Oye....

Working five days a week away from home...no, I don't mean outside the house, I mean having to actually overnight in the city where the job is type of working away from home...cuts into everything else.

Anyway, things are moving along on the soap front.

This is my logo. Is it cool or what? I just love it.

Next on my list is a color printer so the logo will look sharp and crisp on my labels.

I made another batch of soap today. This one is scented with vetiver and tangerine. Vetiver is an earthy, smokey scent. And tangerine is...well, if you don't know what tangerines smell like I wouldn't know what to say. ;-)

I also made a few lotion sticks. I put them in the roll up tubes like chap stick comes in. I scented the lotion with lavender.

I'll take enough supplies with me this week to make a few more lotions, and some lip balm.

And today something amazing and wonderful happened. A stranger had tried a sample of my soap. He made a special trip back to where he was given the free sample just to find out where he could buy the soap. He said he and his family loved it. Yay.

That is enough to make me want to make lots more soap. Too bad I don't make the kind he likes so well now.

Okay, I hear at least one person asking why on earth I'd quit making it if someone obviously likes it. Simple. The soap I make now is better. It's made with better base oils and instead of using fragrence oils, I use essential oils. The soaps are just better.

It's way past my bed time...but I figured while I had a couple minutes to call my own, I'd blog.

Sorry

I've been busy.

I have a logo. All I have to do is figure out how to resize it.

There are things to running a business that I' m not crazy about. The teeny tiny details that make a difference. It's more than the product, it's the packaging, too. The packaging gets people to pick it up, the product is why people come back for more.

I made another batch of soap today. One of the essential oils in it is anise which is the fisherman's friend.

As it's doing its thing...turning into soap, it's the first batch that I've made that will either please me completely or end up tossed. I'm not sure at this stage. Until I can slice a bit off and try it, I won't know either.


Memorial Day weekend is almost here and I have so much to do. Too bad I have all of next week devoted to a new job. Yay for the new job. But I wish I had more time to get ready for the summer soap season.

Smiling, smiling, smiling

We went to Land's End on Mother's Day. A meal there is always fun.

Sometimes one just needs to get away from the hum drum of life and spend quiet time out on the Homer spit. I don't ever remember a time when I took the spit for granted. So many save up over a lifetime just to visit the spit for a week once in their life. Me? I get to live here. How cool is that?

Today I had to run into town...twice. The first trip I had to drop my daughter off for training for her job. I managed to slam the ear piece of my cell phone in the car door. Oops. It still works, but all the rough edges are hard on the ears. I stopped by the cell phone company to buy a new ear piece. Since it's right by my favorite automotive parts store, I stopped in there. Yes, I do have a favorite parts store. It's all the years we had our shop. I'd given one of the employees there some of the soap I'd made. I wanted to get feedback.

She loved it and said she'd be my tester any time I wanted to try out new soaps. Yay.

Before I went in the second time, I sliced off samples for her of the various batches I've already made. She was thrilled to get them.

I had another bag filled with samples. This time I showed them to a potential customer. I walked out of that cold call meeting with my first wholesale account. Yay!!!!!!!! I don't have my company logo. I don't have my labels figured out or all the packaging figured out, but I have a wholesale account. Not a place where I can put my soaps on consignment, but an honest to goodness wholesale account.

Life is good. Life is very good. I showed her one of my packaging ideas and she loved it. It's different than any of the other soaps she carries. Another yay for me.

I also have a place where I can put my soaps on consignment. In time we, the shop owner and I, plan on it turning into a wholesale account. Right now their store is new, and since she's family, what can I say. I'll make the soaps, she'll sell them. It will work for us.

Sunday evening I made a mechanics soap. It turned out really nicely. Tonight I made a batch of soap that is unscented, but I added ground oatmeal anda honey to it. I also used coconut milk for the majority of the liquid. It feels wonderful. It has a burnt sugar smell to it, which isn't offensive at all.

Tomorrow I hope to make another batch of soap, plus a lip balm. Then on Wednesday, I hope I can get another batch of soap made, plus a lotion bar.

Once I get all the recipes figured out, it won't be near as hard to keep up with demand. Right now I'm creating the recipes as I go and all of that takes time. Lots of time.

A wholesale account. I know it's not exciting to the rest of the world, but it's very exciting to me. :-)

The devil is in the details

I'm trying to build a website. I hate building websites. I used to have a clue, but not lately.

Sure html is the same, but there's more than html now.

Using templates isn't working. They don't have the graphics that I want. Or need.

But I do have the website. The name of my new company is Fireweed Soap Company. Right now there isn't much there, except a coming soon sign.

I'm feeling out of my league with this website. I'm such a control freak that I don't want to hire anyone to do it for me. But I think I'm going to have to get some help.

