Did You Survive The Holidays?

It was a fast paced holiday season with craft shows, filling orders, restocking the shelves, and making soap. I found the time to wrap some gifts at the fair grounds for Project Santa, did some baking (oh, the crack candy at my house was awesome), had family dinners, and even read a book.

I love to make soap, it brings out the creative side of me. I like to wrap myself up in a scent and close my eyes and "see" the soap I am going to create. It is really cool when the soap turns out the way I "imagine" it.

While setting up at one of the holiday craft shows I found myself next to Katie Spencer. She is a wonder woman who used to sell to HUGE chain stores. She now sells her handmade items at Tumblewinds on Esmeralda St. in Minden. One item in her booth just fascinated me.


I love the origami feel to the ornament. I love the sharp angles. I love the bright colors. I just love these ornaments. Being the wonderful person that she is, Katie mailed the instructions and I made 11 ornaments to give as Christmas gifts.


Did I tell you I love making these ornaments?

I May Not Have Much Money, Handmade From The Heart

Every year the Parent Teacher Student Organization (PTSO) gets together and makes up gift bags for the teachers at Douglas High School. This year with both my husband and I being unemployed I was not able to pick up the usual gift items. Still wanting to do my part I looked around the soap room and found some 2 oz. bottles I don't use any more. So...I spent the day making 150 bottles of lotions for the teachers. I know many of them and I thank the Lord my dear daughter has such dedicated and knowledgeable people to teach her. It was an honor to be able to bring a little of my handmade items to them.

First I sterilized the bottles and caps.


Second, I whipped up some lotion and scented it with a spicy cranberry scent, perfect for men or women.


Third, I poured into the clean bottles, labeled and packed them up.


Thank you Teachers of Douglas High School.

Every Once In A While.......

You meet a person who has the gift of giving. I don't mean they give you gifts. I mean they give of themselves. They share their passion, their knowledge, and their gift of giving.

I meet one such person through a soap making forum I belong to. I have learned so much from her blog. She does such intense research and provides an overload of information that you can't help but learn something.

Susan is a wealth of information about cosmetic chemistry. As she says, "often strange, occasionally useful, and always worth a stop as a point of interest on your journey through the Intertron." I have been enjoying my journey with her and share her obsession of crafts and the bath and beauty industry.

Now this person does not just give online. She also reaches out to children, and that is a subject near and dear to my heart. Her program is called "Rated T for Teen."
From their web page
"We provide different programs to youth at the Chilliwack and Yarrow Libraries (in Chilliwack, B.C., Canada) and most of the funding comes from the volunteers’ pockets. We offer craft groups to teens, tweens, and pregnant and parenting teens. We provide two card and board game clubs, two video game clubs, and a Japanese pop culture program, as well. We also offer parent-child crafting programs."

Part of her fundraising program has been the Aviva Community Fund Program. Here you can vote for her program to receive community assistance.

As part two of her fundraising plan, she put together a 122 page e-book entitled
"Back to Basics: Anhydrous Products."
" The book includes over 50 recipes and explanations for making lotion bars, whipped butters, balms, oil based scrubs, bath melts, bath oils, oil based sprays, solid scrubs, and facial sera, as well as all the carrier oil, exotic oil, and butter profiles and everything I've gathered about the chemistry of our oils including fatty acids, mechanisms of rancidity, phytosterols, and polyphenols."

For a $20.00 donation that all goes into the project you will recieve a e-book that you will be able to use for years. I am so excited for this opportunity to purchase this collection of facts and information AND to help her project to bring the wonderful world of crafting to their youth.

CHECK IT OUT!

I Confess, I Am A Scent-A-Holic

I have always loved scents. This is Chai fresh out of the pot. I think the nose and how it works is a fascinating thing. When I first ventured into the soap making addiction I scented with a few Essential Oils.


Ok, maybe more than a few Essential Oils.

I joined a few soap making forums. I sold soap in a few craft shows. Everywhere I looked people were talking about scents. On the forums fragrance oil suppliers were advertising the latest popular fragrances. At my craft shows at least one person would come up to me and ask "Do you have ****** scent." I have very little will power. I had to try this blend, then this blend.....Before I knew it I was carrying over 70 different scents of soaps.


The past few years I have been trying to cut back and just carry the best sellers, and my personal favorites.It has been a hard job, but I am down to only 40 different scents.


My biggest problem now is what do you do with all the bottles?




I have great suppliers that ship with great care. Scent Oils are best kept in dark glass to protect them from the light and other elements. I have enough dark bottles to transfer any oils I get in larger containers. Does anyone need any 2, 4, 8, and 16ounce bottles?

Ummm, yum, Kauai Ginger Blossom.

I Am Putting Soap Into A New Store

I put a soap display into a shop in Gardnerville the other day.


Heartstrings Gallery Gifts
1572 US Highway 395
Minden NV 89423
Phone: 775-781-0861

Long-time artist Lee Lewis opened the shop in October of 2009 in the Copeland Center site that now is home to the Arts Council. She makes and sells her own work: silk scarves and ties, jewelry, wall hangings, mosaics, hand painted glassware, candles and original watercolors and prints.


Her partner is photographer Rich Farrar.


She features several other artists.
Laura Burt shows her glass art and fused, leaded, etched and stained glass.


