I can’t be the only one who’s gobsmacked that we’re halfway through the year? The days are already getting shorter and I’ve started thinking about Christmas specials – and all this before the summer holidays officially begin 😱
At the beginning of the month I posted some goals for June – here’s how I got on…
1. Research, and make some test batches of, lip balm ✅ After a bit of research I came up with a few recipes that I wanted to try, and made up a first batch:
Lip balm freshly pouredFinished Lip Balm
I already love this one, but I’m only keeping one for myself – the rest are going out to testers. I still have a couple of recipes to try.
2. Finish making the summer specials ✅ I’m considering keeping one of them – ‘Yr Wyddfa’ – all year round as I think it’ll be pretty popular, living as we do at the foot of said mountain!
3. Create a ‘Core Range’ post for bathbombs ✅ This link is proving so handy to send out to potential stockists!
Welsh Rose Luxury Bath Bomb
4. Post at least nine times here on the blog – oh so close! Still, I posted 8 times, and if I’d got my backside into gear and posted this on Friday night like I should have, I would have hit my target.
Or is it a Blogday? Either way, I published my first couple of posts on the 28th June 2013, Woohoo!! At that point I hadn’t made any soap since the birth of my daughter two months before, nor for a good few months before that due to day-long morning sickness and an extreme aversion to the smell of fragrance AND essential oils. (I’d had to ask my husband to put all my supplies up in the attic as even catching an accidental whiff of any of my soaps had me heading for the bathroom – urgh..)
Fast forward and that newborn is now four years old (funny that :-D) and she’ll be joining her big brother at school full time in September. That will mean much, MUCH more time for soaping and the business as a whole (including the blog!). I’m also hoping that I’ll have a bit more time for myself, and of course my poor, long suffering husband who has spent more evenings than I care to mention alone on the sofa while I focused on The Soap Mine.
I have loads of ideas for new products, blog posts and growing the business generally, so please stick with me – I hope I’ll still be here in another four years time, and I hope you’ll still be reading. Thank you all!!
Oh, here’s a little bit of soap in the mould from a couple of days ago, just because it’s pretty lol…
It’s been a crazily busy week. And it’s not letting up, hence why I’m starting to write this at two minutes to eleven at night when I really should be going to bed! It’s going to be short 😉
Monday evening saw me out at a community meeting, so I couldn’t get any soapmaking done, and then Tuesday night was kickboxing grading night.
I got my orange belt – woop!
An Orange Belfie
Wednesday night was kickboxing class followed by my weekly soaping presentation, but I did get the opportunity during the day to cut the Welsh Rose and Yr Wyddfa that I made last week:
Welsh Rose, freshly cutYr Wyddfa, freshly cut
Thursday night I had to spend catching up on paperwork and then finally, on Friday night, I managed to make something – a shed load of bathbombs for a wholesale order going out next week.
On Saturday, Dean took the kids out for a few hours and I finally got to make some soap – two exclusive custom batches for a local retailer. I LOVE making these two. The customer chose the fragrances and concept for them both, and they’re different in design to my regular restocks so I get to do something a little more interesting.
Potters’ Soap for GlostersAr Lan Y Mor for Glosters
Saturday night we were invited to some friends’ house for dinner (I always try to take Saturday night off, regardless of what else is going on) and the Sunday was Fathers’ Day, so we all went out for breakfast and spent the day together.
Sunday night I made the rest of the bathbombs for the wholesale order – phew!!
Welsh Rose Luxury Bath BombFirst Kiss Luxury Bath BombClarity Luxury Bath Bomb
Now to get them all wrapped for delivery on Friday!!
So although I’ve not been particularly productive this week, it has felt extraordinarily busy – I hope your week has been calmer. If it has, send some my way please?!
I don’t know what the weather’s been like with you, but it’s been absolutely atrocious here this last week. Rain, rain and more rain. It’s beyond the pale, it really is. I keep hearing people referring to that lovely warm spell we had in May and saying that that was our summer – it’s all over now. Arrrghhhh please, no!! Despite living in one of the wettest areas in the UK (and loving it) I adore the sunshine. It brings out my freckles and a sunny disposition that, to be honest, doesn’t often get an airing 😀
Anyway, come rain or shine, there’s always something that needs to be done in the soap kitchen, so I’ll crack on and update you quickly on what’s been happening this week. Four double batches of soap were made: Clarity and Lemon Verbena Confetti (one of the summer specials):
Clarity & Lemon Verbena in the Mould
Incidentally, remember the last batch of Lemon Verbena Confetti that featured in the post about Fragrance Oils going rogue? Well I received loads of tips about more things to try to avoid it happening, which I put into practice and got NO acceleration. I’m in the process of putting together an other blog post about it which I’ll share soon.
