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Bar Soap 101: 8 Tips and Tricks to Make Your Soap Last Longer

Enfys Rainbow soap on a soap dish

When you’ve invested your hard earned cash in a bar of luxurious handmade soap, you’re going to want to make sure that it lasts for as long as possible. A well-made and properly cured bar will generally last longer than a bottle of liquid soap (or a bar of commercially made soap), but by following these tips you can ensure that your bar lasts as long as possible.

1. Store it properly: Until you’re ready to use it, store your soap in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. Soap can fade or discolour when left in sunlight, and it might also begin to lose its fragrance. Our grandmothers knew how to store soap – in their underwear drawers! This had the added plus that clothes would become scented by the soap – win-win!

2. Keep it dry: Clearly, you need to get your soap wet while in use, but allowing it to dry properly afterwards, and keeping it dry between uses, will keep your bar of soap nice and hard right to the very end. It’s also important not allow your bar to sit in water for any length of time.

3. Use a soap dish: The best way to keep your bar dry between uses is to store it on a soap dish or stand. There’s a mulittude of different options out there – some dishes have holes to drain water away, or ridges to ensure the soap sits above any collected water – just make sure that it drains well to ensure that your soap isn’t sitting in a puddle of water, however small. You can find soap dishes for all budgets here

4. Position: Keep your soap dish / stand away from the shower where it might be exposed to excess moisture. Keeping your soap in the shower might be convenient, but it won’t help your soap to stay dry between uses if it’s being dripped or sprayed on. For the same reason don’t leave it by an open window if it’s raining outside.

5. Use a washcloth: Using a washcloth / facecloth / loofah or similar can help extend the life of your bar by creating abundant lather which means you can use less soap.

6. Reduce friction: Handmade soap is a pleasure to use but as tempting as it is to roll it over and over in your hands, try not to do so if you want your soap to last as long as possible. Less friction = longer lasting soap.

7. Reduce the temperature: The hotter the water, the faster your bar of soap will dissolve. Cooler water is the best option for handwashing IF you want your soap to last longer.

8. Use a Soap Saver: Finally, when your bars of soap have worn right down to a sliver, think about using a Soap Saver Bag. Made from sustainable natural materials, these bags create an exfoliating skin scrubber when filled with soap ends, thus ensuring that every last little scrap of your soap is used.

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10 Great Reasons to Switch from Liquid Soap to Bar Soap

Bar soap sometimes gets a bad rap and, for a soapmaker and obsessive solid soap fan, this is hugely frustrating. There are so many good reasons to swap from using liquid soap to bar soap and here, in no particular order, are my top ten great reasons to consider switching. Please note that these points relate to real, handmade soap rather than commercially produced soap. That is a different kettle of fish altogether!

  1. Bar soap is more convenient to travel with as it’s less likely to leak or spill, and of course if you fly hand-luggage only, you won’t be forced to bin it before going through the security checks.
  2. Bar soap can be more satisfying to use than liquid soap, as it creates a rich and luxurious lather that feels indulgent on the skin. Contrary to what many detractors say, well made soap is NOT as drying as most liquid soaps on the market.
  3. Bar soap is usually much cheaper per use than liquid soap, making it a more cost-effective option.
  4. Bar soap is available in a huge range of shapes and sizes, making it easy to find a product that suits your needs. There are vegan and non-vegan (eg tallow soaps) options, soaps fragranced with essential oils or fragrance oils, or with no fragrance at all. Soaps coloured with clays, or botanicals, minerals or natural/synthetic micas, and soaps with no added colour whatsoever. There are goats milk soaps, and coconut milk soaps, soaps with added spices and soaps with exfoliants. Soaps made with fancy, expensive oils and those with more basic ingredients. There’s something to suit everyone, which isn’t necessarily the case with liquid soap.
  5. According to the McGill Office for Science and Society*, the carbon footprint of a bar of soap is about 25% less* than that of a bottle of liquid soap. This is partly because liquid soap is largely water, which makes it heavier and requires more energy to transport. Another reason is that the plastic container and the liquid soap itself both typically take more energy to be made than does a bar of soap and its packaging.
  6. Solid soap doesn’t require the use of a plastic dispenser, making it a more eco-friendly option. Bar soap is more environmentally friendly as it typically comes in minimal packaging and generates less waste than liquid soap.
  7. Well-made and well-cured (for a minimum of 4 weeks) solid soap lasts longer than liquid soap. This is epecially true if it’s kept in a dry place between uses. Again, the McGill Office for Science and Society* says: “On average, people use about 2.3 grams of liquid soap to wash their hands but only about 0.35 grams of a bar soap”.
  8. As a general rule, bar soap is more gentle on the skin than commercially produced liquid soap which, in actual fact, is usually a synthetic detergent, originally created as laundry soap. These synthetic detergents often include ingredients that can cause dryness, skin irritation or allergic reactions.
  9. Bar soap is easier to store and takes up less space in the bathroom than bulky liquid soap dispensers. Plus you get to treat yourself to beautiful soap dishes!
  10. By buying handmade bar soap you are usually supporting a small business, whether from the maker directly or a local independent retail outlet that stocks their products. This puts money back into the community rather than a large conglomerate.

