Over 171 Bramble Berry customers submitted some of their favorite blends for us to choose from. There were fabulous entries and it was hard to choose our top five. Click here to vote for the next fragrance you want Bramble Berry to add!
Swirling Soap – Preparing the 1st color
Earlier this week, Renee asked a question about swirling soap. Renee, here’s a long, multiple day answer to your question. Watch for short instructional videos from this goatsmilk batch (scented with Herbal Essence) this weekend and next week.
Preparing the color mixture ahead of time is helpful. Working out clumps prior to the soap being poured makes for less stress and worry during the touchy last few minutes of the soapmaking process. The colorant mixture above is a blend of jojoba oil, blue ultramarine iron oxide and loofah.
Mixing the prepared coloring into thinly trace (goatsmilk) soap. I did (approximately) 1 tsp of blue color, 1 tsp of loofa and 2 oz. of jojoba oil in 16 oz. of soap. The 16 oz. of soap was pulled from the larger 6 pound batch at thin trace. The rest of the goatsmilk soap is waiting in the large stainless steel mixing pot.
A photo of the entire set up with digital scale, Sunnybrook mold and spatula waiting to scrape soap into mold to get the last drops out.
I’ll post photos and instructions of the swirling technique this weekend.
Squirrel, on our Porch
How cute is this guy? Chris and I try to spend 5 minutes together in the morning, sipping coffee and discussing our schedules for the day. This morning, look who joined us? It wasn’t an accident. Chipmunks and squirrels “forage” for peanuts that we cleverly hide in a bird feeder. It’s a great way to trick them into playing in front of our morning-coffee window. Small adorable furry animals are a great way to start the day off right. It’s difficult to be in a bad mood when the squirrels are running around and frolicking.I’m working on a swirling overview, complete with photos now. Check for that later today or tomorrow. Also, the winner of the Moon Valley Contest will be announced tonight!
Pajama Mama Wins
In our random posting contest for last week, Pajama Mama wins! Pajama Mama’s real name is Jeannie and she’s from Georgia. She writes her own blog about soap and family here. Head over to her site and come up with a caption for her cute cat photo.
Jeannie, email me with your address and I’ll pop these goodies the mail for you. Email is info (at) brambleberry.com
Current state of the Bathroom
I got interviewed for another blog this week (Breakfast with the People). They asked a funny follow up question about my post where I mentioned Chris was painting a new bathroom cabinet!
Here is a photo of the project all done. Notice how the cabinet matches the walls and tile?
I’m a lucky girl. Now I have my very own mirror and space so I don’t have to elbow Chris out of the way to get ready in the morning. Just another reason why crafty husbands are the best kind to have.
Letterpress = Sublime
Thanks for all the comments last week. Readers had a few questions in the Comments section. If one person has a question, there are probably others that do as well. So, the answers to the questions you’ve posted:
Anonymous readers posted twice asking what Letterpress is. Frequent readers of this site know that I’m a sucker for anything letterpressed (previous posts include this one and this one). I’m so passionate about letterpress that our wedding invites (see bottom of this post) were letterpressed.
What is letterpress? The Wikipedia explanation is here. It is a way of printing that literally stamps the words into and onto the page. If you run your fingers over a letterpressed item, the words and design will be sunk into the page. 
Current methods of printing (such as laser) lay ink down on a page, upraising the words. Letterpress uses stamps and lots of pressure and ink to get the design on the page. The photo on the right is letterpressed stationary from Elum Designs. It’s next on my “affordable luxury items to purchase” list.
Why doesn’t everyone use letterpress for packaging? Price. Letterpress is significantly more time intensive, labor intensive, requires bulky expensive printing presses and custom stamps. All those components add up to pricing that costs approximately 8 – 15 times what normal printing costs. From an economics standpoint, it’s difficult to justify letterpress for small items, such as soap, where the $4.00 purchase price normally won’t cover the cost to get the custom stamp made, let alone the extra price per label or tag.
Then again, to elevate your bar of soap from a commodity to the sublime takes something special that not everyone is doing. Maybe Letterpress is just that thing.
Moon Valley obviously believes it is.