I also made Welsh Rose and Yr Wyddfa. Yr Wyddfa is the Welsh name for Snowdon – the highest mountain in England and Wales, and after which this area, Snowdonia, is named. Yr Wyddfa was first made last year, and I always said I would bring it back as a summer special. I’ve made a couple of changes to the design, and I can’t wait to cut it tomorrow:
Welsh Rose & Yr Wyddfa in the Mould
I also made up a big batch of my facial soap. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback from the trial bars that went out, and many more queries from people wanting to buy it, so I’ve gone ahead and made up a batch in my tall & skinny mould:
Facial Soap in the Mould
I cut it couple of days later, and was very surprised to see I’d got a double partial gel! I don’t usually gel my soap, but clearly this got much hotter in the centre of the mould than it did on the outer edges. I actually don’t mind the effect at all, and it makes no difference to the finished product other than appearance, so I’m embracing it. Don’t think I’ll be able to recreate it though!!
Facial Bars with Partial Gel
This week also saw me making LOADS of bathbombs, some of which are heading out with a wholesale order today. Clockwise from top left we have Oatmeal, Milk & Honey, Welsh Rose and Luscious Lavender
Bathbombs
In other news, thanks to the rain, there’s been far less work done on the garden than my optimistic post last week may have anticipated. Dean did manage to make the frames for the raised beds, and place them in situ, but that’s as far as we’ve got:
Raised beds
Oh, and the kids and I made some DELICIOUS chocolate chip cookies. To be honest, they were SO delicious, they didn’t last very long and we had to make a second batch. Ooops!!
Homemade Choc Chip Cookies
I may well post the recipe sometime soon!
I’m off now to make that wholesale delivery, so thanks for reading – I’ll be back soon!!
It’s June! Flippin’ heck I love the summer. Mind you, while we basked in some wonderful weather during May, June seems to have other ideas and has been a little wet so far, to say the least!
Anyway, I wasn’t expecting the last week to be particularly productive as far as soapiness goes. Dean (my other, some would say ‘better’, half) was working away most of the week and it just happened to be half-term so both kids were off school and I wasn’t able to get into the office for any decent period of time.
On Monday night I made the most of Dean’s last night at home to make some soap. This is one I’ve not made since last year, and is one of my summer specials. Traeth Craig Du (Black Rock Sands) is an homage to our local(est) beach. Just 20 minutes from home, we spend long days there in the summer, building sand castles and playing in the waves. The base of the soap has ground apricot stones in it, for a mildly exfoliating, sandy texture, and the fragrance is a refreshing marine scent. Think seaweed, rock pools and a coastal breeze – summer in a soap. Last year I made 15 bars, this year I’m making 60, so I hope it sells! I’ve only got in the mould photos at this stage – which aren’t very exciting, but I’ll post some cut pics very soon.
Traeth Craig Du in the mould
By Tuesday I had sent off all the parcels in this year’s International Soap Swap, and a couple of recipients have already received theirs. In order to avoid spoilers we’ve agreed not to share any photographs until everyone has received their parcel, but as soon as I can, I will…
Dean arrived home on Friday night, to a hero’s welcome from the kids (I let them stay up a bit later especially). I was pretty pleased too, not least because it meant I got to spend the whole day in the office on Saturday, catching up on wrapping and labelling. Not the most exciting of days, but I needed to make up for lost time.
Last night brought more restocks – Clarity & Lemon Verbena Confetti:
Clarity & Lemon Verbena Confetti in the mould
In other news, and this IS exciting, we spent some time in the ‘soon-to-be-recogniseable-as-a’ garden today. We have some scaffolding boards arriving tomorrow to build three raised beds, and today we levelled some ground ready for Dean to build the beds this week. Because of the incline there a fair bit of levelling to be done, so we’ll probably have to create a tier or two. But this feels like real progress, and I may even have sowed or planted something in there by this time next week – woop!!
Garden progress
It doesn’t look like much here, but it took us hours of digging and carting soil to get just this patch of ground nice and level. Those retaining bricks are only temporary by the way!
Building a business one soap at a time. That’s my blog’s sub-heading, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last few years. Just like putting one step in front of the other, I’ve been making one soap after another, and slowly growing the business But a lot of the time it feels like I’m flying by the seat of my pants. I knew nothing of business before I started this venture, and it’s been (and still is!) a huge learning curve. I was simply a soapmaking hobbyist who frankly, was looking for a way to make a bit of money when I realised that I really DIDN’T want to go back to the long hours of Project Management when my son, my eldest child, was born seven years ago. Seven years ago today in fact. I’m not sure where I’m going with this ramble, but it’s my gorgeous boy’s birthday today, and I’ve been reminiscing on the passing of time.