*https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/liquid-or-bar-soapy-tales

Share this with anyone who still needs convincing. Oh, and do comment below with any reasons people still have for not using solid soap. I’ll work on some counter-arguments 😀

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Weekly Round up w/e 15th Jan 2023

Two bars of Fresh Linen Handmade Soap

This was the ‘proper’ 2023 first week back at work. The kids went back to school on Monday, and I was able to work full time again – woop! I made the most of it on Monday with a productive day dispatching weekend orders and making a double batch (128 bars) of a new addition to the core range – Pineapple. This has twice been a seasonal special and as Sugar Drops and Cucumber are both being discontinued this year, I’ve decided that Pineapple will take their place. It’s a fairly selfish decision, I absolutely love the fragrance and can’t wait to be able to bathe with Pineapples any time time I want to!

Other than making a HUUGE batch of Conditioner Bars on Wednesday, the week was fairly uneventful, and I spent some time taking new photographs for the updated website (coming soon *crosses fingers*) with my fancy new lightbox. I’ve decided to ditch the patterned backgrounds for good, and all product photos will now have a clean white background, like these below. Photography really isn’t my forte but I think they look a lot better than they did. What do you think?

That’s it, I’m not going to waffle on for the sake of writing, maybe I’ll have more to tell you next week, or maybe there’ll be a little ‘non-round up’ post midweek (but don’t hold your breath!). It’s enough, for the time being, for me to get back into the swing of posting regularly, however briefly that may be 😉

Thanks for reading – back next week!

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The Christmas Range 2021 – Santa’s Cookies

Blogtober 2021 – Day 29

Last (but – of course – not least) in the Christmas 2021 limited edition line up is Santa’s Cookies. It smells just like Ginger Snaps – a bit of biscuitty sweetness but leaning more towards the ginger, rounded off with nutmeg, molasses and vanilla. Just don’t leave one of these out for Santa to nibble on – he won’t thank you for it 😉

There we go, four days, four Christmas specials. Which one’s your favourite?

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow with the penultimate Blogtober post – hooray!!

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The Christmas Range 2021 – North Pole

Blogtober 2021 – Day 28

The third of this year’s limited edition Christmas specials is North Pole. This one’s a bit of a departure from the norm, but the fragrance is perfect for a winter soap. It’s a fresh, cool menthol/eucalyptus blend with a touch of camphor, pine, lemon and spice. Oh so invigorating!

Thanks for reading! Back tomorrow with the fourth and final limited edition Christmas special for 2021.

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The Christmas Range 2021 – Snow Fairy

Blogtober 2021 – Day 27

The second of this year’s limited edition Christmas specials is Snow Fairy. This fragrance was the runaway favourite amongst my customers last year, so it had to come back for a second appearance this year (with a new look, of course!)

Snow Fairy is fragrance that’s difficult to describe, so I’m going to break my unwritten rule and just copy the supplier’s description. Let’s see what you make of this:

“A captivating blend of sparkling pink snowflakes laying gently on opulent velvet moonlight rose mingles with zingy black raspberry to complete on a seductive base of warm dark smooth ambers, earthy patchouli and sheer musk”

What do you think? Any the wiser? If you know what pink snowflakes smell like, please do share! All I can tell you is that it smells absolutely gorgeous, as a great many of my customers from last Christmas will testify….

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow!