Photo of our letterpressed wedding invitations, designed by Shew Designs
Goatsmilk Soap Weekend
I am speaking at the National Dairy Goats Association trade show coming up in October. I’ll be demonstrating cold process soap, lotion making and advanced cold process soap – all using fresh goatsmilk. I also have a little 45 minute talk on marketing for small businesses. It will be a full day!
To prepare, it seemed wise to make a couple refresher milk batches. I haven’t made goatsmilk soap for at least a year! This weekend, I made two batches of Goatsmilk Soap. This is the first batch. In the photo above, I am stirring the chilled, slushy goatsmilk to break up large chunks, prior to adding the lye.
The soap has been very lightly traced and separated it into three containers for a 3 color swirl. To ensure that I have plenty of time to work with the soap, I have not discounted the water at all and have a full 5% superfat.
Here is the soap, poured into the log mold. It ended up being 9 pours/layers so the color and swirl should go through the entire bar.
The colors used were ultramarine blue (for the light blue) and ultramarine pink with fuscia true tone for the pink. The ivory color is just the natural goatsmilk color.
Moon Valley Contest this week!
It’s no secret that I’m a fan of local fave, Moon Valley. They’ve got a great booth at Pike Place Market and take pride in their packaging. Their soap labels are even letterpressed (swoon).
I love our regular posters and fan of The Soap Queen. Thanks for posting on a regular basis.
If you’ve posted at all last week, though 5 p.m. this Wednesdaynight (Sept. 5) you’re automatically entered to win the Moon Valley lip treat and Moon Valley lotion bar. I’ll announce the winner on Thursday!
Retro Cupcake
Happy Labor Day!
This cupcake is a chocolate mud mini cupcake with acqua blue icing and hand made flower. Kylie designed it to match the paper in the background.
This upcoming week will focus on my weekend goatsmilk soap swirling project.
I hope you all had crafty and creative moments in our long three-day weekend.
Kayaking this morning
Chris and I started out our day kayaking. It was a wonderful way to start the day. This is an actual photo of our morning scene. It looked idyllic. It was idyllic.
It took extra effort to get out of bed early, to drag the kayaks to the water but it was worth it. I’ve been reflecting back on the 20 minutes of quiet contemplation throughout my entire day.
Random Food Factoids
This is totally random. I read it in Women’s Health magazine and thought the factoids were quirky and fun. Enjoy!
The number of Hershey’s Milk Chocolate bars produced yearly could stretch 303,835 miles.
Americans eat 350 slices of pizza a second, which works out to 100 acres per day or 66 miles per year.
Dunkin’ Donuts sells enough, well donuts every year to circle the earth 5.8 times.
About 300 million boxes of Jell-O are produced a year. End to end, they would reach three-quarters of the way around the globe.
— Women’s Health from December 2006
Success = Rust
The September 2007 Business 2.0 issue is a must-read. There are many helpful articles from one on Facebook micro-businesses, to disruptive technologies to innovative interview techniques. My favorite article is about the manufacturer of Two Buck Chuck, Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw $2 wine. The best part of the article is this quote:
Success is easy if you think of it like rust: It’s inevitable if you keep at it. You look for magic moments but they’re not there. Guys claim there are magic moments, but that’s bull.
Look! We’re in the paper!
Otion was profiled in our local Bellingham Herald today – thanks Dave for the writing and Josie for the photo. The article can be found by clicking here.
In a nutshell, the article says that I really like working with my younger brother at Otion. That’s true. Three months into the partnership, it has smoothed out into an easy going, trusting relationship.
Playful Wildlife
We were pleasantly surprised to see darling fawn and her mamma eating grass in our front yard this morning. Chris and I stood quietly, steaming coffee mugs in hand, and took in the peaceful scene. I internally sighed with contentment and settled in for quiet wildlife watching.
And then, brrrrrrrrm! off takes the fawn, at full speed, like a little puppy full of energy. The idyllic scene of mamma and baby was interrupted by the bounding, leaping streak of energy. She went running up and down and around the yard for about 5 minutes – roaring off here, jumping and bounding off there.
I’ve never seen such playful activity out of a deer. The video is only 7 seconds. Imagine the little baby zooming around for five minutes. It wasn’t idyllic but it was delightful and mood lifting.