Before my boy arrived I loved my job. It was fast paced and I worked long hours, but it was absolutely not compatible with a baby – for me anyway. So I started wondering whether it was possible to build a profitable business making handmade soap. Seven years on and the business grows month by month and I love THIS job. Working my own hours is so family-friendly (and will be even easier when my youngest starts school full time in September) but I’m still nowhere near making the kind of income I had from my pre-children employment, and I don’t know if I ever will. It’s exciting, exhilarating even, and sometimes it makes me anxious. At times I drive my long suffering husband insane by fretting and worrying about how much I have to do in what little time I have available to me, especially when he’s working away and that available time is further reduced. I’m frightened of taking too much on, overstretching myself and letting customers down. I’ve been holding back on launching the website because I really don’t know if I can handle more orders than I’m already getting… A great position to be in, but it means that growth is slower than it could otherwise be.
Well, having said all that, I was lucky enough to secure two new stockists this last week. My soap can now be found in Conwy Art & Craft, 7 High Street, Conwy and Slate and Things at 38 High Street, Caernarfon. Do pop in and check them out if your in the area – both gorgeous shops with loads of lovely items for sale.
Needless to say, I’ve been doing a lot of wrapping and labelling recently, but I also made soap (of course!). Two batches each of Serenity and Botanica: (please forgive the shadows – I thought I’d try some ‘arty’ photos in the dappled sunshine but, erm, it didn’t quite work :-D)
Serenity & Botanica in the mould
And I even managed to get it cut in time to share some pics with you:
Serenity Mid-cutBotanica Mid-cut
I’ve been inundated with orders for the mini guest bars – plenty of them gone out this week:
Guest bars ready to ship out
I’m STILL in discussions with a couple of companies re boxes for my soap – I’ll be sure to share more when I have something definite to report.
On a personal note, I’ve already mentioned that it’s my eldest’s birthday today. We held a party for him and his friends yesterday, and much fun was had:
The birthday boy (and me)
He absolutely adored his Minecraft themed cake:
Minecraft Cake
made by the super-talented Julie of Stickytreats – check out her Instagram account if you love creative cake decor…
That’s it for today, thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon!
Did you have a good weekend? I’ve no idea where this last week has gone – seemed to fly by! My husband was away for a couple of nights at the beginning of the week, so although I managed to make a couple of batches on Tuesday night, once the kids were in bed, I didn’t manage to get as much done this week as I usually would… He’s away again next week, for three nights I think, and as it’s half term and both kids are off school, it could well be a rather unproductive week soapwise…
Anyhow, back to the good stuff. These were Tuesday’s batches – Clarity and Luscious Lavender:
Clarity & Lavender in the Mould
And, for once, I managed to photograph the freshly cut bars – forgive the rough edges, these were taken just minutes after cutting:
Clarity – brand new & freshly cutLuscious Lavender – brand new & freshly cut
I’m still on the hunt for soap boxes – I knew there was a reason I put it off for so long, it’s not an easy search! I’ll update when I have something to share.
This week saw the arrival of the last parcel (all the way from the US) in the 2017 International Soap Swap. I don’t want to spoil any surprises so I can’t really give anything away until all participants have received their return packages, but oooohhhhh I’m so excited to share. There should have been 15 of us in total, but 6 had to pull out for one reason or another, and the final count is 9. The contents of these boxes are stunning, and will be posted out to their rightful owners by the end of the week. Stay tuned as I can’t wait to share their contents with you….
Soap Swap boxes – woop!
My soapmaking routine is taking a bit of a shuffle this week. I’ve always been in the habit of making soap on a Tuesday night, so that I have a batch to cut at my soapmaking presentation on a Thursday night (48 hours later). However, the venue has asked me to move my talk to Wednesday nights (after my kickboxing training – eek!) for the foreseeable future, and therefore I need to make soap on a Monday night from now on. It does however free Thursday night up for soapmaking too, so my schedule from now on will mean soapmaking on a Monday and a Thursday as a general rule.