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The Christmas Range 2021 – Noel

Blogtober 2021 – Day 26

The first of this year’s limited edition Christmas specials is Noel, and I’m sharing it first because I think it’s my favourite of the lot. Noel is fragranced with a blend of rich festive fragrances including citrus fruits, spicy clove and cinnamon, and notes of sweet vanilla, patchouli, cedarwood and amber which round off the scent. This is a gem of a fragrance, and is especially wonderful for soap because:

  1. It’s a fragrance that contains vanilla that does not discolour to brown and
  2. It’s a fragrance that contains spice elements that does not accelerate (thicken up too quickly) during the making process.

A bit of a soapmaker’s dream come true really!

Available from the 13th November

Thanks for reading – back tomorrow!

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Rainbows for Christmas

Blogtober 2021 – Day 25

I promised a photo of the cut bars of Enfys (Welsh for ‘Rainbow’) that I made yesterday, and here they are 🙂 Fragranced with a sweet and fruity berry-like fragrance.

Just over 90 bars of Enfys, freshly cut and still a little tatty around the edges. Please forgive their current rought and ready appearance – once they’ve dried a bit they’ll be bevelled and generally tarted up, but they’re a little too soft to be titivated at this stage.

They’re currently out of stock, but when they’re ready – around the end of November, you’ll find them here.

I had thought to tack this photo on the end of a completely different post today, but Blogtober exhaustion has hit, and I reckon as long as I get SOMETHING posted every day, that’s good enough. We’re also going away for a few days tomorrow, and so today has mostly been a day of washing and packing, rather than composing an interesting and constructive blog post 😉

Speaking of which. When I first decided, on a whim, to take part in Blogtober this year, I completely neglected to consider our little trip away. It’s just a few days in Fishguard, on the Pembrokeshire coast, but it’s a few days away from work, to enjoy time with the children, and I’m not taking my laptop. So over the next four days I’m going to introduce the four limited edition Christmas special for 2021, and I’ll be back with a ‘proper’ post on Saturday. Which, in all honestly will probably just consist of photos of our trip.

So, short and sweet, but thanks for popping by anyway. There will be a post tomorrow, and the following three days, but I’ll be back in person on Saturday.

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A Busy Weekend

Blogtober 2021 – Day 24

It may be the weekend, but I’ve still been busy making soap. I generally try to avoid working on the weekend, but it’s half-term this week and we’re going away for a few nights, so I’m getting caught up in advance 😀

Yesterday I made 180 bars of soap – 60 Cysur, 60 Fresh Linen and 60 Rose:

And today I cut all the loaves into bars:

Yesterday I also cut the loaves of Luxury Facial Bar that I made on Friday. If you’ve never considered washing your face with soap, then this might the thing to change your mind. It’s cleansing but super-gentle, and won’t leave your skin feeling tight. Just check out the reviews on the website listing here

Today I’ve made 88 bars of Enfys (the Rainbow bar) – the most I’ve ever made in one go. These are currently sold out but are a great seller at Christmas, so I was really keen to get these made before we went away. Hopefully I should be able to get them all cut tomorrow (Monday) and then I can forget about them for a few weeks. All being well I’ll share a photo of the cut bars in tomorrow’s post.

That’s all for today, thanks for reading, I’ll be back tomorrow!

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Musings on the Nature of Soap – A Guest Post

Blogtober 2021 – Day 20

When it was suggested to me that I could include guest posts as a ‘Cheating But Not Really’ way to help with this daily posting palaver, I could have jumped for joy. Of course! Great idea! The one flaw in the plan was finding someone to actually write a guest post. Haha!

I need not have worried. Within the hour I had a guest post on the nature of soap! Lovely LOVELY Laura, a customer and friend who’s also a moderator in our FB group, came up with the goods in record time. I absolutely love this piece of writing ,and I’m very happy to be able to share it with you today. Thank you Laura!

Anyway, enough from me. Read, and enjoy.

Soap. What is soap? It’s an everyday necessity, a regular occurrence, our familiar friend. To some a status of the divide between poverty and power, to others a luxury treat, a revelation that is transformative in its magic as it takes you from a hard days work or sleepless night to a new being, fresh and filled with promise.

