BlogtoberSoapers Archives

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Vicki — 9 Comments

A Name Change (Blogtober 8)

For the last few months I’ve been working on a mountain design. I live in the heart of Snowdonia, practically at the foot of Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) itself, and wanted to make a bar of soap that might appeal to the many walkers and climbers who are drawn to the area.

The last version of Yr Wyddfa looked like this:

Although they proved to be really popular (and I sold all 30 bars in record time) I wasn’t happy with the design. Firstly, Snowdon doesn’t look like that. Secondly, (faint of heart look away now) it looked like a big ole pile of dog s**t. Not what I want people to be thinking when they look at a bar of my soap!!

So, anyway, a few weeks ago I made another attempt using the sculpted layers method. (I need to make another batch soon so I’ll try to do a tutorial at that point, but in the meantime there’s a great tutorial here by Danica of Seife & Anderes. I had thought that this method would give me uniform bars, all with a similar looking mountain scene, but nope, I think I need a fair bit more practice for that to be the case…

New version, to be renamed 'Eryri' — Yr Wyddfa reinvented…

Although these mountains look much more realistic, they still don’t look like Yr Wyddfa, and are clearly not uniform. Pondering this dilemma I had a lightbulb moment. I’ll just change the name of the bar from Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) to Eryri (Snowdonia). We have so many mountains in Snowdonia, why limit myself to trying to reproduce one peak when I could potentially represent them all? 😀

The colours aren’t quite right in these, I think I need to revert to my dog s**t colours!!

So, introducing Eryri (Snowdonia). It’s fragranced with a blend of peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus, patchouli and lime essential oils – a fresh, outdoorsy scent.

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!

Vickx

Posted on October 8, 2017 by Vicki — 9 Comments

A Name Change (Blogtober 8)

The last version of Yr Wyddfa looked like this:

The colours aren’t quite right in these, I think I need to revert to my dog s**t colours!!

So, introducing Eryri (Snowdonia). It’s fragranced with a blend of peppermint, rosemary, eucalyptus, patchouli and lime essential oils – a fresh, outdoorsy scent.

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!

Vickx

Posted on October 7, 2017 by Vicki — 8 Comments

Social Saturday (Blogtober 7)

Welcome to the weekend folks! I’m not only celebrating the fact that it’s SATURDAY but also that I’ve got to the end of the first week of Blogtober without too much difficulty.

As well as writing and posting, I’ve also been doing a little blogosphere housekeeping this week. I’ve been working my way through the list of blogs that I follow and have stopped following anyone who hasn’t posted since the beginning of 2016. I was REALLY surprised, and a little saddened, at how many there are were. Saddened because some of these blogs were people that, at one time, I absolutely loved following and reading, but I hadn’t even noticed how long it had been since they last posted. Circumstances change, lives move on, and I do wonder what happened to those people I admired so much. I hope they’re all ok…

Anyway, I realised that the number of active soapy / skincare bloggers that I follow has seriously diminished, and wondered how to plug that gap. As ‘Social Saturday’ (the concept of inviting people to share their profiles / accounts via your own) seems to have become a bit of a thing on various social media recently, I thought I would offer up this post as a place where anyone with a soap / skin care / bath & beauty type blog could share their blog and perhaps find new ones to follow themselves.

So! Don’t be shy – even if I already follow you, please share your blog in the comments below so that others can find you and hopefully follow you too.

And don’t forget there is also a dedicated Facebook group for soapmaking (and other types of skincare) bloggers here

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow 🙂

Vickx

Posted on October 5, 2017 by Vicki — 12 Comments

Soap Samples (Blogtober 5)

Every time I cut a loaf of soap – I always have a fair sized chunk left over at the end of the loaf. Not so thick as to be a saleable bar but perfect to cut into four and use as sample bars. Their uses, as a general rule, are twofold

1. As free samples to be popped in the box when anyone places an order and

2. To be given out to retail outlets with each wholesale order, one per fragrance ordered, so that customers can get a good idea of the fragrance

I ALSO have left over the very thin end piece that I slice off the loaf when I begin cutting it:

and recently I started wondering how I could use them. A couple of years back, at Christmas time, I had bundled up various end pieces, wrapped them up in raffia and sold them as sample packs at market:

But I wanted something a little ‘neater’, and then I remembered this blog post by Emily at Soap & Restless, and went on the hunt in the kitchen for a suitably sized cookie cutter. This was the result:

I’m still not entirely sure what I’m going to do with them. Maybe cut a hole in each one and string them onto some ribbon or raffia? Or just use them as prettier free samples? It would be an easy enough process to continue slicing that last chunk into thinnish slices, so I should still be able to get four samples out of each end chunk… What do you think? Which sample would you prefer to get with your order?

Back tomorrow,

Vickx

Posted on September 16, 2017 by Vicki — 9 Comments

Blogtober’s Fast Approaching…

I’m in the process of building a list of blog ideas to keep me going throughout this year’s Blogtober blogging bonanza. For those who don’t know, the goal of Blogtober is simply to post on your blog at least once a day during October. I did it last year and didn’t find it too difficult, but I don’t think I can re-hash all the post from last year, I need some fresh inspiration!

And this is where you come in my soap-loving readers. I’d welcome any suggestions for posts that you might have, but, more importantly, I was wondering whether you would be so kind as to throw some questions at me? Anything at all (well, kinda, lol) I thought I could then do a post answering them, and then I’ll only have to think up another 30 blog ideas… :-/

If anyone out there has their own Soap and/or Bath & Body blog and would like to join in the fun, there are a few of us in the Soaping Bloggers Facebook Group taking part, using the hashtag #BlogtoberSoapers. It’s a bit of a challenge if you don’t normally post regularly, but it really is doable, especially if you do a little prep beforehand so you have ideas to hand, and maybe even have some posts ready-written and saved for emergencies.

So pleeeaaaase post me some questions – anything you like – and I’ll answer them next month – pinky promise 😀