Candybee

Is this about acrylic molds? If so, soapmakingresource.com sells acrylic molds you don't need to line. They do recommend for stubborn soaps to put the mold in a warm oven for a few minutes to help the soap release.

Soapy bubble- the recipe in the article is not a salt bar recipe. Salt bars and brine bars are two different soaps altogether. The brine soap or soleseife is a regular soap you use brine water as your liquid. You can use your regular bath soap recipe for making it and don't need to increase your superfat. Think of making your normal bath soap recipe and using sea water instead of distilled. Hope that clears up any confusion.

Here are some I like to use in my summer candles: CS has some good ones that throw really well in parafin, soy, and palm: Beach Linen Coconut Lime Sex on the Beach Hawaiian Breeze From Peaks: Ocean - I mix this with some of their Freesia and name it Boardwalk Breeze (good in parasoy and palm) Beach Daisies? forgot the name

"Hybrid" and "Fushion" are the popular contemporary adjectives for today's blends in cooking, cars, drinks, etc. I am more surprized it took this long to start calling it a hybrid wax. It could also be a new industry term that is being used. They just started using the term. They have been selling parasoy waxes for years.

I remember seeing an apple lavender fragrance somewhere.. anyway sounds like an intersting combo.

My best sellers are Lavender and Lavender Chamomile or anything with lavender in it. Lavender is a classic and universally loved by both men and women.

Those sound lovely. I love tumeric in soap. I get a nice golden yellow with it. Did you get lavender buds for the lavender? I use the lavender buds to make my own lavender water. You can also make rose water with the dried rose petals too. I use these for CP soap. You can also use the floral waters for misters.

Sometimes the best soaps come from the mistakes I make. Hoping yours turns out nice.

Nice rack!

I only did 2 markets this weekend cause it rained Friday. But Sat & Sun's sales more than made up for the lost market day. Had some good Father's day sales. Again my big sellers are salt bars, men's shaving soap, shampoo bars, and any soap with clay in it. Scents selling are herbal botanical types like lavender & chamomile, spearmint & eucalyptus, lemon verbena, any citrus really, and aloe soaps. Forgot that cucumber melon is coming back-- or maybe it never went away but I sure do sell a lot of cucumber melon soap. Maybe its the French green clay and aloe I put in it-- but really customers just love classics. Lavender is selling too of course. Wish something fun happened but not much does. The market I do on Sundays is in a county where people just love their dogs so you see a lot of them strolling the market.

I have come to realize over the years that when it comes to mixing scents for my candles the simpler the mix the better. Generally I don't use more than 2 FOs for each blend. More than that is the rare exception. I came to realize that I wasn't selling anymore of the complex blends but ended up with more unsold candles. Plus I was always running out of several FOs during the height of the candle season in the fall. So I narrowed down my scents and now keep them more simple. I also end up with a whole lot fewer unsold ones. When it comes to my soap scents thats another story altogether. I do lots of blending and combinations of EOs and FOs. I guess one day I will end up simplifying those too. Its just that I have been making candles much longer than soap and have learned many more lessons with them. Makling soap and choosing scent blends is still in the 'honeymoon' stage for me!

So how did the festival go and what did you buy? Details please!!

I'm working on salt bars. Got an order for a wedding plus I am almost sold out from this past weekend. I am turning into quite the saleslady pushing salt bars. LOL The order is for pink and green salt bars in spearmint and eucalyptus. So I guess I will be working on that tomorrow. Not today. Today I had to mow the lawn. It takes a lot of energy out of me so I am bushed. The soap can wait til tomorrow!! So what are you all working on this week?

Hope its okay to add my two bits. For a basic bath bar I also like to start out with the basic tried and true formula: 50% hard oils 50% soft oils But here is where I break those down and build my recipe: Of the hard oils I use: 25% creaminess oils - these are solid fats that give your bar that creamy feel such as: lard, palm oil, tallow, shea butter, cocoa butter, mango butter 25% fluffy lather oils - these are solid fats that give your bar lots of bubbles such as: coconut oil, palm kernal oil, babassu Of the soft oils I use: 40-45% basic conditioning oils - these are liquid oils that give your bar high conditioning and or gentle conditiong such as: olive oil, sunflower oil, avocado oil, grapeseed, etc. 5-10% creamy and/or luxory/exotic oils: these are also liquid oils that give your bar a little something extra such as more creamy lather, extra conditioning such as: castor, sweet almond oil, or exotic appeal such as: argon, manoi de tahiti, etc. Here is a simple sample recipe using this formula: 45% olive oil 25% coconut oil 25% palm oil 5% castor oil This will give you a nice creamy, bubbly bar of soap. Simple recipe, simple to make. Notice that the hard oils, coconut oil and palm, make up 50% of the bar and the liquid/soft oils, castor and olive, make up 50%. The creaminess and lather oils are both 25% giving you a good balance of creaminess to lather in your soap. Last, the olive will give your soap lots of gentle conditioning while the castor will add extra conditioning and creaminess and boost your lather as well. I love castor oil in my soap. A little goes a long way. Too much and it can kill lather or make the bar too soft. I generally use only 5% in my basic bath soap. I use higher amounts only in specialty soap like shampoo bars or high condtioning bars. Here is a more complex variation on splitting the hard oils and the soft oils down: Soft oils (making up half the recipe): 35% Olive Oil 10% Avocado Oil 5% Castor Oil Hard Oils (making up half the recipe): 15% Coconut Oil 10% Palm Kernal Oil 20% Palm Oil 5% Shea Butter Total: 100% How about an exotic triple butters soap recipe but using the same formula: 45% olive oil 25% coconut oil 10% mango butter 10% shea butter 5% cocoa butter 5% sweet almond oil Notice the hard to soft oils are still split 50/50%. The hard oils; coconut , mango, shea, and cocoa butter are split, half for lather (coconut oil) and half for creaminess (mango, shea & cocoa butter). The soft/liquid oils are also split in this case 45% is olive and 5% giving the bar high gentle conditioning (olive oil) with the extra creaminess (sweet almond oil) of a high end luxory bar. Note: I actually like to split my coconut oil with palm kernal oil. I find my skin like 15-20% coconut oil so the rest I make up in PKO. Both CO and PKO have similar properties; they produce lots of fluffy lather and help harden your soap. If you happen to be sensitive to cococut oil exchange it or part of it for PKO or babassu. I always come back to this split when testing a new recipe or trying to figure out one that needs tweaking. When considering using new oils or ones you haven't used before always run them through a good soap calculator and adjust the oils for the properties you want in your bar. Its a good idea to get into the habit of always running your recipe through a soap calculator. I use soapcalc and run my recipe through that every time I make soap. I also make notes and put in all my additives. Then I print out my recipe. Each batch I make has 'papers' so I can go back to it and see how it was made.