I made another batch of soap today. This time it was a test batch for an order that I have. She wants kelp in the soap. Okay. I found some ground kelp at Cadre Feeds in Soldotna the other day. I wanted the base oils to be palm, olive, coconut and palm kernal with a touch of castor. I decided I'd superfat it with walnut oil.

I knew going in there would be one major problem. Kelp stinks. In the package it doesn't, but once the lye water hits it, it smells worse than low tide. It's rank. I knew I'd need a strong essential oil mixture to over power the kelp.

Added to that mix is my palm oil. I'm still using the red palm oil I bought at the health food store. It has its own odor that isn't pleasing to my nose. I know from personal experience that in time that odor will disappear. In about three or four weeks.

I guess I'll have to wait on the fifty pounds of palm oil that is coming via a very slow boat to Alaska.

I'm getting a little frustrated. I want to up the size of batches I make. It takes just as long to make a one pound batch of soap as it does a five pound batch. I feel like I'm wasting time, but I know I'm not. All this is doing is showing me early what the best oils are and I know I have to wait for them to arrive before I can do the large batches.

Tomorrow is a day off. I hope all the mothers out there have a great Mother's Day.

Gold mines

No, not the real ones. Too many people want the real things, or at least they want the contents of the real one.

We had to make a quick trip to Soldotna today. More about that in another blog. Probably next week sometime.

While there, I wanted to stop at a couple places. Yesterday a soaper from Soldotna mentioned Cadre Feed. She said they have essential oils there.

Oh. My. Gawd. Do they. They're expensive. But anything like that in Alaska is expensive. I spent more than I should have, but there were so many that I wanted. I've been sniffing essential oils ever since we got home. I want to mix and match, and blend.

I want to make soap. But after a quick trip up the road, I'm just too tired to mess with lye. The other day I managed to get raw soap on my hands. Talk about stinging. Or is that burning. It was horrible. Nothing a little white vinegar couldn't take care of, but still, I don't touch lye when I'm tired.

I have an appointment tomorrow. I don't know if I'll have time to make a batch of soap before my appointment. I want to do a test batch of mechanics soap. I also want to do a test batch of a fisherman's soap. Hey, the kings are getting ready to run. It's time to create a soap for our fishermen and women. Trust me...fishing isn't just a man's sport in Alaska.

We also stopped at Home Depot. What an evil place...in a good kind of way. We bought a couple of cabinets. We have a 34.5 inch space for the wall cabinet to go. It's a 30 X 30 cabinet. Uh, actually, no, it's not. Just because the label said it was doesn't mean it's true. It's 36 X 30. We're going to have to cover a window, sheet rock the wall, slap mud and tape and paint on it and put the new cabinet on a different wall.

That was my day...well, and a little secret that I can't let out of the bag yet. As I said...next week.

Let's just say some of the things that had me worried yesterday aren't near as huge today.

Hope your day was as productive as mine.

Scary things in business

Here's the worst part of starting a business. Will I run us into bankruptcy, or actually make money doing this?

No one goes in knowing the answer to that combined question. We can plan. We can plot. We can do a zillion and one market surveys. But in the end, we really don't know if people will buy our products. We just don't know.

At best, we hope. We pray. We plan. And we worry.

During all the preparing stage, I've had to do so many things. First, I've had to make different types of test batches. I use one pound of oils, which yields about 1.25 pounds of soap. A bar of soap is usually around four ounces. Some make five ounce bars. That's four bars that are over four ounces each. If the bar of soap is a nice hard bar, and if it's kept in a soap dish, one bar of soap will last about two months.

Right now, I have more soap than I can use. The nice part about making soap, there are so many things I can do with it. I can rebatch some of the batches that I'm not pleased with. Or the ones that I made using only one type of oil.

Today I made two batches of soap. One was nothing put a pure experiment. I colored it with cocoa. I wanted to see if the smell stayed in the finished product. It didn't. I wanted to see what would happen if I used a bar of the 100% olive oil soap I'd made a couple weeks ago in that soap. BTW, for those who don't know this, the 100% olive oil soap is castile soap. It's turned into a very nice white bar of soap. I cut it into small pieces. Right before my new batch was ready to pour into the mold, I added the castile soap to the mix. Then I sprinkled the top with ground coconut. Not coconut oil, but real coconut. It's the dried variety.

I was after a rocky road affect. It didn't turn out exactly like I wanted it to, but it's still usable soap. Oh, I also tried to scent it with coconut extract. Another failure. So, right before it went into the mold, I poured a little blood orange into the carrier oil and added it as a scent.

If that had worked, my next step was to make a mocha soap using cocoa and fresh coffee. I don't see me doing that any time soon after today's experiment.

