Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
In this Sunnybrook mold, it’s easiest to do swirling with a super white base and a bright vibrant color. One tried’n’true method is to take out 10% of your soap recipe and mix in the color super dark. In this example, we used blue iron oxide and pumice for texture.
Here I am, pouring the white fragranced base soap into the mold, having done one white/blue pour already. Notice how the blue color rises to the surface.
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.
Thank you Renee for coming to visit Otion! She even sent us photos of her visit.
Renee said,
“It was fun to come to the store and see everything in real life and, of course, smell the fragrances. Fresh Baked Bread was awesome and so was Tomato Leaf! I had to really hold back the urge to splurge because I was trying to travel light so I just picked up a few little things. What a neat place. People who are close to that have no idea how lucky they are because there is no concept like this at all in my area…also, my area is very “chain” oriented so independently owned businesses are hard to find.”
Thanks for visiting the store and for supporting our little locally owned retail operation.
We have spent the last few months preparing to do a local media blitz with Otion press kits. My sister in law, Cheriss, worked for Deutch LA for the last few years. She has a degree in Marketing, is creative and saavy with press. She was quite generous to help out with our press kit blitz.
Each of the press kits contains a letter from the founder, an Otion FAQ sheet, 1 bar of soap, and a full color/full bleed 8 page glossy about Otion. The special feature with the glossy is a perfume vials on each page. The vials are filled to the brim with our best or most unique fragrance oils. Shew Design did the initial design work for the glossy insert, including the genius idea of including the fragrance vials.
All the labels for the soap were done on full-sheet labels. The labels were cut out by hand and painstakingly peeled apart (thanks Cheriss!)
The final kits shipped out yesterday. Next week, I will focus on calling each of the 24 news outlets and ask if they received the press kit. When they respond enthusiastically (fingers crossed), I’ll explore story ideas with them. For example, a family vacation publication would be interested in our soapmaking bar but a magazine focusing primarily on singles would want to focus on fun, exciting date nights. And really, what’s more fun and exciting than making soap?
As the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK says, the way to get press is just to pick up the phone. The magic phrase, according to Brian Scudamore, is “Hey! I’ve got a great story for you!”
The phrase has been instrumental in getting 1-800-GOT-JUNK lots of free press. Let’s hope that it’s magic for Otion too.
We are totally feelin’ the love out there for Otion, soap and all things Soap-Queen related.
Big thanks to Joanna at The Soap Bar Blog for writing about our own little homegrown soap bar – Otion and reviewing our Soap-Queen blog. Read her take on Otion and the blog here.
Michelle, a frequent reader at The Soap Queen won our box o’ goodies two weeks ago. Read what she has to say about her faves in the box here.
Renee in Texas visited Otion. Click here to see her photos. I love the one with Mark wearing his Otion apron.
Thank You to Renee, Jo and Michelle for the support!
Here are some photos from Alicia Grosso’s Soapmaking Class! A big shout out and thank you to Alicia and her sweet husband for staying overnight in Bellingham to teach. They even hung out to do dinner with the whole class. Alicia was the sweetest (!!!) person and I am frantically trying to get here up to Bellingham next year for a full weekend of classes.
Thank you Alicia! 
View from Instructional Lab Upstairs
I taught a beginning cold process soap class at Otion tonight. It was a wonderful class with students from Arizona, Tacoma (WA) and Portland (OR). We had 7 students, two of whom had made soap. It’s always a joy to have experienced soapmakers in class so they can augment my instructions.
We did room temperature (energy transfer) soap for the first batch. I showed my dexterity by pouring lye water all over the table in front of the class. Clumsiness is catching. Erik (Otion Store Manager, also my little brother) poured fresh soap all over one of the student’s papers. It was not our collective finest moment.
Alicia Grosso, noted author and soapmaking artist, is at Otion today. She is racing us with her presence and teaching a beginning cold process soap class. I am flitting back and forth between Otion and Bramble Berry today. I am doing poor job of multi-tasking payroll, L&I taxes, emails and assorted management minutiae today. Today is not one of my finer self-employed moments.
Tonight, we’re (Alicia, me, spouses, and soapers contingent) headed to local Mexican favorite, Jalapeños on Holly Street around 5 or 6 p.m. So, if you’re in Bellingham and you want to meet Alicia, please stop on down to join us!