Those are all great tips! I have one to share. I keep a clipboard and pen on my sales table at craft fairs and farmers markets. Customers can sign up and leave their email addy. I add their emails to my address book so when I send out promotional emails with a link to my website they can shop and save right away. I have drummed up hundreds of dollars in sales just from a few emails!. Just make sure you customers can opt out of future emails if they want.

I'm a big fan of freebies so I downloaded Quickbooks SimpleStart from Quickbooks. Its easy to use for a small business. It has all the basics for keeping track of your biz but it does not have the inventory part. You have to purchase a version of Quickbooks that has that feature. But for a freebie it sure has a lot. You can also purchase accessory programs for marketing and writing checks if you want to spend the money. Since I am a soapmaker I have been toying with the idea of buying a Soapmaker program. There is a hobbyiest version and a soap business version. The program has the capability of creating and saving soap recipes and keeping inventory so you know how much you are using and when to buy more supplies.

I also use Avery DesignPro. Its a free download of Avery's. I always get compliments on my labels. Use it for all my labels; soap, candles, lip balm, lotions, etc. I even use it for my promotional materials; biz cards, flyers, pamphlets, tabletop signs, brochures. I like that it is easy to learn to use very quickly and is so versatile.

I keep my soaping oils seperate from my candlemaking oils. I use the empty candle glass boxes with the dividers in them to store my bottles. Each box is dedicated to a scent type; floral, fruit, citrus, bakery, fall, holiday, etc. Just easier for me. I don't need to keep them by supplier as I know who the supplier is for each fragrance. When a fragrance gets low I just pull the bottle out and put it in my 'oils I need to order' box. I think it would be too confusing for me to sort by supplier. I prefer to sort by scent type so I can see at a glance all the ones I have for a particular type.

I'm lucky the local health food store has bulk items. They sell fine grain sea salt in one of their bulk bins for about $ .75 cents a lb. I've been using it in my salt bars and its very nice. The salt grains are similar to table salt, very small, almost powdery.

Thanks for your input Proudmarinemom. I plan to make some when I get some time. I was planning to use coconut oil but you should not have to use a high amount like a salt bar. The soapers who tried it posted that you have to cure the brine bars for at least 4-6 months or you don't get any lather. Just think of them like curing castile. A long cure and they will be awesome. Something you said about your salt bars being scratchy-- are you using fine grain salt? Thats the only kind I use. Its not scratchy at all. The bar feels like a smoothe polished river stone. You shouldn't be having any scratchy salt bars. I think it must be the salt you use. I wouldn't even use medium grain unless you want an exfoliation soap. I know some soapers like to use a larger grain. I remember when I was first researching making salt bars that you should use a fine grain. I know about the dead sea salt. But I have read some have successfully used dead sea salt as a percentage of their salt. I don't know how much would be a good percentage thou as I have not tried it.

I use the CSN wicks as well. Tried others but the overall burn was not the same. I too like the textured tops of palm. I use both crystal container palm and glass glow. A while back someone posted about how much soy you could add to your container palm wax before the crystal pattern disappears. I know from my experience that 25% soy will kill the crystalline pattern but don't remember what the right amount to keep it was. The only reason I would add soy is to help my candles burn longer. This would have to be tested as I don't know from personal experience if it works.

Or how about wine and rose?

Didn't someone blend chocolate and rose together a while back? Or was that champagne and rose for Valentine's day?

This recipe has been going around at the Dish and it looks like something I would like to try: http://candleandsoap.about.com/od/SpecialtySoapRecipes/fl/Soleseife-or-BrineSalt-Water-Soap-Recipe.htm?nl=1 Its not the same as a salt bar where you add the salt to your soap batter. For brine soap you add the salt to your lye water. You use a regular soap recipe and it doesn't have to be high in coconut. Some folks at the Dish tried it and liked it. Just wondering if anyone here has and how it worked for them and what they think.

Sorry to hear that Steve. I had to cut back services and products a couple years back when my sales went south. It has been really hard to get sales going but they were nothing like they were a few years ago. Sales are picking up for me this year so hopefully I can add more product and services starting next year. I hope you will still lend your expertise on soaping Steve. I like reading your posts.