Yet to most it’s still just a lump of lather that encapsulates cleanliness, soft scented and subtle but mostly thoughtlessly forgettable as bubbles disappear down a gurgling drain along with the unseen nasties of daily life and it deserves far more recognition!

There are so many layers and complexities to soap, endless forms and shapes carved by its creator. A gorgeously hand poured chunk, lovingly cured and embraced with bevelled curves, a bland boring bar complete with the stamp seen a world over, anonymous blocks in hotel bathrooms and the luminescent liquid beside every unknown public sink. You see it, touch it, invite it into crack and crevasse; every stretch mark, hidden scar, palm lines and fingertip whorls unchanging as soap prepares hardened skin for what is to come and gives it a moment of unadorned peace.

Soap can be sensual, caressed onto a partners back at the beck and call of a shared shower, or loving as you rub between your child’s fingers over the sink in rushed seconds before the oven timer signals a family meal. It can be gifted, cherished in neatly cut wrapping and passed along from friend to companion at birthdays, Christmases, special occasions. It can be treasured, adored, used daily or hourly then lost for months down the side of the bathtub and re-found in a fit of joy; bubbles and aroma untouched where other goods would have perished. Soap is reliable, sturdy and honest, shrinking softly over time as you take what you need and it gives unrelenting to you, silently contented to fulfil its only purpose.

Soap makes its mark creeping onto life’s calendar unseen; regularity with a nightly shower or the final chapter on a bathroom break visit. It gives its tender touch to the first bath taken by a wailing red newborn and the final gentle wipe of the mortician. It is universal, everyday mundane and yet more often than not made with love, blood, sweat and tears, an unseen seal of dedication by its maker, yet it is unassuming in it’s simplicity setting, a brown paper parcel box waiting to be torn open and enjoyed.

The shy, unseen side of soap is that it’s essential yet humble, and if you take a single thought from these words just know that your soap is much more a part of existence than you could ever imagine and will continue to be, so give it the admiration and recognition it deserves. Choose well with what you invite into your skin for its scent will become synonymous with your own.

It is beautiful, it is basic and it’s a bargain for £5 bar

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The Purity Range

Blogtober 2021 – Day 15

I LOVE good smells. I’ve always been the one who has to sniff every variety of whatever’s on offer, and of course as a soapmaker, fragrance plays a huge part in my daily life. Not everybody feels the same though, and over the years I was often asked whether I offered a fragrance-free soap. It surprised me, actually, how regularly the subject came up. For a long time the only unscented soap I could offer those customers was Castile. Castile – pure olive oil soap – is a wonderfully gentle and mild bar but it doesn’t have the fluffy, abundant lather of my regular bars. Finally, last year, I decided to create a fragrance-free bar with that same fabulous lather.

That was was when Purity (Purdeb in Welsh) was born. I chose to make it uncoloured as well as fragrance free, and while I love my fragrances and colours, there is definitely something beautiful about a plain white bar in all it’s glory

Purity Handmade Soap

Purity proved to be a popular choice as soon as it was launched. It seemed to make sense to create a new category on the website for all the uncoloured/fragrance free options, and so the Purity range was created. If you’re not a fan of fragrance for whatever reason, you can now find fragrance-free soaps, solid shampoo, solid conditioner and a facial bar all in one place on the website.

Thanks for reading, back tomorrow when I’ll be halfway through Blogtober! Hooray 😀

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The Cut of Serenity

Blogtober 2021 – Day 7

A quick and easy post today in the shape of the cut of Serenity made on Monday – 120 bars cut on my ancient single string soap cutter! It’s quite a so process and I’m getting very close to ordering a fancy-pants multi-string cutter – yey! (Maybe it’ll be here before the end of the month so I’ve got another easy blog post 😉 )

So anyway here they are, some quick snaps of Serenity taken today, literally seconds after they were cut from the loaf:

I love how there’s never, ever, two identical bars. These particular ones have now been put down for their 6 week nap, but there’s plenty available on the website – get yours here.

Thanks for reading, almost a quarter of the way there now! Back tomorrow with Day 8

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A Return to Posting?