Kim Johnston shows her ceramics and pottery.


And now there is me.


The store is bright and the colors are brilliant. It makes you happy just walking into the door. And now it smells good, too! Lee has the eye when it comes to decorating. The store flows from one treasure to the next. It draws you in, you know there will be another delight to the eyes right around the corner. I am so happy to be here.


As with all the shops I put my soap in, this one is community friendly too! We all believe in shop local and support your local businesses and friends. This is Lee donating a painting to the DAWG representative for their fundraiser. I love our no-kill pet shelter and try to support them any way I can.


Lee will have the shop open for Carson Valley Days, so stop in and say hello!

Heartstrings Gallery Gifts
1572 US Highway 395
Minden NV 89423
Phone: 775-781-0861

It Is All About Choices

A crisp clean scent, Mountain Lake.

While stocking the shelves at one of the stores I sell my soap, a customer walked by and started smelling the different scents I sell. Upon checking the price of a bar of soap she asked me, "how do you stay in business selling soap for $6.00 when a person can buy soap much cheaper at the grocery store?"

That is a good question. First I have to think about the product. Soap is a reusable product. Everyone uses it. Everyone buys more when they run out. I need to be the one they come to when they run out. I can not compete with the stores on price so I have to have a better quality product. My soap sells for $6.00 for a 4 oz. bar of soap. It has been over 10 years since I bought soap at the store but I am sure you can buy something for $1.00. I make sure my soap uses the finest ingredients. I buy local whenever possible to reduce the impact I make on the environment. I support local merchants to keep my money in my community.

A sweet tart scent, Sunkissed Currant.

My goal is not to compete with a grocery store when it comes to selling soap. They can sell a basic bar of no frills soap for a cheap price. I want to sell a quality, luxurious bar of soap that will delight your skin, overload your senses with pleasure from the soft silky bubbles to the heady scents I use. I want you to breathe deep and imagine yourself in a spa instead of your shower. When you are drying off I want your skin to feel soft and pampered.

I want you to have a choice. I want to make the best soap possible so you don't have to settle for less. I guess that is how I stay in business. There will always be people who will not settle for anything but the best. I will be there for them.

A fresh green scent, Clover.

Essential Oils Are Fabulous In Soap

If you are not making unscented soap or using herbs for your scent you really only have two options (well not really just two, but we will talk about those later) to use to scent your soap. You can use Essential Oils or Fragrance Oils. Today we will talk about Essential Oils.

Essential Oil Here are several definitions of essential oils you will find on the world wide web.
•An essential oil is a concentrated, hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants.
•Aromatic liquids extracted from flowers, grasses, fruits, leaves, roots, or trees. The oils maintain the odors and tastes, and thus the essence, of the plant they are extracted from.
•Aromatic volatile oils extracted from the leaves, stems, flowers, and other parts of plants. Therapeutic use generally includes dilution of the highly concentrated oil.
•Oily or non-oily, volatile aromatic substance constituting the chemical principle of the plant, extracted by distillation or expression.
•An essential oil is the volatile material derived by a physical process (distillation or expression) from odious plant material of a single botanical form and species.

Essential oils do not have anything in common with each other, other than than they lend their plant material to give a scent. There are no common chemical properties, but many of the explanations use the same wording. So lets explain the explanation.

Essential Oils
A distinctive scent, or essence, of a plant makes an oil "essential". So Essential Oils are "the oils of a plant".

Hydrophobic Liquid
The chemical definition of hydrophobicity is the repelling from a mass of water of a molecule. The molecules are non-polar and tend to cluster together. Examples include fats, and greasy substances.

Volatile
Volatiles are chemical elements and compounds with low boiling points, that change. In this case volatility is the tendency of a substance to vaporize.

Aroma
This is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor and known as a fragrance or flavor. The compound has an odor when it is volatile so it can be transported to the olfactory system and it needs to be high in concentration so it reacts with the olfactory receptors.

This means an Essential Oil is a liquid that comes from heating plant material and changing or vaporizing the chemical compounds of the plant. This is most commonly done by steam in a distiller. As the heated water, or steam, passes through the plant it vaporizes the compounds and flows through a coil. The vapors then condense back to a liquid where it is collected. It most often is clear and not oily at all. Before the discovery of distillation, plant material was pressed to get the oils. Most citrus essential oils are still cold pressed and because the oil comes from the peel, there is a lot of it, it is easy to grow and harvest, the cost is less. Flowers contain the least amount of volatile compounds so cannot be cold pressed. They are too delicate to be steamed so a solvent is used to extract the oils. It takes a lot of flower blossoms to make a floral essential oil so they are typically the most expensive of oils. One ounce of Rose Essential Oil can cost $700. I use 6-8 ounces of scent in every batch of soap! That would be one expensive bar of soap.

You can purchase Essential Oils many places. My favorite suppliers are the following. They have great quality oils, purchase from fair trade countries, have the best customer service, and have the information you need to make informed decisions.

Brambleberry

Essential Wholesale

New Directions Aromatics

Essential Oil University

Many sites aid you in blending techniques. Here are a few of my favorites. You can also purchase oils from these suppliers.

Bo Jensen

Natures Gift

Rainbow Meadow

Sydney Essential Oil Co

And one last fun site!

Treatt