There’s no point pretending any different by this point, Christmas IS coming š
I’m waiting for my holiday soaps to harden up a little so that I can get them bevelled and generally tidied up before I take some decent product shots,Ā butĀ here’s a first look at what I did with those stars I posted three days ago. Ā Nothing fancy, but I rather like the simplicity of this one:
One week of Blogtober successfully completed – woop! Ā Today is day 8, the first day of a new blogging week as far as this challenge goes, and the first day I’ve come down in the morning and had nothing prepared to post. Ā This is primarily because I’ve been spending the last couple of days wrapping and labelling every chance I get for a couple of large orders going out soon, so it makes sense to show you my soap packaging.
These are the full sized bars, wrapped and labelled. Ā I place each bar into an individual cellophane bag with the ingredient label tied on with natural raffia.
Behind each soap I place an insert with all other mandatory information – contact details, weight of bar, batch number and best before date:
I also offer guest sized bars, which are one third of the size of regular bars. These have proved popular with guest houses and holiday rental properties, but I don’t sell them individually – they’re far too much work:
Have a great Saturday, whatever you have planned. Back tomorrow š
A couple of months ago I began supplying my soap to a local retailer, Glosters in Porthmadog. Ā Glosters is a beautifully curated gift store, stocking handmade items made in-house, locally and further afield in the UK.
They took a selection of my regular range, but also wanted something exclusive, just for them.
One half of the Glosters team (Tom) is a potter (who sells his ceramics in the store) and the store also has a nautical feel to it. It made sense therefore when Myfanwy (the other half of the Glosters team and textiles whiz) said that she would like a ‘Potters’ soap and a ‘Sea’ themed soap. Ā Ā I sent away for some sample fragrances, and in due course Myfanwy chose her two favourites.
This is the Potters Soap, fragranced with a fresh, clean scent of green florals and citrus, on a base of amber and musk. The dark blue reflects the colour of the Glosters’ logo, and for this one I kept an element of my signature drop swirl:
And this is the Sea Soap, fragranced with a Ā refreshing salty sea fragrance (of course!), designed with the sea in mind and topped with real sea salt from Halen MĆ“n:
Both these bars will be available exclusively from Glosters very soon.
Another quickie today –Ā a sneaky peek at the soap embeds for one of my Christmas specials…
More coming tomorrow – of course š
Did you know Wet Soap Wednesday is a thing? Certainly on Facebook and Instagram it is anyway. Today’s post is a quickie – the fruits of last night’s soaping session.
From left to right: Three Kings, Luscious Lavender & Christmas Tree
Back tomorrow š
I posted last year about the first bar of soap I ever made and I’ve shared the ‘how’ post again below. But WHY did I make that first batch of soap? It’s a question I’ve been asked many times and the answer is quite simple. Curiosity. A friend came to visit, and proudly showed me some soap that she’d made. I was intrigued. How on earth did one make soap at home? Up until that point I’d assumed that it was some kind of highly technical laboratory process and I don’t think I’d even wondered whether it was possible to make it at home. It was just there. Soap. From the shop.
Had I ever suffered from sensitive skin, or had problems using soap I may have looked into it earlier. It’s more likely however that I would have gone and bought soap ‘for sensitive skin’ and left it at that. Nor did I try soapmaking because of ecological or environmental concerns *blush* (yep, I know a whole lot more about that side of things now!) No, it was pure curiosity. I did a bit of internet research, and became more and more excited. There was a whole big soapmaking world out that and it was fascinating.
My very first attempt was with a soapmaking kit. With hindsight I could easily have bought what I needed separately and just got on with it, but if I’m honest I wanted to MAKE SOAP NOW and the kit sped things up for me a little. I made soap, and I loved it. So what next?