How long has it been since I last published a blog post? It was before last Christmas certainly, and I don’t think I’d been particularly prolific for a while before that either. SO much has happened since then, as we all know. The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the way most of us live our lives, and has affected us all to a lesser or greater extent (high five to all the parents out there who’ve been homeschooling!). My soapmaking has remained constant however. Increased, if anything. My customer base has changed of course – wholesale orders dried up completely as soon as the lockdown was announced, and all craft fairs and markets were cancelled. This website however has been my saving grace. It was still under construction last time I posted here but we managed to get it launched last February and thank goodness we did – that’s where more or less all my sales have come from over the last 4-5 months. If this is your first time visiting do have a look around before you go and let me know what you think!

With the new website came this new blog. All the old posts have been transferred over to here, and fingers crossed all the subscribers have too, but nothing’s certain so I’ll press publish with bated breath and see what happens.

The best thing to happen (soap wise!) since I was last here is the change of packaging. I’ve been wanting to upgrade my packaging for a long time but couldn’t settle on what it was I wanted to do. When I started making soap for a local company and saw that they were selling it in beautifully simple paper wrappers, I realised that I could do something similar. I approached a local printers and they designed and printed my current packaging. It’s a fantastic solution and as an added bonus, it’s fully bilingual, which I’ve wanted for a while.

Watermelon Handmade Soap
Watermelon Handmade Soap

Another big change since I was last here is the design of the fragrance oil bars. They used to be all done using the drop swirl technique which, while pretty and distinctive, wasn’t something I could keep scaling up as I made more and more bars. I routinely make 6kg batches now, poured into four loaf moulds, and the drop swirl design is just too time consuming to do effectively. I now make all my fragrance oil bars using the ‘In the Pot’ technique.

Bewitched

There have been two limited edition releases since I was last here – the Spring Specials and the Summer Specials (no surprises there :-D) –

Spring Specials Montage
Clockwise from top left – Lemon / Pepper, Maple & Cedar / Pear & Freesia / Fresh Linen
Left to right – Jasmine / Black Tie / Cucumber / Very Cherry / Pina Colada

I’ve just finished making the tester bars for the Autumn Specials:

And started gathering together options for Christmas. Well, it is July after all 😉

So there we go – a whistlestop tour of the last 9 months or so. My goal is to get back to weekly posting if possible – maybe something along the lines of the weekly updates that I was doing last year, but it may take me a while to get back into the habit, so bear with me.

Please join me on social media for way more regular soapy updates – just seach for The Soap Mine on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter. We also have an active (and very friendly) facebook community here https://www.facebook.com/groups/841016452928421 where you’ll find competitions, giveaways, sneaky peeks and the occasional bit of sillyness 😉

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The Christmas Specials 2019

The theme for this year is ‘Let it Snow’, for what are, I hope, obvious reasons. There are five different fragrances to enjoy:

Sugar Plum

Fruity and warm, this fragrance combines berries, orange and cherries with a hint of vanilla and sugar:

Sugar Plum Handmade Soap
Sugar Plum

Candy Cane

Back for a third year, this fragrance has proved so popular in the past that I couldn’t NOT bring it back.  It’s a delicious blend of buttery peppermint and sugary vanilla – do not eat!! 😀

Candy Cane Handmade Soap
Candy Cane

Snow Queen

I’ve never made a blue Christmas soap before and with a color like this I couldn’t resist a Frozen reference.  The fragrance is a complex blend combining herbal and fruity top notes, middle notes of jasmine, cinnamon and clove and base notes of amber and patchouli. It’s a really difficult scent to describe but it’s heady and exotic and perfect if you’re looking for something a little less traditional.

Snow Queen Handmade Soap
Snow Queen

Warm Gingerbread

Back for its second year, this fragrance is absolutely gorgeous and proved hugely popular last year. Ginger and cinnamon, vanilla and freshly baked cake give a warm, comforting scent perfect for winter days.

Warm Gingerbread Handmade Soap
Warm Gingerbread

Spiced Orange

A strong, rich and spicy orange and cinnamon blend, heartwarming and cosy.

Spiced Orange Handmade Soap
Orange Handmade

All available from week commencing 11th November. Pre-orders being taken now, £4.50 each.

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The Week in Soap: 27th October, ’19

Today’s weekly catch up is going to be an experiment in speedy posting, I’m officially on holiday, but won’t have anything soapy to share next Sunday and I didn’t want to miss two weeks. Every week seems to get busier and busier, but I think this week that had more to do with being off this coming week and wanting to get all orders out and loose ends tied before I go away.