There you go, that was my soapy week in a nutshell. In other news, we spent most of yesterday working in the garden. Have I mentioned our back garden yet? It was a complete jungle when we moved into the house, and it’s slowly being tamed into submission. This was it last year – just look at those overgrown boundaries :-O (But on a positive note they hid pounds and pounds of juicy blackberries)
Last Autumn…
Then, after lots and lots of hacking, digging etc etc etc we got to this point a couple of weeks ago:
Before yesterday’s efforts…
And by the end of yesterday:
After yesterday’s efforts…
I’m starting to see potential, and am getting excited about what we could do with it. It slopes upwards, so it’s foreshortened in this picture, and is actually longer than it looks. I have dreams of a greenhouse, a seating area, raised beds for veg and salad, and plenty of flower beds. I absolutely adore gardening, and can’t wait to get to it properly! And obviously I’ll be sure to share the progress 🙂
Good afternoon from a very wet Monday in Snowdonia! We’ve had some glorious weather recently, but this morning we awoke to pouring rain and it hasn’t let up all day. Ah well, the gardens will be all the happier for it!
I didn’t post a round up last Sunday, as, to be honest, there wasn’t that much to tell you. I’d made one batch of soap – yet another two loaves of Tutti Frutti (I’m selling out as soon as it’s cured, and I need to get stock levels back up):
Tutti Frutti in the mould
And last week I only soaped twice – another restock of Welsh Rose:
Welsh Rose in the Mould
and the second time was some wedding favours for my friend who gets married at the end of June. I’ll share those in another post as I’ve not got round to photographing them yet.
I’ve been really busy with orders for my mini bars. These are really popular with holiday accommodation owners in the village and the surrounding area. Three lots have gone out over the weekend, and there’s still more to do.
Welsh Rose Mini Guest Bars
I only sell these on a wholesale basis, with the minimum order being 50, they’re just too fiddly and time consuming to wrap to make them cost effective in smaller amounts. I’m considering doing a selection pack of one of each of the core range, but I need to think a little more about the practicalities (I’m back to whether or not I can make them cost effective again)
The other big thing taking up my time over the last week or so has been trying to get some quotes for soap boxes. I currently wrap in cellphane bags, but I’m looking for something a little more professional, and which will give the bars more protection in transit / on shelves. I’d like plain white boxes with a window, so that the soap can be seen (and smelled!) and early indications suggest that they’re not cheap!! It’s a work in progress, and I’ll keep you updated.
But the main reason I’ve not made soap for a while? I was all out of Olive Oil, and had been for a week. I strongly suspect that there’s a shortage at the moment as, although I could buy plenty of Pomace Olive Oil, I’m struggling to get regular olive oil at a good price. I know many soapmakers use pomace without any problems, but I find it accelerates trace compared to regular olive oil, and that’s no good for my drop swirls. I usually get mine via Amazon’s subscribe and save facility, but they didn’t deliver April’s order, and when I went online to check what was going on, they’d cancelled the order without so much as an email to let me know ARRGHH May’s order is still in place so I’m hoping that turns up as planned. Anyway, I ordered some more from another supplier last Monday evening, and it finally arrived today…
Oh, and this blog was featured in Feedspot’s 100 top soap blogs last week. I’ll be honest, Feedspot was new to me, but it appears to be very similar to Bloglovin’. If you’re interested in soapy blogs (and of course you are, right?!) do have a look through. There I am, right down at No. 62 😀 (and it seems my location is wrong – I’ve not lived in Manchester for over 3 years, so I’ll need to find a way to change that – I’m guessing it’s here in my settings somewhere?)
I’m in holiday mode again. It’s May Day bank holiday here today, so even though Easter seems like just yesterday, we’re enjoying another long weekend, and I didn’t even think to get my weekly round up post done yesterday. (*Ahem* If I’m honest, it did cross my mind briefly last night, but by that point we were binge watching Dexter on Netflix and enjoying rather nice bottle of red 😀 It’s all about balance eh?!)
This week saw me making a start on the summer specials – Lemon Verbena Confetti. I’ve not got round to taking a photograph of this year’s version yet, but this is a photo from last year to give you an idea…
Lemon Verbena Confetti
The Lemon Verbena fragrance oil smells absolutely amazing, but it’s such a fast mover that I was in two minds whether to use it again this year. In the end my (and my customers’) love for the fragrance won out, and last Thursday I made two batches. It was worse than I remembered 🙁 I’m in the middle of writing a post about it, and I’ll definitely have some cut photos of the recent batches by then.
The rest of the week was spent fulfilling orders (inc one for a brand new stockist, Crumpton Hill Farm Shop in Herefordshire), end of month accounts and wrapping & labelling for the monthly Porthmadog Craft Fair on Saturday, including these:
This week we also enjoyed the fourth birthday of the littlest Soapminer but I’m ever so glad such important birthdays only happen twice a year!!