I bought some books. Okay, I’ve bought a lot of books. One of my first was Smart Soapmaking by Anne Watson. A great book, though I did find that I had to tweak the recipes slightly when I ran them through Soapcalc. In those early days I also bought The Everything Soapmaking Book by Alicia Grasso, The Natural Soap Book by Susan Miller Cavitch and The Handmade Soap Book by Melinda Coss. Since then I’ve bought many more – I’ll have to gather them together and write a round up of soaping books I think.
I also did a lot of internet research. I don’t recall too many forums or Facebook groups back then, but there were an awful lot of Internet articles offering their soapmaking advice.
So having made that first batch of soap out of pure curiosity, and doing a LOT of reading on the subject, I was hooked, and I’ve never looked back. (Well, apart from when I was pregnant with my second child. The smell of all fragrance oils made me feel so violently sick that I had to have all my soapmaking stuff – including ALL handmade soap – put away where there was no chance I’d catch smell of it – for months… They were dark days :-D)
Post by @TheSoapMine.
Source: The first step
I’m not really a bath person. Ā Every now and then, if I’m particularly tired or achey, I’ll luxuriate in a deep, hot bath with plenty of bubbles, but I’ve never been one for bath bombs. Ā Many of my customers, however, most definitely ARE bath bomb people.
I posted a while back (here) about my first foray into bath bomb making, and during the intervening months I’ve continued to perfect my recipe abd practice the process and, finally happy, I applied for a CPSR (Cosmetic Product Safety Report) to enable me to sell bath bombs last Thursday. Ā Now for those of you not in the know (or for anyone outwith the EU), in order to be able to sell any kind of bath, beauty or cosmetic product in the UK (and EU) you need to get yourself a CPSR for it. This needs to be done for every single product (and variety of that product) and isn’t cheap, so you want to be absolutely sure of your recipe before you put in that application.
These are what the final bombs look like. I was, admittedly, a little heavy handed with the colourant in this batch – I’m using these bath bomb colourants from Soaposh Ltd andĀ they’re fabulously intense. There will be a little less going into the next batch š
Now, I just need to wait for the documentation to come through (it can take a few weeks) and I’ll be making some of my customers very happy indeed!
I’m pretty sure Ā I should be doing this every month – having a list of goals would probably lend focus to my work wouldn’t it? Ā October is going to pretty busy even without this daily blogging malarkey, but this is what I’m hoping to achieve by October 31st.
So much to do, so much to learn!
Thank you for reading – I’m off now to make as start on that lot up thereĀ āāā
When I woke up this morning, I reached for my phone (and my glasses – not sure when exactly THAT became a prerequisite for reading my phone screen but it’s now automatic – arghhh) and checked my Twitter feed. At 6.30am I had no idea that such a thing as Blogtober even existed but by 6.45,Ā I was doing it.
The Blogtober Challenge is all about blogging every day, for a month. Ā You may know that I recently committed to update the blog more often but I’m still struggling to do so, mostly due to time constraints. So how on earth I think I’m going to do this, I’m not really sure, but hey that’s what a challenge is all about eh?!
As far as I can tell, many, if not most, bloggers out there are following a set list of prompts for each day of October, Ā but I didn’t want to be quite so constrained, so I’ve created my own list of potential blog post topics. So as well as the usual soapy stuff I’ll also be writing about more personal topics and day-to-day life. They may not be long posts (in fact, they’re very unlikely to be!) Ā but If nothing else, you’ll get to know a little more about the person behind The Soap Mine!
If there’s anything particular from this list of topics that you’d absolutely like me to write about, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll be happy to oblige.
Anyone else committed to doing this or done it before? Ā Please do share any tips, ideas or advice you may have (and leave a link so that I can follow you too)
I’ve done a lot of soapy things over the last couple of weeks, but they didn’t include writing a blog post. I’ve thought about it, aware of the passing days and the realisation that my plan to post at least once a week wasn’t panning out. But you know what? It’s only been 16 days. Ā I’m improving š
During the last couple of weeks I’ve given a soaping demonstration to a local ladies craft group, given two soaping presentations, had a stall at a (late) summer craft fair and, of course, made loads of of soap.