The main thing I wanted to show you before I go away is…. Drumroll please…. the Christmas bars!  The theme is ‘Let it Snow’, and there are five in the range:

Ice Queen

Spiced Orange

Sugar Plum

Gingerbread

Candy Cane

What do you think?

This week I delivered my first batch of 840 bars to Babipur, a local online company who offer ethical shopping for kids (and the grown ups in their lives).  I have many more bars for them ready to be wrapped, yet more curing and more still to be made, so they’re keeping me extremely busy but I’m SO grateful and happy to be working with them to spread the love of handmade soap 😉

I was lucky enough to secure two new stockists this week.  Firstly The Eating Gorilla is the areas newest vegan eatery which has had seriously great reviews in the few short months since it opened. The owner Diane was already a customer of mine and she was keen to share her love of my vegan friendly products with her customers

The Eating Gorilla

The second, Celyn’s is an independent shop which stocks a fabulous range of locally produced goods for the home and garden. It’s located in Llanbedr, on the west coast of Wales, just south of Harlech:

Celyn’s Llanbedr

In addition to all the deliveries I had to get out this week I also had my regular monthly craft fair in Porthmadog on Saturday:

Craft Show Display

and spent most of Friday night wrapping and labelling stock for that (oh, and a special order for 40 (FORTY :-0) gift sets that were being picked up on Saturday evening – I was wrapping THEM in my sleep Friday night lol, but sadly I forgot to take a quick pic of them before I handed them over).

Finally, because we’re away next week over Halloween, my kids decided to carve their pumpkins early, and I did a bit of seed roasting for the first time.  Oh my word how have I never done this before? Home roasted Salted, Spiced and Honey  pumpkin seeds are DELICIOUS!  And the children agree, so that’s a win 😉

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Tomorrow we head off on holiday for five days – taking the children to do the whole sightseeing shebang in London.  There’ll be no soapy stuff going on, but hopefully lots of exploring, fun and… walking. Unfortunately I managed to twist BOTH my ankles this week – my right one last Sunday while out with the pup, and then on Wednesday my left one went and I took a dramatic tumble. Ouch 🙁  They’re improving and I’m hoping that all of the walking to come this week won’t make them worse.

Thanks for reading – I’ll be back in a fortnight if not before!

Vicki

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The Week in Soap: 20th October, ’19

I can’t be the only one who’s incredulous that there’s only a week and a half left of October? They say time flies when you’re having fun so I guess I must be having a whale of a time 😉

I didn’t manage to get a weekly update out last week, I posted the info about the solid conditioner bars (here) and that, it would appear, brought me to the limit of my available blogging time. However, you really didn’t miss much. I made soap. I wrapped soap. I labelled soap. I dispatched soap to retail and wholesale customers. I read about soap and talked about soap soap – in person and online.  Oh, I took the dog for a few walks as well.

Seriously though, I am living and breathing soap at the moment (with the odd foray into solid conditioner bars). I’m running out of space in my rented office space (a 20 second commute over the road above the village Tourist Info Shop – I should share some pics sometime), and I definitely need a larger making area at home.  It feels like I should be expanding my space, but there isn’t really anywhere local I could move into, and the children are still too small for me to travel too far afield.  We’ve talked about the possibility of building a workshop in the garden, which would solve the studio space issue, but I’d still be struggling for curing / wrapping / packing space. It’s one of those things that’s on the back burner, but always there, niggling at me to find a solution, so I’m trying not to fret about it too much during the run up to Christmas, and will give it some more thought in January / February (supposedly my ‘quiet’ time, but it didn’t quite work out that way this year so we’ll see).

I’ve had a big run on guest bars this last couple of weeks. The guest houses and holiday lets around here continue to be occupied throughout autumn and are always full over Christmas and New Year, so I think everyone’s getting their orders in now to be sure they don’t run out over the festive period.  I have 250 of these mini bars to cut and bevel over the next two or three days. Thankfully customers are becoming increasingly eco-conscious and don’t always want them fully wrapped – the ‘naked’ option is becoming more popular, and I always provide a full ingredients list and other mandatory info for the customer to pass on to their guests.

