BLSoaps

My vote is for blending Peppermint & Rosemary. You can do it with EOs or FOs. I don't like Rosemary on it's own much, but it's nice with Peppermint.

Some EOs overheat, and others don't. Usually the ones that accelerate trace are often heaters as well. Cinnamon, Clove, the spices often are overheaters. Lavender slows trace for me, something I wish it wouldn't do, since I can't stand the stuff. Peppermint is nice and patient. FOs are the same. Some heat, others don't. So without know what you used, we can't really help determine if it was your EOs doing the superheating or not.

I would imagine it'd leave a mess in your bathtub. I don't know what type of micas these are, but if they're lip safe, they can be used in lip balms. I also like to use some in lotions every once in a while. Micas can be used in soaps. I don't use them very often, but I know a lot of people do. Glitter in soaps, while nice in theory, end up being scratchy. There are a lot of different grades to glitters. I haven't used them much, but when I did, I got the Ultrafine (they also have fine) grade from MMS.

I know you said you looked into overheating, and don't think it is, but that's honestly what it sounds like to me. I've only had this happen a couple of times, and it was from a superheating FO.

Hi Shannon! I'm so glad you jumped over here! Everyone on this forum is wonderful, and they love to help! (to everyone else) I've had the joy of getting to know Shannon over the last couple months. We talk on the phone about once a week (which I just love!), and I have to tell you, she is a wonderful marketer without even trying! She'll have a lot of great advice for this group! Shannon, I really like the "Sleeping Waters Soaps". I know you don't necessarily want soaps in the name, worrying that it will limit your line. It's up to you to decide. I have it in my retail name, and I've never felt it limiting at all. It might explain why we sell more soaps than anything else though! LOL! I also like it just as "Sleeping Waters". You can always add Bath & Body, or Bath & Beauty to another part of your logo/label to help clarify. Remind me to send you a copy of the new logo design we had done where we added something like this. So Sleeping Waters has my vote! Most people also wouldn't misspell it!

Keeping the light fluffy consistency through out any temperature conditions is going to be the hardest thing for you to nail down. Getting it to be quick absorbing and non-greasy is mostly choosing the right ingredients and oil blends. Do you still have the original mousse product? I'm wondering if there was some kind of modified starch product to help it keep that fluffiness (for lack of a better word ). It would be the heat that would make it collapse more than anything. Now you've got me curious! I've got some lotion base I'll be packaging up soon. I'm sure I'll have a little extra. I do know our base whips up very nicely, and holds its form in normal temps. I'll see if I can stick some of the base into my Bosch, whip it up, then I'll stick it out on the patio tomorrow. We keep trying to break 90, so if the heat will make it collapse, I'll know quickly. I'll try to get this done tonight. I've got a lot on my plate this weekend. If you don't hear back from me, holler. I've added it to my to do list, but that list is long, and keeps growing faster than I can knock it down. Only reason I'm on here is because I'm waiting for some things to cool before I can do anything with them. But seriously, if you don't here back from me, send me a PM reminding me! LOL!

I'm pretty sure Mountain Majestic Sage has all of them.

I occasionally use a hydrosol as part of a lotion formula, but not very often. It should be added during the cool down portion (but calculated as part of the water phase) so the fragrance is more likely to stay intact. My favorite product to use hydrosols in is actually a facial spray or toner. I like mixing different hydrosols with witch hazel, and using it as a toner. In lotions, it very well may be more cost effective to just use the EO rather than the hydrosol. I pretty much only use Rose Hydrosol in lotions, because it's just too cost prohibitive to use the EO. I can't even afford a teeny tiny bottle. But I LOVE the smell of Rose Hydrosol. I save this for facial lotions, very upscale. It's not something I'd slather all over my body, no matter how much I want to sometimes! HTH!

