Packaging Archives - Page 8 of 9

Snazzy Holiday Soaps

December 17, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

I got these goodies in my latest Lemming Box Sampler. What a joyous surprise for the season!

First of all, how cute is this soap? It’s a plain box that is wrapped in cellophane with a simple ribbon finish. It looks very festive and gift-giving-ready. Nashville Wraps has some adorable printed cellophane for all seasons.

This little gift pack came packaged nicely in a bag with classy looking insert. It’s a good example of what you can do on a budget with branding (rule: keep it simple and keep it looking similar).

This is a traditional bar of cold process soap that is dressed up with both the nice cut-out box and also the drizzling of melt and pour soap over the top of the finished bar. The “icing” lends a look of sophistication to make this soap stand out.

Sampler Soaps = Perfect Gifts

November 14, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Biggs and Featherbelle has a delightful gift set for Christmas. It’s comprised of 8 perfect little bars of soap, all with their handstamped wrappers for $21.99. Click here to see a list of their stores or go buy this adorable sampler for yourself at their site.

Kelly and Kasey Evick also sell their artwork on t-shirts using CafePress. It’s a great example of brand extensions and marketing. After all, they have the artwork done. It doesn’t take much more to upload the artwork to CafePress and make t-shirts.

For previous stories on Biggs & Featherbelle, click here, here and here.

FLOAP soap

November 7, 2007 Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

Thanks to Joanna over at The Soap Bar blog, I am now $35 lighter in the wallet but oh so enticed by this super cool cold process FLOAP soap!FLOAP soap appears to be a traditional cold process soap recipe with a lot of air whipped into it. The bars feel a bit like a light, fluffy marshmallow. It’s odd to pick up a bar of soap that has 4 ounces in volume, only to have it be as light as a feather in your hands.

The soaps all came wrapped in individual gift wrapped paper. It was like Christmas opening all the pretty wrapping. The care taken in wrapping definitely enhanced my FLOAP experience.

Each bar seemed more pretty than the last. The green soap above is Peony Paradise. While not my most favorite scent, the soap is an artist marvel. The green is a shockingly bright green.

The Neapolitan Shaving Soap is a denser bar of soap with light to no whip. It is the only bar that I purchased that may last longer than 2 weeks in the shower. The bar just feels heartier. The layers are crisply done and the scent is strong and sweet.

Cow-Ma-Flage is a marvel of layering and sophistication. It is a gorgeous bar of soap up close. And, it smells delish! Gudonya just came out with another bar that is done in the same design, only with purple and white colors, reminiscent of a purple cow. It’s quite beguiling.

Chocolate Truffle soap is very intriguing upon first inspection. It’s a great idea but in reality, the using of the bar wasn’t as mind boggling cool as the first look at this innovative marvel. In the shower, little bits of the bar kept coming off and the marshmallows mostly ended up in the drain. My husband actually begged me to put another bar in the shower since he was tired of this bar breaking apart. So far, the other bars are staying quite put which is good. The breaking-apart must be an aberration for just this soap type.

Bubble Cola smells like a hot summer day on the playground, right after someone has spilled their pop! It’s a fun smell that kids will appreciate.

Overall, this was a wonderful present! Of course, I bought this present myself but it still felt like a present with all the bars wrapped individually. The soap is light, airy and fluffy, like nothing I’ve felt or touched before. I am trying not to get obsessed about figuring out the secret of their light, fluffy, cold process floating bars.

Lusting after these personalized cards

October 24, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

From their site: cheerful, colorful avians, two by two. freehanded on felt, so every bird is one-of-a-kind, like you. two-line saying in lovebird cursive (neat, carefree handwriting).

The cards are $42 for a box of 12 which seems pricey but when the work to cut out the felt birds and the custom printing is taken into account, it seems like a fair price to pay for all that labor!

Cake and Milk Paperie has lots of other card options if you’re looking for personalized cards. Check out their site here.

Yes, I agree. Packing Peanuts, not so good

September 25, 2007 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News, Business Musings

I got this note a while back from Kelly S. in NYC.

I was a bit bummed to see that you ship using Styrofoam peanuts especially after reading your Social Responsibility commitment. Is there any way you can use a different packing method?

First of all, I really appreciate Kelly for writing. So many customers would have just gone, “Hey, what gives? Bramble Berry says they strive to be environmentally friendly but then they send me these hideous, terrible-for-the-environment-green-packing-pellets-of-Mother-
Earth-death,” rolled their eyes and moved on. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you why we use those little hideous green puff balls to get your package to you safely.