The soaping demonstration was for a local ladies crafting group. There were some 16 ladies there, and I made a batch of Luscious Lavender soap from scratch. They were fascinated by the process, and asked a lot of questions as we went along. Luckily I had taken plenty of fully cured and wrapped soap with me, as once the demo was over they were keen to treat themselves and their loved ones to a bar or two of handmade soap. Ā The whole demonstration was done through the medium of Welsh, and I’ve made a note to look up some of the more technical words and phrases before my next one (oops!)
The soaping presentations were in a local guest house, Craflwyn Hall, where visitors come to stay and walk the mountains that surround us here. I go every Thursday evening during the holiday season (usually April through October) and I absolutely love havingĀ a captive audience to talk to about my soaping obsession. I’ll write a more detailed post about it another time.
The summer fair I attended last Saturday wasn’t particularly well attended, but I was lucky in that almost everyone who visited my stall bought something. It was a beautiful day – just look at the views from my stall!
I’ve also been making a lot of soap but you know what? I’m going to save that for the next post, which will come all the sooner if I already know what it’s going to be about. Oh I’m definitely getting back into blogging mode š
Um… Ooops! It would appear that it’s been five months since I last posted here. Ā I knew it had been a while, but FIVE MONTHS?? Ā In fairness I have been incredibly busy, and posting on the blog was one of things that I kept putting off until I had more time. Well, now I have more time. Today my youngest child started school. Only two hours a day this year, but that still gives me 10 WHOLE HOURS a week to ‘get stuff done’, and high on my list of priorities is to resurrect this blog and start posting much more often.
Since my last post I’ve standardised all of my range, including the seasonal bars. Ā I may post more about these in the future, but here’s a quick peek:
Love Spell:
Cherry Blossom (Spring Special):
Afternoon at the Races (Summer Special – Strawberries & Champagne fragrance):
Criccieth Beach (Summer Special – Rockpool fragrance):
And, as there’s always an exception (or two) to the rule, there were also a couple of anomalies – one confetti bar which I made to use up all the bits of soap that I get when I bevel the bars, and one that seized badly when I added the fragrance so I had to simply do what I could with it to get it into the mould, and actually, it turned out ok:
Confetti Soap (Lemon Verbena fragrance):
Black Rock Sands (Beachy fragrance):
What else?
Well, I’ve gained two more wholesale accounts, bringing the total of retail outlets stocking my soap up to ten, and started supplying one-third sized bars to two businesses offering Ā guest accommodation. Ā Much of my time has been spent making, wrapping and labelling soap to keep up with demand. Generally this means working once the kids are in beds, so lots of late night soaping for me!
Every Thursday evening during the holiday season (April – Oct) I’ve been giving a soapmaking presentation to visitors staying in local Holiday Fellowship accommodation. Ā I LOVE being able to share the process, and it’s always really well received – so much so that I’ve already been asked to go back next year š
During May and June I participated in a European soap swap with 20 other soapmakers from all over Europe. Ā It involved making an all natural soap, without artificial colours or fragrances, and I was waaay out of my comfort zone. Ā I’ll share more in another post.
We enjoyed a lot of fantastic family time over the school holidays, with long weekends camping, trips to the beach, geocaching and scavenger hunts (despite the weather not always playing ball – I’m fully expecting an Indian summer now that the kids have gone back to school!).
Plans for the near future include getting my bathbomb assessments organised in time for Christmas, making a facial bar, and experimenting further with sugar scrubs and lip balms before I decide on final recipes. Oh, and launch the website, but you’ve heard that one before š
I’ve been using a partial drop swirl for all my essential oil soaps for a long time but for my fragrance oil barsĀ I’ve been using a mix of styles – In the Pot, Tiger stripe, Drop – Ā whatever took my fancy at the time of making. Ā As I’m now selling more wholesale soap than I am retail,Ā I’ve slowly come to the realisation that my FO bars need to be of a uniform design too.
