Shani

I don't like rebatching, however, I found a method that worked perfectly for me. I made a lavender/eucalyptus batch last week, and when I cut it into bars, I noticed chunks of lye. I didn't skip any oils or anything, so I figured things did not fully incorporate; lye/oils ( bad night;) ) Instead of shredding the entire batch, I cut it into cubes, put them into boiling bags and placed the bag into a pot of boiling water on the stove for 1 to 1 & 1/2 hours. The cubes melted beautifully! Whenever I've done a rebatch with the shreds, I would always get a few shreds that did not fully melt and you can see them in the finished bars. To make a long story short, the cubes melted fully and the bars are very nice, IMO of course. check it out http://www.mygiftblvd.com/lavendereuca.html

Let me tell you, my first few batches were hideous! I started soaping in 2000 learning from reading books and manually calculating lye needed for each batch. But once my common sense kicked in:grin2: and I realized what I was doing, I poured my first batch into a tupperware container; then graduated to a shoe box! ( I remember distinctively, it was a Nine West, size 8 1/2 shoe box lined with parchment paper and I thought I was the sh*t!) At the time I didn't know forums like this existed! If i would've known, I would have used a wooden mold!

Thank you guys for the compliments! It's making me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

Hi Lisa! Thanks for the tips. I moved the "scent of the month" so that it is more visible. Thanks for the compliments Meredith! I did have the scent descri on a full page, but customers were saying that they did not like flipping back and forth; from the order page to the scent desc page, so I decided to make it a bit smaller so that they can have the scent page open as they are viewing the scent selections that they are going to purchase. I hope that makes sense. SoapInTheCity, you are making me blush...thanks. As for the olive oil, I only use it in one of my soaps, and that's the olive oatmeal. I am slowly working the rbo out the door and moving to a very different, well tested recipe. I use around 60-80% hard oils in my *new*recipe.

Thanks Lindsay, I did play around with the nav bar to have a "side" navigational bar, but it didn't look all that great to me. Maybe I'll be able to come up with something at a later date.

Hi Ginger! I tried to pm you, but unfortunately you can't receive them. Email me at: gift boulevard @ comcast dot net. Thanks Shani

Thanks for the opinions. It is greatly appreciated.

92 views and only 1 comment? Are you guys trying to tell me something?:whistle:

Thanks faerieglow! I tried to keep with the same color scheme; but moved quite a few things around and I just want to make sure it's still user friendly and visually appealing. Thanks again!

Hi all! I need your help. Can some of you log onto my site and let me know your thoughts? I changed things around a bit to make it more search engine friendly. I need some feedback as far as design from viewers other than friends and family. As always, your help is greatly appreciated! http://www.mygiftblvd.com Shani

Natural vs Not Natural is an ongoing debate. To make it short and sweet, if you are using fo's in your soaps, you can always say they are 98% natural. HTH Shani:)

Let me just say that learning how to build and maintain my site is the best time I ever spent building my business. Yeah, it can become time consuming and tiredsome, but well worth it in the end. I can edit, change words around and apply whatever changes I want, whenever I want without the hassle of contacting a web designer. It may not be the most professional site, but hey, I'm proud of it! (Deep breath here:grin2:) So with that being said, I use adobe photoshop and golive. Took a long time to get it just the way I wanted, but I'm almost there! And I use godaddy for domain and hosting. Maybe more than you wanted to know, but hope it helps anyway Shani:)

Yeah, they could work on that wording a little or explain it more in detail. Right now it sounds as if it's mainly soap and some other sh*t that they just throw in there!

Very well said. IMO it is not necessary to offer so many versions of similar products, i.e. bath & body oil, massage oil, goat milk lotion, satin & silk lotion, etc. Choose one of each, offer a very of scents and you're good to go;) Of course, this is only my opinion. HTH Shani:)

I agree...

Check out the siggy!

I do my swirls the same way...

I will be sending my first newsletter out this week:) I collected email addresses via my site and have a pretty good list. I'm going to include a few handmade product facts, tips, contests, coupons, etc.

Myself and my customers enjoy a strong smelling soap, so with that being said, I add no less than 1oz ppo...

They look good! Welcome to the insanity!

I use mal's free cart service. It works very well for me.

Those are just BEAUTIFUL!!

I use a potato beveler to smooth out the edges of my soap. Some use a professional beveler; I think Brambleberry carries it. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong. HTH Shani

LOL! What town in Jersey? I'm in Central Jersey.

I interchange grape seed and sunflower oil in my bombs. I have some from over a year ago using the grape seed and I have not noticed any rancidity in the bombs.