Oh, and guess what? I actually read a whole book in April! Yep, I managed to finish The Girl on the Train yesterday and it’s definitely whetted my appetite to read more.
Goals. Should I or shouldn’t I? January through to March, one of my monthly goals was to read a whole book. Failed on three counts. In April I had no goals whatsoever and I read a book. In February and March I wanted to create a wholesale linesheet, or at least put all the information into one place for customers to access. Didn’t happen either month, but in April I managed to post about the Core Range. Is it just a coincidence or am I subconsciously sabotaging my own efforts when I have a ‘goal’ to achieve? Why would I do that though? Am I asking too much of myself? Perhaps I should just have the one goal until it becomes a habit and then introduce another… On a personal level that’d probably work well, but I need to be a little more productive and proactive workwise, and push myself a little more, not less…
So here’s the deal – I’ll give myself just one personal goal, and that’s to read a book (I so very nearly wrote ‘two books’ before I realised how utterly ridiculous I was being :-D) My challenge now is to find a book that will grip me as much The Girl on the Train. To that end I did a quick ‘what should I read next if I liked…’ Google search, and I now have 7 books on order with my local library. I’m hoping that at least one or two will arrive pretty quickly and I can make a start.
Workwise there are a few things I want to achieve, alongside the regular restocks, and I don’t think I’m being over-ambitious here either:
Get my facial bars out to testers
Make trial batches of lipsalve
Get back to posting on the blog at least eight times during May
I also have another 200 mini guest bars, for three different customers, to be cracking on with this week and my regular Tuesday (tomorrow) night session has been hijacked by an meeting that I’m expected to attend, so I’m having to bring my soaping session forward to tonight in order to have soap to cut at my regular Thursday night soapmaking presentation. Juggling, always juggling, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Thanks for reading, I’ll be back soon with more soapy updates.
After a lovely couple of weeks off for Easter, the kids went back to school today and we’re almost back to normal. I say almost as today was the little one’s fourth birthday, so nothing normal about that :-D. We threw a party for her and her friends yesterday (Sunday) so today was a little more low key. I picked her up after her two hours at school this morning (she won’t be full-time until next September and neither of us can wait haha!) and went into town for some mum/daughter time and a BIG bowl of ice-cream. Do you think she enjoyed it?
The Birthday Girl
I usually get to go to work for an hour or two at four o’ clock when my husband finishes work, but today my mum came over with a birthday gift so we had some birthday cake and played with kinetic sand (that stuff is AMAZING – I wonder if the recipes on Pinterest are any good?). We’ve had lots of fun but tomorrow is definitely ‘back to normal’ day and I’m looking forward to getting back into the swing of work again.
I only managed one evening of soapmaking this last week – a double batch of Tutti Frutti. It was these batches that I photographed to use in my rainbow drop swirl tutorial:
Tutti Frutti in the Mould
Tutti Frutti mid-cut:
Rainbow Drop Swirl mid-cut
In other news, I’ve finally found a novel to end my reading drought and I think I’ll actually be able to say I’ve read a whole book by the end of the month. Now this is a big, huge, MASSIVE deal for me given that I’ve been whingeing on to anyone who’ll listen about how much I miss reading, but what’s at the back of my mind? Oh, only the fact that I didn’t bother with that perennial ‘read a book’ goal this month – gah!! Anyway, I’m a bit late to the The Girl on the Train party, but I picked up a copy for pennies at a table-top sale recently and I’m LOVING it. It’s an easy read, but it has me hooked, and I find myself glancing over at it at various times of the day, wondering if I could get away with hiding in the corner for half an hour for another fix…
Hope you’re all having a happy and peaceful holiday weekend. This week has been fairly quiet on the soapy front – not an awful lot going on other than restocks, blah blah… Don’t get me wrong, I adore making and cutting soap, restocks or otherwise, but it’s not so exciting for you dear readers to be seeing the same thing over and over again 😀
I took the children to visit friends over night on Tuesday, which is generally soaping night, so I brought it forward and made two double batches on Monday instead. These are First Kiss & Luscious Lavender:
First Kiss & Luscious Lavender Handmade Soap
I’m in the process of trying to rename ‘First Kiss’. It was so called because it’s so sweet (groan!!) but I’m pretty sure that some people are put off buying it as a gift because of the name. If you have any thoughts pleeeaaase share – it’s a dupe of Aquolina’s Pink Sugar, and is a a rather delicious sweet, vanilla-y / caramely fragrance.
My second soapy session was today – two double batches of Scrubby Peppermint and Botanica.