It took me a little while to settle into the idea. Ā Soapmaking is such a creative process and half the fun is coming up with new designs and trying out new techniques. I reluctantly came to accept that I needed to choose a style and stick with it, making it synonymous with The Soap Mine brand and making my soaps (hopefully!) instantly recognisable.
I wanted to retain a link between my EO soaps and my FO soaps, while ensuring it was easy to tell them apart, so the obvious choice was to make my FO soaps using a full bar drop swirl.
I’ve been making soap with this technique for a long time – this was the first one I ever made (years ago!), Ā fragranced with coconut FO.
And these are some more recent makes – this is what my FO soap bars will look like for the foreseeable future.
Delicious (Similar in scent to the DKNY designer fragrance Be Delicious)
Oatmeal Milk & Honey:
Welsh Rose:
Blue Belle (Similar in scent to Jo Malone’s ‘Wild Bluebell’ designer fragrance)
I guess the next thing to focus on is standardising the photography :-O
Thanks for reading – back soon!
We’re nearly a quarter of the way through the year (already!!) and I’ve not been making much headway with those goals, so I decided to give bath fizzies, aka bath bombs, a go. Ā I’ve always called them bath bombs, but apparently Lush have patented the name and now everyone’s scared silly to call them ‘bombs’. I’ll continue to call them bath bombs until I come up with my own clever, witty and amusing name. Obviously…
So, bath bombs. Ā I have a vague recollection of making mini bath bombs in a craft class I took once many years ago, but this was the first time I’d attempted to make them from scratch at home. I duly did my research, and one book and a bunch of Facebook groups later I was ready to give it a go. Ā I started with the simplest possible recipe: 1 to 0.5 Bicarbonate of Soda/Citric Acid, water, colour & fragrance:
For my first try I added the fragrance oil to the dry ingredients in the bowl, and added the colour to the water:
I spritzed and mixed, mixed and spritzed, until I thought I had enough moisture in there, and, of course, I added too much, not that you can tell from this pic:
I used a spherical mould in two halves and went for it. Ā It was pretty successful initially:
But as I made more, and left them to stand a while – uh oh!
For the second batch I added cornflour into the mix. This is supposed to give smoother bath bombs, and also helps keep the mix stable while adding the liquid (ie helps keep the fizz from happening too soon). This time I added the fragrance and the colour directly to the dry mix, and spritzed with water from the bottle. I got a bit of bubbling as they dried out, but these were much more successful:
For the third lot I used the same dry ingredients – bicarb, citric acid and cornflour, but tried spritzing witch hazel (with a little added yellow colouring) rather than water.
I crumbled up the first, failed, lot, added a little cornflour and remoulded them, which seemed to work just fine.
By carefully making sure all the flawed sides were facing back or down, I managed to get a half decent picture of all them together š š
Now, I’m not generally a huge bath bomb user, so I handed some out to friendsĀ to get some opinions, and I’m happy to say they’ve gone down well. I personally couldn’t see much difference between the second (cornflour / water) and third (cornflour / witch hazel), so I’m not sure yet which is the best.
I can’t start selling yet though. Ā In the UK (and the whole of the EU) each bath & beauty product that we sell must be covered by aĀ full Safety Assessment, issued by a qualified chemist. Assessments aren’t cheap, but they are a legal requirement and are there to ensure that members of the public can rest assured that the products they buy and use are safe. So, there’s more experimentation on the horizon (I’d like to incorporate a little skin loving cocoa butter next) and once I’m happy with the recipe I’ll get my Safety Assessment done so that I can start adding them to the range – woop!
I promised weeks ago to update on my 2106 business goals, but I’ve found it so difficult to decide what my priorities should be. The days have passed and I’ve pondered and prevaricated, mainly because the next 12 months could, hopefully,Ā bring some serious disruption to my soaping. Ā When we bought our home 18 months ago, we knew we wanted to build an extension at the back, and within that extension would be a dedicated soaping area (woop!). We’ve finally had the planning permission through, and are hoping that the extension will be built this year.