I guess I've never understood completely why so many people are so against private label. I understand taking a lot of pride in your work, and wanting to receive acknowledgement for it. Having your info on the labels also can help pull future business back to you. But I've found that at least 75% of my wholesale accounts request private label. If they own a store front, this isn't an uncommon request. By having THEIR own info on the label, that gets the people back in their store, and purchasing more candles (or soaps, or B&B, etc). I charge a private label fee, because it takes time to create new labels for them. I also try to insist with some kind of small text clause (usually near the address section), something similar to the following. "Made for XYZ Store by Body Language Soaps". But no contact info of mine goes on the label anywhere, just theirs. I've had a few referrals come through stores, and I usually give them some 'store credit' for the referral, as a thank you. But I don't turn away business just because they don't want my info on there. In my opinion, a sale is a sale. The main reason stores don't want our info on the products is because most likely, they're charging slightly more for the product than we're selling them for on our websites. They'll lose their customers if they come and buy directly from us. Wholesale accounts, while the profit margin is lower, cuts your labor time down so much, that it's really hard to grow while doing retail only. Okay, I can tell I'm definitely starting to ramble! It's been a long day, and I really should have gone to bed 20 minutes ago! I hope I made sense. Basically, by not having our contact info on the private labels, it guarantees the customers come back to the shops to buy. Which results in our wholesale accounts becoming successful and growing. It's a good thing. Really.

Most hydrosols are significantly LESS than their EO counterpart. Where are you looking that they're more expensive?

I am SOOO jealous! You wanna bring it to my house for a test run? I've got about 5 logs that need cutting, and my cutter broke. I tightened the darn wire too much, and it snapped. I've got my dad coming over today to see what he can rig up on it. (gotta love handy dads...hubby gets handy every once in a while, but dad's better)

There are probably lots of advantages and disadvantages that could be listed for both. Design A: PROS: You have more table space that you can play around with since the sides will be more open to you. CONS: People may be more intimidated about coming "into" your booth. Design B: PROS: Your products are right out there, drawing immediate attention from everyone that walks by. CONS: You won't have as much table space, since the sides may not be useable, but you could set this space up to write out orders, pack orders, hold extra stock (since you'll probably have less of each item out in front). Also, depending on how wide or narrow the aisles are, you may run into issues with customers blocking the aisle with the B set up. The owners of the show may or may not take offense. It's just something I thought of. I don't really do shows any more. In Utah, most people come shopping for crafting ideas, not products. And most show prices (for 2-3 day shows) run at least $130. With a low return, and young kids to schedule around, we've decided it's not worth our time and effort. We've usually only made 2X our booth fee, sometimes less. I really like the idea of Booth B, but there a few issues you may run into. If you've got more than one show, try both.

It's a full time business for me time wise, but we're living off DH's income so we can re-invest everything back in and grow. But I'm kept very busy. Between making products, filling orders, marketing, website maintenance (both our sites are completely redone, and now active! ), paperwork, taxes, bookkeeping, etc. Yes, it's full time. Some days more than full time! But I love it! If we were to try living off of it right now? It'd be scary. Trying to live solely off a business like this, it's hard. The volumes you'd have to be making and selling is astronomical. I calculated it out once, and was floored. To bring in $40,000 profit (this is money going just to you), you'd need to bring in $100,000 in gross retail sales minimum. I'm going by retail prices only, as wholesale is completely different, since it's a much smaller profit margin. You should have a 50% profit margin on your retail sales, but I'm going with 40% because we all know things come up that dig into that profit margin! So, 100K in gross sales per year. Let's say your bars are $5 each. You need to sell 20K bars of soap. 385 bars per week, 77 bars per day (not including weekends). Just to maintain production of what sells (this is very simply to replace the amount that sells), you would need to make 20 lbs of soap a day. Is it possible? Definitely. Are you anywhere close to being there? That's only a question you can answer. Other factors that come into play when you get to this kind of volume... Storage space. Assuming this is CP soap, they should cure for 3-6 weeks before being sold. We'll split the difference, and have them sit for 4 weeks. You'll have to have storage room for, at the very least, 400 lbs of curing soap. I also calculated out how much oils and butters I'd go through every month. As well as lye, water. I'd have to have room to store all of that. I figured at least a month's worth at a time, most likely more. We're talking several drums of Olive Oil, pallets of Shea & Coconut. So massive amounts of storage space. Probably several employees. I'm not trying to scare you out of trying to make a full out go for this. I've just always believed knowing and planning what you're going to be getting into is very very wise. Otherwise you end up burning out long before you reach your goal, in most cases. Most people, if they don't have a spouse's income to fall back on, tend to scale back their full time jobs slowly. Go to 32 hours, then 20, and so on. Other tips, any place you can outsource, figure out if it will be worth the time you save. If it does, then do it. I wish you luck! It's possible, but you have to REALLY want it, and you should go into it with your eyes WIDE open!