Scrubby Peppermint & Botanica in the Mould
I’ve said before that Botanica’s blend of Lavender, Lemon & Lime is my current favourite, and today the fragrance of the essential oils together was literally making my mouth water, they blend stunningly well together.
This week we finally got to make a start on the EPIC project that is our back garden. It’s pretty big, but as we’ve been focussing on doing up the house since we moved in, the garden’s not had a look-in. It’s been totally neglected for the last 20 (30?) years and making it beautiful is going to be a real labour of love, but we’ll get there.
Here are a few ‘before’ photos to give you an idea of the hard work we have ahead of us!!
The Garden – BeforeThe Garden – Before
I’ve called these ‘Before’ photos, but believe it or not these photos were taken after we’d done a fair bit of clearing already. We did take some photos when we first moved in, maybe I’ll try to hunt some out for a future post – I’m sure there will be regular updates as and when we make progress 😉
That’s it for now. It’s Easter Sunday evening and I really must go and spend some time with my (mostly) ever-patient other half! Thanks for reading, back soon!
A day late, but better late than never eh? Anyway, this weekly update will be super-short. The kids are off school for the Easter break, and I have even less time than usual to get all the things done…
I only managed one night of soaping in the last week – I made double batches of Boho Baby and OMH. I tried using a mica called ‘Arctic White’ instead of Titanium Dioxide for the white portion of the OMH, and I really wish I hadn’t, but hey ho, it’s good to try something different occasionally (shan’t be trying that one again though!):
Boho Baby / OMH
Last week I also managed to hastily put together a post outlining the core range of soaps. It’s a poor substitute for a website, but at least now when I’m asked what I have it’s all listed in one place and I can just send a link. It has however highlighted the fact that I need to do some work on product descriptions and on photography (though luckily my husband just bought a DSLR camera so that might happen soon) before I launch the website.
The second bit of news is that I made facial soap – finally! It was on the goals lists for the last two months and while I’ve been working on the recipe for quite a while, I just never got round to actually making it. I put a lot of research into this one, and while it’s colour and fragrance free, it’s chock full of some other amazing ingredients. I’ll post separately about it soon.
Now I’m (kind of) back on track goals wise, I should be thinking about April’s goals but you know what? We’re already 10 days in and I’ve got 14 days of school holidays to get through – I’m cutting myself some slack and not setting goals for April. I’ll just keep on building inventory (starting to feel a little more comfortable with the numbers on the rack now), wrapping / labelling, fulfilling orders and doing my weekly soapy presentation / monthly market.
Excuse me… where did that week go? March flew by in the blink of an eye, and this last week seems to have done so too. Thursday evening saw the first of this season’s weekly soaping presentations at Craflwyn Hall. I’ll be there every Thursday evening from now until the start of November, describing the process of soapmaking and enthusing about my obsession. It’s always a pleasure to get out and spread the word about handmade soap.
That was really the only remarkable thing about this week in soap. I managed two soaping sessions – firstly making a double batch of Welsh Rose and a double batch of Castile:
Welsh Rose & Castile
and secondly making double batches of Blodau (Flowers) and Delicious:
Blodau & Delicious
And a closer look at the Castile in its mould, just because…
Castile in the Mould
Tutti Frutti has been out of stock for a couple of weeks thanks to a couple of large wholesale orders a last month, but this week it came off the curing rack and I made a start on wrapping and labelling. Not before taking this photograph though –
Tutti Frutti, fully cured
which proved to be the most popular of all the photos I posted to Instagram this week.
You may have noticed a few recipe / review posts sneaking onto the blog occasionally, and you’ll definitely see more in the future. It’s just my way of expanding the focus of the blog a little, to include more of my day-to-day life, but don’t worry, it will remain predominantly a soapy blog 😉
And that’s it for today. I’ve got quite a few posts lined up (in my head) so I hope to be back very soon. Thanks for reading!
Yesterday (Saturday) brought the first craft fair of the year, and a lot of last week was spent wrapping and labelling in preparation. It also saw the first outing for my bathbombs, which are FINALLY available for sale. I’ve been so busy dispatching wholesale orders and restocking the curing shelves that creating labels for my bathbombs was never a priority – until the night before the craft fair 😮 I took just four varieties – Clarity, Serenity, Lavender and Bewitched (was LoveSpell):
Bathbombs, all wrapped up
I was busy Mon, Tues, Wed evenings this week, so couldn’t make soap until Thursday night, and then realised that I was so low on Olive Oil I could only make a two batches of Boho Baby (fragranced with Patchouli & Orange essential oils):
Boho Baby
Friday evening was spent wrapping bathbombs for the fair on Saturday, so I wasn’t able to make more until this evening, but I made up with it with two double batches of Serenity (Patchouli, Ylang Ylang, Orange & Lemon essential oils) and Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils):
Serenity (left) & Botanica
I now officially a yellow belt kickboxer! I went through my first ever grading on Monday evening. I had no idea what to expect and it was intense – I arrived home bruised, exhausted and ravenous, but I absolutely loved it, and I’m ridiculously proud of my yellow belt:
I missed last week’s weekly update completely, so this is me, trying to do better 😀
It’s been another busy week. I dispatched boxes of soap to not one but two new wholesale customers and delivered another order to a more local ‘new yet old’ customer. More on them all in a ‘Stockists’ update coming next week.