Lavender Guest Bars

Ooh, and I’ve added a new fragrance to the FO range… During the summer I released four limited edition bars, one of which was Watermelon, which proved to be extraordinarily popular. And justifiably so – it smells utterly delicious.  When I dropped Tutti Frutti from the core range I had room for a new regular fragrance and adding Watermelon was a no-brainer.  Here’s the very first batch of 60 in the mould:

Watermelon in the Mould

I said in my last weekly update that I would share a bit more about the Christmas range soon but I’ve STILL not managed to take any photos. I hereby undertake, no, I PROMISE, that I shall reveal the Christmas range in my next update post. *Adds another thing to this week’s to-do list*

I’m still working on my HUGE order that I alluded to back on the 22nd September.  The first batch are now all fully cured and are bevelled and ready for wrapping. There are almost 800 bars just in this first delivery to get labelled up with a cigar band wrap, and I’m so grateful that my lovely friend has been willing to come round and help me in return for a cuppa and a chat.  Now these are new to me, but I love the way they look, and I’m edging more and more towards doing my own this way. They’re eco-friendly, look great, and are quick to wrap once you get into the swing of them.  However my customer is an online only company, so these bars won’t be sitting on a shop shelf for any length of time, whereas mine would be, so I’m not sure whether it would work for my wholesale customers? I think I’m going to give it a go though. Here’s a sneak peek of some we’ve wrapped already:

Custom Order Packaging

And finally, here are some pics of cut soap and soap in the mould from the last couple of weeks…

Triple Coffee Scrub

Luscious Lavender in the Mould

Thursday Night’s mega-making session

Serenity Essential Oil Bars

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

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The Week in Soap: 6th October ’19

Monday and Tuesday of last week were the big soaping days – this was the result of Monday’s session:

180 Soap & Shampoo Bars

On Tuesday I was mostly speed (read: ‘panic’) making Christmas soaps.  I made a  load weeks ago, thinking I was really on the ball, but I wasn’t happy with them.  AT ALL  🙁

I prevariacated for a while, conscious that time was getting on and that I needed to make a quick decision, and finally this last week I redesigned and made bars that I’m happy with – phew! They’ll be released a little later than I’d hoped, but still in plenty of time for the holiday period.  I don’t have any pictures yet, but I’ll share the fragrances next week, and perhaps a photo or two the following week – maybe 😉  In the meatime, here’s a sneaky peek that doesn’t give too much away 😀

Festive Collection Sneaky Peek

A brand new stockist came on board last week, Snowdonia Nurseries in Glan Conwy. They’ve taken a lovely range of soaps for their gift shop, and shared these photos with me over the weekend:

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

The next bit of excitement last week was the fact that my Cosmetic Product Safety Report finally came through from my solid conditioner bars.  It’s illegal to sell any body care / cosmetic product in the UK (well, the EU actually) without one of these reports, which proves that your recipe has been checked by a qualified chemist and is safe to use. So although I’ve had them ready for a while, I’ve not been able to sell them until that report came through.  These are some of the ones I made during the formulating / testing process:

Solid Conditioner Bars

They’ll be available in three varieties initially, to match the shampoo bars – Bergamot & Lime, Lemongrass & Spearmint and Unscented – but more varieties will be coming soon.  Now I just need to get making!  A few people have asked for more information about the ingredients etc so I’ll be writing a dedicated post about the conditioner bars later on this week.

Lastly, I’m giving away a free mini Peppermint Scrub bar with all orders over £10 this week (while stocks last).  These are what’s left over when I make the full size peppermint bars – I use the usual amount of soap mix but because there’s so much extra stuff in there (ground apricot stone and oats) there’s far too  much to fit my regular moulds and I have plenty left over to make these little ones – a little treat for my valued customers 🙂

Mini Peppermint Scrubs

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

 

 

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The Week in Soap: 23rd Sept ’19

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!