My other experiment was with dried blueberries. I used the coffee grinder to grind up the blueberries. I put them into the water. Then I poured the lye into the water. Oops. At first it was a nice color. Then it turned brown, as in a burnt brown.

In the end, that soap turned out pretty nice. I added bayberry scent to it.

And that's another part of the problem. Bayberry is a nice scent. But it's a fragrence oil. I really like essential oils better. They not only smell nice, they tend to be good for the body. Fragrence oils just make us smell nice. They don't have the added bonus of healing properties like essential oils have.

With that said, there are some blends that are almost impossible to get with essential oils. If that weren't enough, sandalwood essential oil is expensive. Depending on which vendor I look at, it runs about a thousand bucks for 16 ounces. Hello! That's a little rich for my blood. Rose, otto is in the same category...about a thousand bucks for a pound of the stuff.

Those are the things that I worry about. Do I stick with only essential oils? Do I break down and use a few fragrence oils, but make sure it's clear on the label they are fragrence oils? Fragrence oils aren't harmful to most people. It's not like I'm shoving something into the soap tht is bad. But for anyone who has sensitive skin the risk of a reaction runs higher with a fragrence oil.

Some soapers claim that most customers won't know the difference. They might be right. But why not give the customer the best? They might not know the difference, but I do. Isn't it my responsibility to use that knowledge to their benefit?

That's what I've been worrying about today. And when will I have a product ready to sell so I can start paying for some of the supplies I've been ordering?

Lunch and stuff

Today I had lunch with a friend. He asked me why I hadn't been blogging.

Uh...lazy. Not enough hours in the day. All kinds of reasons. Mostly, I don't think anyone wants to read about the joys and frustrations of someone starting a business.

He assured me that I was wrong.

It's not like I've never had a business before. I have. When we closed our shop, I swore I'd never do that again.

There are a lot of headaches involved. It's up to me to make sure I have a product available. It's also up to me to make sure that I have a product that is viable in the market.

So what is my business? I'm making soaps, lip balms and lotion sticks. I'm not ready to try regular lotions. That requires a whole new concept and technique. There are too many areas to introduce bacteria, mold, etc., into regular lotion.

I'll stick with soaps, hard lotions, and even shampoo bars for a while. Later I'll think about branching out. But for now...the basics.

I've made several test batches of soap. I play with the different oils to see how they work and what type of bar the different oils produce.

I've also played around with the various ways to make soap. I've tried cold processing. It's where I make the soap, put it in a mold for 24 hours, take it out and cut it into bars. Then I have to let it cure for 3-12 weeks.

I've tried some using the hot process method. It's the same as cold process, but before I put it in the molds, I cook it on the stove for a couple hours. When I pour it into the molds, it's soap. The next day I remove it from the molds, cut the bars and let them finish drying for a week or so. But it's usable the very next day.

I love the time of having soap ready to use...but...when I stir it in the double boiler I end up introducing too much air into the mixture. I can't get those bars to be nice and hard like I want them to be. Hard bars of soap last longer, which makes customers happy.

The last method I tried was cold process in the mold in the oven. I cold process it, pour it in the molds, then put it in the oven for a couple hours. The next morning I remove it from the mold, cut it into bars. And. Oh. My. God. What a gorgeous bar of soap.

I've also been playing with the scents and things I can use to add color to the soaps.

Ground cinnamon makes a nice brown bar of soap. I don't know if it's the ground cinnamon, or the cinnamon oil in that batch, but while it's great on my hands, it's a little too tingly for the face. The man of the house has used it on his face and doesn't have any tingly sensations with it. But I love the scent of it. It has a mixture of cinnamon, lemon and sweet orange. The aroma is perky.

I've spent a few hours infusing lavender, promogranate seeds and lemongrass into olive oil and grapeseed oil. It does leave a hint of the scents in the soap. I'm just not sure if it will last very long in the soap.

I've also bought several essential oils and a few fragrence oils. I'm trying not to use too many fragrence oils. They do make the soaps smell really nice, but I like the healing properties of the essential oils. But I have to say, I do like the carrot cake soap I made on Sunday. It smells really good.

Tomorrow I plan on making several batches of soap. I have to get my supply up so I can ship some to my sister's store. She has a store in Lake of the Ozarks and her customer base likes soaps. I'll also send her some lip balms and lotion sticks. In the meantime, I need to get my logo created so I can label and package the products.

All in all, it's fun.

Eventually I'll have a website set up for my products. But honestly, right now I just don't have the time to deal with a website and the headache of trying to figure out how to do a shopping cart.

So, why haven't I been blogging? All my free time has been spent on getting supplies, making test batches, letting people try the soaps out and on and on it goes.

I'll try to do better. And in time, I'll try to get some pictures of the soaps I'm making so you can see them.