorry to say that system on the website isn’t working right now. I think the website will assign you a new password when I process your new membership.”
Okay, so let me get this straight:
1. You didn’t remind me to renew my membership because the web sit wasn’t working
2. I can’t actually renew my membership because now, my log in isn’t valid.
3. If I want to renew my membership, I have to sign up as a new member and fill out all the forms (name/address/payment) all over again?
If you really want my money, you’ll make it easier for me to sign up.
This made me sit down and think about some of Bramble Berry’s policies that weren’t so helpful – I came up with a list of things that we can improve on – starting with our web site. One of the things that I’m ranting about with this company is that I have to enter all my data every time I order. The BB web site doesn’t save customer data either.
We need to change that. Thanks to this negative experience, I’m all over researching new shopping carts that will allow our customers to save their shopping carts to come back to and have a password protected account that remembers them.
It will be a long process but I’m sure it will be worth it in the end.
Project Instructions – Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Missed the intro for this Pinwheels Soap Project?
Click here for Part One.
Click here for Part Two.
Step 7: Fill another coffee cup or heat safe Pyrex with soap.Melt the soap and add color (to preference) and fragrance.
Step 8:Let melted soap cool so that it is no longer steaming and won’t burn your finger (if you were to dip your finger in the glass). The goal is to have the soap cool enough to not melt the white pinwheel swirls.Spray the four pieces of white soap in the round mold with rubbing alcohol and pour the remaining colored soap into the mold, over the pinwheel soap cut outs.The rubbing alcohol ensures that the pieces will adhere nicely to your overpour.
Step 9: Place mold back into the freezer for roughly 25 minutes if you’re impatient and willing to get condensation on your soaps. If you want to ensure that you don’t get glycerin dew on your soaps, resist the urge to hurry the process and wait 3 hours before gently popping your soaps out.
Step 10: Enjoy!
While these aren’t Pinwheel soaps, I think this type of wrapping would be phenomenal for the Pinwheel Soap Project.
Click here for Part One of the Pinwheel Soap Tutorial.
Step 5: With a very small bladed knife make a mark in the center of the circle.Proceed to cut the round soap into eight sections using the mark as a starting point on each cut.You get extra bonus points if you cut the sections curved. It’s harder than it looks to cut them curved!Out of the eight sections, pick the four that align with each other the best.
Step 6: Place the four sections back into the round mold.Pour a THIN layer of clear soap into the bottom of the mold. Let this layer of soap harden (approximately 7-10 min). This is to make sure the curved pieces stay in place when the fill color is added.
Bramble Berry just added a new fragrance – Smoky Patchouli. It smells suspiciously like firewood in the bottle but in cold process soap, smells like a rich, deep and expensive Patchouli. You can find it here.
Over on the TeachSoap Forum, Erin asked for a tutorial on making the exciting Peppermint Candy Soaps that I made at Christmas.
Here is a tutorial on making Peppermint Candy Soaps – but redone for Spring with happy pastel colors.
The set up is simple:
White Melt and Pour
Clear Melt and Pour
Non-Bleeding Colorant
Fragrance or Essential Oil
Milky Way Round Mold
Rubbing Alcohol
Knife (a little paring knife)
Phew, though we got through inventory counting months ago, we’re finally now we get to do the fun stuff – numbers crunching. Sharing the wealth of knowledge with Soap Queen readers, here are Bramble Berry’sTop 10 Best Selling Fragrances and Essential Oils for 2007
Oatmeal, Milk, & Honey fragrance
Lavender Provence Essential oil
Energy fragrance
Vanilla Select fragrance
Sensuous Sandalwood fragrance
Lavender fragrance
Dark, Rich Chocolate fragrance
White Tea & Ginger fragrance
Island Coconut fragrance
Plumeria
Thank you New York Times Bitten Blog for making my evening that much sweeter.
For their book, Hello Cupcake!, cake artists Karen & Alan made this amazing sheet of cupcakes and frosted it in an extraordinary way.
Though, as a cupcake connoisseur, I suspect some of that frosting is so darkly colored that it doesn’t taste great. But, whatever… I’ll suffer for art.
Thank you TechCrunch for the dismal miserable news about another venture capital funded business, Akimbo, headed down the toilet.
Akimbo raised $56million to compete in the digital media space, apparently without much success.
If those Venture Capitalists (the same ones that don’t fund any of my businesses because they’re not “sexy enough” – since when has 11 years of growing revenues and profitability not been “sexy?”), had just doled out 560 “little” investments of $100,000 t0 560 members of our Soap Queen community, they would have had a much better return on their investment.
Despite owning the majority of businesses in the US, women entrepreneurs received only a whopping 4.6% of available Venture Capital funding between 1997 and 2004 (Center for Women’s Business Research).
When do you think VC’s will learn that going after the flashy, “huge potential for growth!”, isn’t always where it’s at? That reminds me of a little story about a tortoise and a hare …