All great stuff, BUT it does mean I’m unwilling to plan for expansion, or an increase in the number of retail outlets that carry my stock, for fear of being unable to keep up with demand if, as is likely, my current soaping area is out of action for a period of time. Ā It’s difficult to plan for, as it’s by no means certain that it will go ahead as planned, or if it does, how long it will take. So my goals for this year are modest and *crosses both fingers* easily achievable:
There, four goals. Nothing too taxing there is there? Ā We’ll see…
And a quick soapy pic – here’s a stack of a recent batch of ‘Delicious’, with a lovely upside down depiction of the island of Cyprus in the middle š
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon!
New Year is generally a time for looking forward for me (I’m still working on those 2016 business goals I touched on in my last post) but last week I was browsing and sorting (supposedly – I’m easily distracted š ) through my HUGE collection of soapy photographs and I came across some from the early days. Ā I can remember being SO proud of this one – my first every straight lavender essential oil soap:
Note the rounded corners – I hadn’t yet discovered the joys of silicone liners lol… You can also see the signs of a partial gel here too.
It wasn’t long before I began standardising (and simplifying) the swirls, and this was the next incarnation – an In The Pot (ITP) swirl:
I went through a phase of experimenting with mica in oil swirls on the top of the bars – though I’m not sure why I thought this was a complementary colour for the top-swirl…
When it came to developing a cohesive rangeĀ I decided to make all my essential oil soaps with a drop swirl, and so came up with this two colour lavender drop in a white base:
The colours have remained the same ever since – I use titanium dioxide for the base and two micas called ‘grape’ and ‘lilac beauty’ for the drops:
Thanks for checking in – I really do hope to be back soon with those 2016 goals!
I don’t do resolutions. Ā Haven’t done for years.Ā I can’t be bothered with airy fairy statements like ‘I resolve to get fit’ or ‘I resolve to learn a new language’ blah blah blah, which never seem to come to anything (for me, anyway)
I do, however, like the idea of having specific, measurable goals, and while I’ll cover my Business goals for 2016 in another post very soon, I wanted to share with you my two personal goals for this year. Ā (Not least because I’m hoping that having to update here will make me more accountable!)
My first goal is to run 1,000km during 2016. Ā Before having children I used to be a regular runner, but that was over six years ago, and I’ve been feeling recently that I want to regain my previous fitness levels. On paper, 1,000km seems a lot (especially as I ran a total of 93.5km last year!) but I really think it’s doable – Ā it equates to 19.2km a week, or 83.3km a month. This week I’ve run 14.5km over four days (rest days on Wed & today – Sat) and I’m planning on going again tomorrow, so I’m on track:
and the distance I run per week should increase as I get fitter. That’s the plan anyway!
My second goal is far more sedentary – I plan to read 12 novels. Ā Compared to how much I used to read, it seems a paltry number, nevertheless it will probably be a harder goal to achieve than my running one (I had the same goal last year and I read 4 (4!!) novels all year) But my evenings are almost always spent working – be it soapmaking, wrapping/labelling soap, paperwork, marketing etc etc etc. Add to that two young children, exercise time (see above!) Ā and a part-time day job (with related compulsory coursework/study) and time for reading suddenly becomes rather hard to find.Ā I hope to squeeze in half an hour reading at bedtime before my eyelids start to droop!
Number 1, and currently on my bedside table isĀ Life after Life by Kate Atkinson:
Anyway, that’s it for now. Once again it’s approaching midnight and I’m nowhere near bed. Oh for more hours in the day lol!
