This lovely hat is hand knitted and fits a small toddler head. It’s $8 over at Etsy. Click here to buy it or just be inspired by the handcrafted paean to cupcake goodness.
Search Results for: www.brambleberry.com
Scent Trend Alert
The trends for 2008 are out and they are a puzzling mix – exotic yet also homebound. Apparently, we’re all craving yummy food-like scents such as hot chocolate, S’Mores and blueberry muffin. Yet, we’re also predicted to be desiring exotic and healthy fragrances like acacia, pomegranate and banana plant. Odd. We have schizophrenic taste buds in 2008 and 2009. When you open up your fridge next year and find yourself craving a Cucumber Basil Cilantro Wasabi Smoothie, don’t be surprised; after all, the trend reports predicted it. Supposedly, 2008 and 2009 are the year for exotic fragrances.
We put 15 of our favorite latest trend fragrances into candles to test their throw and elicit opinions of Otion customers, friends and family. Over the next six weeks, we will burn all of the candles and rate them for smell, throw and saleability.
I already have a favorite – Green Zuccinni with White Truffle Oil. I don’t dare buy it yet though. It won’t sell until 2009 – or so, that’s what the trend report tells me!
More Otion Christmas Display Soap
All of the soaps were made using Non-Bleeding Red in Bramble Berry House Base Clear with White House Base.
Dove’s "Real Women" Commercials
This is the next generation of Dove’s “Real Women” commercials. The message seems clear: quit bombarding yourselves and your children with unrealistic images of women. It’s a positive common-sense message. I’m not entirely sure how one would get away from those images however; they’re everywhere.
Dove Onslaught – Watch the best video clips here
Thank you to the Organic Beauty Expert blog for finding the clip.
Lifetime TV likes our Kit!
We are thrilled that Lifetime TV featured our Wedding Soapmaking Kit on their site. Click here to see their review (we’re the 2nd box on the right).
If you’re interested in making the soaps pictured above, check out the kit. It makes about 40 wedding favor soaps. It’s just $31.55 at the Bramble Berry site. Click here to learn more about the kit.
Teaser Photo
Look for more photos and (eventually) a tutorial for making these fun Holiday soaps.
Grand Opening Shout-Out
Congratulations to Jen at Healdsburg Soap Company! It’s the grand opening of her new shop today.
I phoned to congratulate her and she was positively ebullient. She said they had been busy all with well-wishers and shoppers. 
The big hit for the day is the Moroccan Fig and Jen reported that the Champagne Soap were also selling like crazy.
I met Jen two years ago at the National Soap Guild conference. I immediately was taken with her positive attitude, fearless confidence and driven personality. Though I haven’t been to Sonoma County to visit her shop, it is on my to-do list for next year! I’ve been saving up my airline miles and I’ll get to her shop (and maybe a little r & r in Sonoma County, California) next year.
In the meantime, a big positive shout-out to Jen for taking the leap and opening her first shop. We wish you much success and joyous days, making soap and delighting customers every day.
Christmas Soap Already?
It was a very full day at Otion. Erik, Sarah and I worked all day helping the stream of customers coming for help with Christmas gifts.
I made our first Christmas display (is it that time already?) of Peppermint Essential Oil (1st distilation) melt and pour soaps, including some Peppermint Candy soap. The photo on the right is from the “Project Of The Week” site. Click here for the project.
I’ll have photos of all the soap I made, including peppermint jelly roll soap, uploaded tomorrow. I’m pleased with how they all turned out and can’t wait to get your feedback.
It’s Friday! And, I bought stuff …
The week was long. Soap seemed like an apt reward for this tired gal. So, I went out and shopped the ‘net for fun and unique bars of soap! Coming in the next few weeks are assorted goodies from:
Patti Flynn Soap Bars from Etsy
Cocoa Pink soap and haircare products
Look for reviews over the next few months.
Frontier Angel Soap TV Interview
Diane’s web site is FrontierAngel.com
She makes beautiful soap, with varied shapes, sizes, textures and colors. It’s worth a visit to her site. Be sure to drop her a line and tell her how great she did on camera. It was her first time on-air.
Sweet Kitty
This time, the hat tip goes to my Mom for sending this amazing video to share. Thanks Mom!
Age Calculator
Hat tip to my Dad (that’s a photo of him and my mom in Antarctica, on a penguin searching expedition) for helping to keep The Soap Queen blog varied and not entirely soaping related.
Did you ever wonder how much damage that extra vodka & tonic was doing to your long term health? Or maybe that spare tire around your middle? Now you can find out with the Age Calculator. Click here to figure out how old your body really is.
My actual body age turns out to be 11 years old and I have a life expectancy of 94. I guess I should start planning for a very long retirement!
Photos from Seattle Trip
My parents recently went to Seattle. They stayed downtown and their hotel had a beautiful view of the city.
The next day, they walked around Greenlake and look what they saw! Aren’t the turtles precious?
Being Defensive May Lose You Money
Bramble Berry recently ran a full page advertisement in a national magazine. The full page did not come cheap. The ad ran but printed incorrectly. The design was … off. The ad looked odd. The ad didn’t look terrible, just wrong.
I phoned my rep and left a generic, “Something was wrong with our ad. Please call me.” The message was friendly, polite and to the point.
The phone message I got in return was defensive and arrogant. “You clearly submitted the ad incorrectly. In the future, we will require you to send out proofs for every single ad you want to run.”
I like the magazine so I decided to try to work this out via email since phone messages obviously weren’t working.
My designer swears she had two ad formats on the disk; the other magazine that ran the ad had a correct rendering of the ad. I’m not sure what to say except that I’m disappointed the ad looked so bad and I’m disappointed in the lack of options offered me.Your message leaves me feeling like you are blaming me, the customer, for the ad rendering issues.
I of course, love XYZ Magazine (who couldn’t?) but am disappointed at how this issue was handled.
This communication worked out much better. The magazine in question is running a (small) free ad in the next issue to compensate for the incorrect rendering in the original ad.However, I still might not do business with this company again for a few reasons:
1. Future ads will now be inconvenient to send. We can’t upload them to the FTP ad server. Now we need to submit a print out proof for each ad, via Fed Ex.
2. There was no effort made to address the underlying problem. The ad ran incorrectly. We submitted the ad correctly (blustery and defensive assertions to the contrary).
3. I don’t want to deal with testosterone driven, obtuse jerks. I like to work with people that admit mistakes and work to correct errors. Defensive blamers are a pain to interact with. Life is short. It’s good to surround yourself with people that are fair, decent and don’t cause you too much stress.
I’m still simmering on this issue and haven’t committed to any future ads with the magazine yet. They did make the mistake right by running a comp ad, gratis. But, it took more effort than I would have liked to get to that resolution.
If anyone has feedback or a shared experience that might help me out with whether I should run more ads with the magazine in question, please let me know. I’m very open to feedback on this issue.