Alicia is starting her soapmaking class at 1 p.m. and there is one slot open if you’d like to learn from a soapmaking master. The store # to reserve the spot is 360.676.1030
My younger brother Erik has officially been on the job for 2 months. He has taken the helm at Otion, our retail store operation. It hasn’t been the smoothest of transitions from a no-managerial-oversight to a full-time, in-store manager but we’re through the uphill part and onto a nice plateau.
In his two months at Otion, Erik has installed new flooring in the soap bar area (faux tile – it looks great!), implemented staffing policies and hired a new employee for the store. He also has learned how to make many toiletries and Cold Process soap. Here is his latest CP soap on the right. The soap on the left was one of his first. He has come a long way in his technical expertise! He’s actually got a bit of a swirl motif with his latest batch. 
The color choice is interesting for a champagne fragrance. It’s certainly eye catching.
I had the privilege of co-teaching a private soapmaking party last night. Some of the gals flew in from Boston. It was fun to have a group of happy, giggling, laughing ladies to teach soap to. They were all friends. Camaraderie was easy going and the atmosphere was light.
Each partygoer got to make 2 different batches of Cold Process Soap. The recipes were the same except for the superfatting level. One used a 2% superfat and the other used a 10% superfat. 
All of the newbie soapers were able to personalize their individual CP bars with their choice of color, scent and exfoliants. It was quite a lot of fun!
Parties at Otion start at $14 per person. We can do parties customized to anyone’s interests – all natural, toiletries classes, lip balm, lotionmaking, massage melts, balms, soap, melt and pour – Otion can instruct in almost anything!
Alicia Grosso’s class is officially open for registration. You can read all about Alicia here.
Alicia is very busy, teaching, running a soap company and working as an in-demand speaker/author. Her interesting philosophy about being fulfilled with self-employment came out in an interview with the Indie Beauty Network:
Alicia says one of the most useful guidelines she’s found is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. “Maslow orders from bottom to top the things that humans need. At the base are physiological needs, safety need, belongingness, love and esteem,” she says. “Once the ‘base’ is in place, you move to the next level, which is the need to know and understand and the need for aesthetics. When those are working, then you can move to self-actualization and transcendence.”
As an accomplished business woman and consultant, her services are in high demand and we are very privileged to have her teaching and signing books at Otion. There are only 6 more spaces available so sign up today to ensure you get access to learn from one of the best!
Alicia Grosso, noted author, teacher and expert soapmaker will be at Otion for a book signing in August. If you hurry, you can even sign up for her class and learn from one of the best in the industry.
Alicia’s book, The Everything Soap Book, is considered by some to be the most comprehensive cold process soap on the market today.
Here is a customer quote about her book:
I found Alicia’s book whilst perusing a Borders! It was by far the BEST book on the shelf. Loaded with really great info what would take you months of tearing through the [soapdish forum] archives to benefit from. It wasn’t expensive either. I bought it to share with my SIL who wants to learn soapmaking. There were other books that were WAY more expensive and didn’t come close to covering the ground she did.
Having seen Alicia in action at the Arizona Soap Conference, it was clear that she really knew her soapmaking stuff.
Come and spend the afternoon learning from Alicia, visit Otion (and smell all of the Bramble Berry fragrances), buy your supplies and then take in a wonderful easy evening in beautiful Bellingham.
Otion recently was photographed for an advertising campaign by a local, well-respected PR firm. Bramble Berry has actually worked with this firm before and had been happy with the output. The photographer was at Otion and took many more photographs than were needed for the ad. I asked if we could have a couple of the photographs for use on our web site and promo material.
When we’ve been photographed for various news stories in the past, the publications have always allowed us to have a few photos for our own use. But our own local PR firm, who is already being paid for the photo shoot, wants to charge an extra $150 per photo. And these are for the discards that aren’t even being used.
As a small business, I probably won’t pay $150 for a photo. Had the photographs been more reasonably priced, I would have paid $25-$45 per photo gladly. The photos are of no use to the PR firm. Wouldn’t it be better for them to price lower, sell more and help out another small business? After all, it’s all pure profit for them once they’ve got the perfect shot for the ad campaign.
The lesson I am taking away from this is to charge what the market will bear, not what you feel the the market should pay.