I’m clearly not back into the habit of regular posting. It’s 10pm on Monday and I just realised that I haven’t written last week’s roundup post (I would normally do it on Sunday evening if not before). So this will be a short one, forgive me!
I didn’t get half as much soap made this week as last because, as much as I’d like to make soap every day, there is a lot of other stuff that needs to be done when running a business, however small, and it was a lot of that that got done this week ;-D
Monday I spent wrapping, labelling and dispatching retail orders from the weekend, cutting and wrapping guest soaps and putting together wholesale orders.
On Tuesday I travelled to Pwllheli, about half an hour away, to take stock to a new stockist – Oriel Pwlldefaid. I’ve been keen to find a stockist in Pwllheli for a while so I’m thrilled that they agreed to stock my soaps. In the afternoon I made soap – hooray!
Wednesday saw me making more soap again, this time 60 bars of Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils) and Lavender & Peppermint Shampoo:
See the orange in those bars above? That should be yellow! This soap has always been a white base with drops of purple, yellow and green (lavender, lemon & lime) but I used a different yellow mica this time and POW! Bright orange!! Luckily it morphed back to yellow by the time I cut it.
Thursday and Friday I spent getting ready for my monthly Craft Fair in Porthmadog on Saturday, none of which I took photos of. Saturday’s Fair was a strange one – very quiet in the morning but much much busier late morning and into the afternoon and ended up being a great day.
On Sunday I spent a few hours masterbatching enough oils and butters for 24 loaves, and took the dog for a looooong walk in the late afternoon. (Oh, I’ve just realised that Jac the Border Collie joined our family during my blogging break, so I won’t have introduced him yet – I’ll try to rectify that very soon!) Anyway here’s just one of the photos from my walk through classic Beddgelert weather – clouds, drizzle and a glorious peek of sunshine highlighting the autumn colours on the mountains.
I took very few ‘cut’ pictures this week (another thing I’ve got out of the habit of since taking a break from the blog) but here is the current batch of Eryri (Snowdonia), more of these are on the ‘to make’ list for this week or next…
That’s it for now. Apologies for the rather rushed and superficial post – maybe I just need to get back into the rhythm? I hope so…
Thanks for reading if you got this far, back next week!
Vicki
I’m sure lots of people think soap makers just make soap!! If only! One can but dream! All the wrapping/labelling/record keeping, trying to remember to breathe doesn’t feature in their thinking. In fairness, I’m sure my perception of other people’s work is also off kilter too!
Glad your mica morphed back – it’ll be interesting to see the comparison with it’s stages and also against your original yellow. I’m just willing my recent salt bars made with a gorgeous purple that have gone a yucky grey mud colour to revert to some semblance of a pretty colour. Fingers crossed. x
I’m so sorry Jo, I didn’t get a notification for either of your comments, I’ve not been ignoring you! Yes, if only the life of a soapmaker was all about making soap eh? We’d be in soapy heaven daily lol…. How did your salt bars look in the end? I’ve not been brave enough to make to make salt bars since my early days of soapmaking when when I ended up with a crumbly mess. Obviously I’ve learnt a lot since then and I know the theory but…. 😀
The salt bars are slowly morphing back to a decent purple – thankfully! – I was a little worried there for a while!
If you do give salt bars another try at some stage, individual moulds (not loaf or slab) are definitely the way to go – eliminates the ‘avocado syndrome’. ( You know how avocados are not ripe, not ripe, not ripe, ripe for 1 millisecond, then gone over? It’s the same with trying to decide when to cut a salt loaf!!!) x