My new, double batch system of soapmaking is working really well. Last week I made soap on Tuesday evening last night, Sunday, making 8 batches, or 120 bars in all. This my absolute minimum for a week, and I’m still struggling to get stock levels back up to where I’m comfortable:
The lucky winner of the Facebook giveaway was announced earlier on this evening. I was overwhelmed by the number of entries and the lovely comments left on the page. I’ll be running another giveway at some point, so make sure you like and follow the page if you’d like to win some of my soap.
This was my most popular post on Instagram this week, with a whopping 473 likes. We got a bit of sunshine on Wednesday, so I took full advantage. It’s rained almost non-stop ever since 🙁
Welsh Rose in the sun
On Saturday I spent all day in the office wrapping and labelling while my other half took care of the kids, so today was more of a family day, though I did manage to fit in a 5km run. (we’re not having February happen all over again, ohhhhh no!!) This evening I cooked a traditional roast dinner, including Yorkshire puddings. I’m kind of proud of my Yorkshires, but I’m guessing they’re not eaten (or even known about?) much outside of the UK so I thought I’d share a quick snap:
Yorkshire Puddings
They are, I promise you, delicious, and if anyone wants to know how I make them (and my recipe method will give you perfect ones EVERY TIME) then just let me know and I’ll happily share 😀
Coming up next week I will (of course!) be making more soap, and testing and reporting on the Castile I made a couple of months ago. I need to write a new ‘Stockists’ post as there are now a few more on the list, and I also have the first craft fair of the year coming up next Saturday, so bathbomb labelling needs to be a priority. Add into the mix my first ever kickboxing grading on Monday evening (the next time I post, I may well be a Yellow Belt – eek!!), and a pre-school committee meeting on Tuesday evening, and suddenly the week doesn’t feel so long arrgghhhhh!!!
I got back into the swing of making soap this week. Having realised that I need to be making far more to keep up with demand, a new process was required. Previously I would usually make three different batches during an evening’s soaping, once a week, but the new routine is four batches a night, twice a week. By doubling up the batches – ie making two lots of two fragrances, rather than three lots of one, I find I can make the four batches as quickly as three, if not faster.
Wednesday was the first day of the new regime – two lots of Welsh Rose and two lots of Bewitched on the cards. But, wouldn’t you know it, I ran out of lye. Arghhhh – I felt sure I had a second tub but nope… Nevermind, I had enough for three batches: two Bewitched and one Welsh Rose:
Two Bewitched, One Welsh Rose
More lye was ordered and arrived within 48 hours, so I was able to make more today – two lots of Oatmeal, Milk & Honey and two of Blodau (Flowers):
Two OMH & Two Blodau (Flowers)
I clearly need to have a better handle on inventory. I do have have the Soapmaker 3 program, which comes highly recommended, but haven’t got round to using it yet. :-/ Maybe that should be one of April’s goals.
This week I also delivered another couple of batches of ‘Ar Lan y Mor’ (By the Sea) and Potters’ Soap – exclusive fragrances/designs for Glosters in Porthmadog:
Ar Lan y Mor / Potters’ Soap
I also finished off wrapping and packaging the mini guest bars for Plas Colwyn Guest House right here in the village – these are just a small selection of them:
Mini Guest Bars
We celebrated St David’s Day on Wednesday, and as is traditional, I made up a big batch of Teisen Gri (Welsh Cakes) for the village school show.
Welsh Cakes
I’ve been asked again to share the recipe, so I’m planning on getting that written up this week and posted here on the blog.
This is my little three year old in her traditional ‘welsh lady’ costume, singing her heart out at the front of the stage. She’s normally pretty shy, so it was wonderful to see her enjoying her moment in the limelight…
Little Welsh Lady
I also managed to get out for ONE run this week – 5km on Friday morning. If you saw the post about my goals for March, you’ll know that I want to run at least 30km this month. Easily doable, IF I can get my running mojo back where it was in January. Throw some motivation my way?