Wish me luck, and let me know what your goals and/or resolutions are for 2016 š
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
I’m finding it hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since I last shared one of these.Ā It’s been a busy year, and I’ve posted less often than I’d hoped I would, nevertheless, I managed 50% more posts in 2015 than in 2014 – onwards and upwards š
In 2016 I aim to post yet more often. The more observant among you may have noticed a change to the blog tagline to ‘A Soaping Life’.Ā I want to broaden the range of posts, just a little, to give me the opportunity to post more than simply what soaps I’ve made that day and/or week. I’m not sure exactly yet what direction this will take me, but I’m looking forward to exploring my options.
Lastly, I’m really grateful to those of you who take the time to read and comment on my posts – thank you!Ā I didn’t do enough during 2015 to find the time to reciprocate, but I will endeavour to try harder in 2016!
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Click here to see the complete report.
Just a very quick post to wish you all a very merry Christmas and the happiest of New Years.
Thank you so much for reading my ramblings over the last 12 months, I’ll be back with (hopefully!) much more in 2016.
Vickx
One of my best sellers is, quite literally, ‘Delicious’. Ā It’s fragranced with a dupe of the DKNY fragrance ‘Be Delicious’ which has the fresh scent of apples blended with floral / woody fragrances. Ā To date I’ve always made it with a simple ITP swirl (with apologies for the lighting on the bottom bar):
When I’m against the clock and frantically trying to get my stock levels back up, an ITP swirl is mercifully quick to execute. But, for me at least, they are unpredictable, and the colour distribution isn’t always as I would like. So I decided to try using the same colours but with a drop swirl, and this is how it came out:
I LOVE it! So that’s me with one less ‘quickie’ during busy stocking-up soapmaking sessions, but I reckon it’s worth it š
It has though brought to mind an ongoing dilemma I have about what’s most important when it comes to the soaps that I create. I put a lot of thought into what oils and butters go into my bars to give them skin-loving, super-lathering properties, but then I hear people say that they look too pretty to use. It’s a phrase I’ve heard at every single craft fair / Christmas market I’ve ever sold at. Ā I know people are being complimentary but – Noooooooooooo! Use them! Use them, then buy more š
Last year I made just one batch of soap specifically for the holiday season. Ā I swapped the usual raffia for a seasonal ribbon, and it sold out within a couple of days. Ā I posted at the time that it was a case of bad planning, but by then it was too late to do anything about it, and I vowed to do better this year.
I was super-organised, and ordered my Christmas fragrances in August (!!). I decided to make four different Christmas soaps. Four different designs made with four different fragrances. If I’m totally honest, I have mixed feelings about this lot, but judge for yourselves:
First up was Candy Cane – a mouthwatering fragrance which blends peppermint and vanilla. I liked this one so much I made a second batch, and good thing too, as it’s proving very popular and the first batch is already sold out.
Next I had a plan to create a stylised Christmas Tree design, complete with baubles. My main disappointment with this one is that I somehow had a brain freeze while rolling the ‘baubles’ and I made them two small. To me they should be the same diameter as the baubles on the top of the soap. I also tried to get clever and create some variation in the colours/designs of the baubles themselves by rolling different colours together, but it didn’t work as well as I hoped. Perhaps they would have looked better had they been larger. Anyway, they may look a bit quirky, but they certainly smell like a Christmas tree – the fragrance oil has top notes of pine needles and and spicy, woodsy middle and base notes.
The third fragrance was called ‘Yule Log’ which, predictably, is a sweet chocolate scent, with notes of bitter almonds, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla. I planned to use this fragrance oil to make my ‘Clyde Slide’ entry for the September Greatcakes Soapworks challenge and used colours which are reminiscent of a Christmas Yule Log:
Sadly I was focusing so much on mastering the technique that I forgot to add the fragrance oil – arrrgghhhh! Never mind, I made it again and now have a scented and an unscented version š
My final Christmas design for 2015 is a second Clyde Slide – Moonlit Mistletoe – in grey, silver and green. It’s a true unisex fragrance, the top notes are herbal, green and fruity, balanced with spices, amber and patchouli.
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back again soon!