Soap in the mould
Triple Coffee Scrub, Serenity & Lavender & Orange Solid Shampoo

Wednesday saw me making more soap again, this time 60 bars of Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils) and Lavender & Peppermint Shampoo:

Botanica and Lavender & Peppermint Shampoo
Botanica 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…

Four bars of Eryri handmade soap
Eryri Handmade Soap

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

 

 

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The Week in Soap: 16th Sept ’19 Ramping up Production

Last week I set myself a challenge to make a minimum of 600 bars of soap in seven days with today (Sunday) being the last day.   As well as trying to restock after a busy summer season and getting ahead for the festive season, I have a new wholesale customer who has placed a very large (for me) order that I’m steadily, but surely, fulfilling (I’ll share more about them once the first shipment has been delivered in a couple of weeks) and all that means I need to increase my rate of production.  This week was a bit of an experiment in masterbatching larger amounts of oils & butters and working out how to work smarter and be more productive. That 600 bars was a fairly arbitrary goal – more than I’d ever made in one week before, but  hopefully doable given my proposed new processes.

In the past, each soaping session has begun with the mixing of the lye solutions – usually enough for 8 loaves in four separate containers, which were put to one side to cool. I’d then weigh out four separate lots of hard oils & butters and melt them while also weighing out four lots of the liquid oils, ending up with four 5kg capacity buckets each containing enough prepared fats for two loaves (30 bars total) of soap.  I would then go ahead and make soap, ending up with two loaves of four different varieties, giving me a total of 120 bars each full soaping session.

This week I decided to get all the oils / butters / lye prepared the night before production, and also to make more, and bigger (four loaf) batches. This gave me far more time the following day to make soap and I was able to get this lovely lot, a total of 632 bars (woop!!) made over three separate days:

Tuesday’s Makes

Thursday’s Makes

Sunday’s Makes

So what about temperatures? I read a lot in online soaping groups that temperatures are important in the soapmaking process, but I haven’t used a thermometer since my very early days of soapy experimentation.  I generally soap cool anyway, so using lye solution that was mixed the day before isn’t an issue, and I found that I needed to sit the buckets of oils & butters in some hot water in the sink for a little while to remove any granularity from the cooled hard oils. I dream of having a large insulated tank with a heating band in the future, but until then, this works really well – hooray!

Next week I aim to make as much, if not more, again. Keep rooting for me 😀

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

PS Thought I’d share this little vase of nasturtiums, freshly picked from the garden today. I have a mass of them at the bottom of the garden where they’ve self seeded and they just keep on coming, in beautiful autumnal colours. Just lovely!

Vase of Nasturtiums in Autumn Colours
Autumnal Nasturtiums

 

 

 

 

 

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The Year in Soap: 19th Sept 2018-2019

One year.  One whole year, exactly.  My last post was on 18th September 2018, a year ago. 365 days ago.

Right, well then, erm… Hello!  Gosh, this is awkward. How’ve you been?  Sorry I didn’t write, or call, or, well, you know… I’ve missed you though. Did you ever think about me? I thought about you a lot, even considered typing a few words a couple of times, then decided it had been too long. Didn’t think I could just jump back in like nothing had happened. Thought you might have found someone new. It would be rude, wouldn’t it? To try to muscle in on your new blog relationships, when I’d deserted you without so much as an au revoir?

Just kidding, obviously.  I will ABSOLUTELY muscle in on your new blog relationship 😉

Yes, I’m back. I lost my blogging mojo there for a while, but with the launch of the website on the horizon, forcing me back onto my laptop to write about the benefits of a soap based facial bar, different types of solid shampoo bars and ‘about us (ain’t we just darn peachy)’ pages, I realised that I kinda miss writing.

So, a quick round up of the a last year in one paragraph. Christmas came, it was busy. January was supposed to be quiet, time for a bit of a break. It was busy.  Spring came and things picked up, and then summer just went nuts – as did I, I think. Over that time the facial bars have become really popular, and I recently launched a charcoal version.  The solid shampoo bars are also now available and are selling well – I’ll write a post all about them very soon.  I’ve also submitted the paperwork for a Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CSPR) for solid conditioner bars which I’m hoping will be approved in the next few weeks, so fingers crossed I’ll be able to offer them for sale very soon.  What else?  I have a few more wholesale customers (more on them in another post), lots more retail customers AND a whizzy new Facebook Group (well, since May new) which now has almost 450 members. Join here.

I’m going to go back to weekly posting, just a round up of what’s been going on, together with ad hoc posts as and when the urge strikes. I hope you’ll forgive my absence and we can enjoy soapy stuff together just like the old days 😉

Here’s a quick pic of the charcoal facial bar in the mould – I promise to include more photos in future posts!!

Charcoal soap in the mould
Charcoal Facial Bar