Remember a month ago when I posted about my success regarding January’s goals? It had been a good month but, was I too full of hubris? Was I perhaps a little smug? Were February’s goals desperately ambitious and unattainable? I can only assume so because, my friends, February was a washout. Suddenly (seriously, without warning :-D) the end of the month arrived and was devoid of goal success.
So, here’s how bad it was:
Create a wholesale Line Sheet. Wholesale enquiries are increasing and this is a high priority ‘must have’. Oops Still need to do this asap
Make a test batch of facial soap Oops Still want to do this asap
Make 3 Spring Special soaps Oops Have decided against this – I’m struggling to keep up with the core range at the moment
Post 8 times on the blog Oops Only 6 posts in February 🙁
The personal goals weren’t much better. I was aiming to run 50km during February, and actually managed *ahem* 12km. I seriously lost my running mojo very early in the month. I’ve missed it though, and have arranged to go with a friend tomorrow morning, so hopefully I’ll get back into it soon enough. I also wanted to read more. Well, I have read more, but still not a whole book, so back to the drawing board with that one too. Lastly, I wanted to do some baking. Well that much I did do. I make a rather lovely Victoria sponge (but rubbish photograph) for my mum’s birthday, and a couple of batches of Welsh Cakes (which I’m going to post about very soon!)
Victoria SpongeWelsh Cakes
So, a couple of small wins in a big sea of fails un-met challenges 😀
I’m not, however, despondent. By no means. I’ve been ridiculously busy during February. I’ve taken on two new BIG wholesale customers, and I’ve been snowed under with making, wrapping and labelling. It’s all good stuff, but it does feel like I’m running to stay still, so I firmly believe that goals are still a good and necessary thing, helping to keep me challenged and moving forward. To that end, I’m going to reset last months business goals, excluding the one about Spring specials:
Create a wholesale Line Sheet. Wholesale enquiries are increasing and this is a high priority ‘must have’. ASAP…
Make a test batch of facial soap
Post 8 times on the blog
And as far as personal goals go, I’m going back to basics – run 30km and read a book. That’s it. I’m taking part in a Library Bingo Challenge which is encouraging me to get to the library more often, and which might motivate me to find the time to read more often, but I’ll post about that another time.
Wish me luck! I’ll be back soon – I will smash that ‘8 post goal’ this month LOL
I almost didn’t post a weekly update this week as it’s been a strange one, work-wise. The children have been off school for half term, and although the youngest only goes for two hours a day, I’ve still missed that time to ‘get stuff done’. Days have been spent entertaining the children, and evenings have been mostly spent wrapping and labelling for a couple of BIG wholesale orders I have going out this week. Then we had a weekend away visiting family, so I have very to share on the soapy front.
But then I remembered that I needed to show you the cut of the Tutti Frutti that I made last week:
The children start back at school tomorrow, so I’m hoping this coming week will be far more productive on the soaping front, and keep an eye out for my February update coming up in the next couple of days.
I have at least 6 draft posts half written, but somehow it’s got round to Sunday again and I’ve not managed to even think about finishing any of them…
It has, however, been a busy week… I’ve been busy wrapping and labelling the bars for the shop in Didsbury, all 150 of them. It’s a big order for me, but I’ve got a week or two to get it all together.
On Thursday I agreed to supply a local guest house with soap on an ongoing basis. It’s self catering accommodation, and they want to leave both full sized and mini bars for their guests. The first lot of regular bars has been delivered, and this coming week will see me cutting and wrapping the mini sized bars for delivery before the weekend.
I’ve made another five batches this week, three on Monday – First Kiss, Love Spell & Peace:
First Kiss, Bewitched, Peace
That little heart was added for Instagram as a nod to Valentine’s Day, as I didn’t get around to making any Valentine’s specials this year.
And two batches of Tutti Frutti on Friday – I’ve been waiting on more fragrance oil for this one for quite a while, and I’m nearly sold out, so I got a couple of batches done at once.
The colours on the top of the finished batches look a little muddy, but I’m hopeful it’ll be fine inside *crosses fingers*
And tonight I made more bathbombs – I literally finished cleaning up 10 minutes ago, so these are very rough and ready photos, but you get the first peek:
Bewitched:
Bewitched BathbombsLavender Bathbombs
I’ve not managed to take many soapy photos this week, but here’s the Blodau (Flowers) bar from last week:
Blodau (Flowers)
The kids are off school for half term this coming week, so it’ll be interesting to see how much I get done (especially as we go away on Friday for a couple of nights) but hopefully I’ll get an update out on Sunday at the very least :-/
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