First things first, we get it. We don’t like those little green ecologically damaging messy ball of air more than you do. In fact, given that they litter our office, cost us a minor fortune and take up a bunch of storage space, I’m willing to bet we like them even less than you do.

But, we haven’t yet found anything better to ensure your package gets to you safely. We have tried what feels like everything – from the air packets (disaster disaster disaster), to the bio-degradeable peanuts (one broken bottle and they totally disintegrate, ruining the entire package), to paper (heavy, expensive, and doesn’t provide great cushion when wet) to strange, crinkly, weird , cut up randomly odd paper strip thigies with foam inside them (didn’t work) and a couple more that I’m not remembering. Oh yes, and the cut up cardboard strips that cost a fortune, were heavy and left the package-reciver with 5 pounds of cut up cardboard strips. That was not a popular experiment.

So, we do our best. We recycle. We give back to charitable causes. We’re energy neutral. We buy solar and wind power. We donate our time to non-profits. And we try not to waste anything in our office. And, I compost at home (do I get extra bonus points for that?). But, when it comes to getting your packages to you safely, in the lightest weight shipping box we can, for the best price… Green packing peanuts can’t really be beat.

If you have a better option or are using something different at your company, please write me. I really want to learn about it and try it in our company. Anything to help save the planet, one box at a time.

Hand Soap, literally

September 18, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Really cool? Or, really creepy?

Ikea scores again

September 15, 2007 Filed Under: Business Musings

Can you see this for soap packaging? The little dividers are movable and the price is right – $3.99. Ikea wins again. This little box is made out of solid walnut with a dark stain.

Length: 11 3/4 ”
Width: 5 7/8 ”

Length: 30 cm
Width: 15 cm

Letterpress = Sublime

September 5, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

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

Random Food Factoids

September 2, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

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

Ikea $.99 Soap Dishes

August 15, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

A bargain at $.99! Ikea … if only you were closer.

Sugar Lips Etsy Shop

August 3, 2007 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

810 positive reviews can’t be wrong! Sugar Lips is clearly one of the go-to gals on Etsy for a successful indie soap operation. The labels are waterproofed and like David from The Bubble Roome, designed by the owner. In her description of the Solid Lotion Bars, she says that they are good as a tattoo revitalizer. Who knew? There’s an extra sales pitch to add to your solid lotion bars.

If you’ve never made solid lotion bars, check back next week for few recipes on making solid lotion bars.

Wylde Ivy Soap Rocks

August 2, 2007 Filed Under: Business Musings

Wow! Look at those photos! They are very clean, crisp and a showcase for beautiful soap. Wylde Ivy has it right with their web site too. It has effusive verbiage on product descriptions and goodies that work as well as they photograph. I have ordered from Wylde Ivy twice in the last year and been excited and happy with everything I received.

My two favorite items, on my desk right now, from Ashlee are her “All Olive Lotion” (I’m using S’mores, a limited edition) and a perfume Spritzer in Sugar Cake (it makes me smell just like an edible sweet confection).

Ashlee also does an email newsletter that is well designed and has discounts for the faithful. She is utilizing a Marketing 101 concept. It is easier to get current, happy customers to reorder from you than it is to make a brand new customer.

Nicely designed site, crisply photographed products and a well-executed Marketing Plan make Wylde Ivy a soaper to watch.

Estrella Soap Company

July 22, 2007 Filed Under: Personal Ramblings

Estrella Soap Company in Seattle WA makes very sophisticated soap, brilliantly executed swirls with clean packaging. Their site is functional and not too messy.

Bella Beautiful

July 2, 2007 Filed Under: Business Musings

I just got this yummy package of goodies from Bella Lucce. It’s a super good deal – $20 for samples of almost all of the scrubs that Bella Lucce offers and a few creams thrown in.

My favorite scrub from Bella Lucce is the wine based scrub. It smells delicious and has just the right amount of scrubbiness. The other one I really like is the Pumpkin Glow Body Scrub.

I appreciate Belle Lucce’s packaging, graphic design and well thought out promotional support (lush photos, strongly worded copy, comprehensive full lines).

Browsing their blogtoday, I saw that they are expanding to the Middle East. They have several outlets selling their products in Dubai. Good for Bella Lucce for finding new markets and going where consumers are demanding designer products and premium pricing.