6 ml of flavor oil in 20 tubes is between 6 & 7%, which is VERY high for any lip balm flavor oil. The highest recommended percentage I've ever seen recommended is 5%. WSP recommends a MAX of 1%. Many sweeteners for lip balms, if too much is used, it will taste bitter. Even unsweetened flavor oils, if too much is used, it will impart a bitter taste to the lip balms. Some flavor oils, like many chocolate ones, will actually burn when too much is used. At 1%, just slightly less than 5 ml will flavor 16 oz of base. If you're looking to flavor 20 tubes, or 3 oz, you're going to want to use 0.88 ml. So I'd either toss what you've made so far (even the other batches you've made at these ratios, because chances are, someone will have a reaction to them), or do the math, and melt them down, adding more base, to get them to 1%. I know math sucks. But if you're going to be making stuff, you NEED to do it. MMS has a Fragrance Calculator. It doesn't have Lip Balms as a product type, but you can just pick any product, it will still do the math. For 20 tubes, you'll need a minimum of 3 oz. I put in 3 oz of whatever the first product listed was, shower gel, I believe. Then it asks for an FO. I just chose one of the FOs, didn't really matter which one. Then next page pulls up the math in a nice easy to read chart. Since you know you want to use 1%, and use milliliters to measure it, follow the 1% line across to the milliliters column. For 3 oz, it pulls up 0.9 ml (rounds to 1 decimal point). Voila! The math is done for you! I really don't intend to sound harsh, just some guidance. When a manufacturer recommends a max usage rate, it's always for a reason. You could run into serious problems by not sticking to those guidelines. Check out the calculator. It should help a lot with the math. I hope the flavor oils end up working for you. Try them without the extra flavoring at the recommended usage rate. I bet they'll work a lot better for you!

I've actually never HPd my liquid soap, so I can't compare them at all. The CP process is discussed frequently in this section. If you do a search, it should pull up a thread in which I posted the "instructions" I follow when I make the soap. I don't remember the name of the thread, but I remember that the topic line didn't give you any clue what was being discussed. Put Cold Process Liquid Soap and I'm sure it will come up. It has been some time in the last couple months.

I agree that the question was a bit confusing. I know I didn't reply to the poll part because I honestly feel I'm a little of both. I LOVE making soaps, lotions (even candles, even though it's only been a handful of batches for personal use only). I wouldn't even consider selling them if I didn't love it. If I wanted a job that I didn't like, well, I'd at least choose something that pays me a little better! However, if you're making the soaps and candles to sell, you can't sell them if you don't have them made. On the other side of that coin, simply making them doesn't sell them. You've got to have a balance of both. I know the monotony of making lotions every day sometimes gets to me. I sometimes have to force myself to restock my "stock" bases. That's actually one of my projects for this afternoon. But I had a day earlier this week when lotions were the absolute last thing I wanted to even look at, let alone make (I'm sure many of you feel this way about the stuff you make the most as well!). So I pulled out my soap molds and my lye, and I made four different batches of soap. Then next day I was able to jump back into the lotion making with no disgruntlement. So I've always felt variety is important, however, so is consistency. I know, confusing, and I'm probably waxing a little philosophical. But the original question steered my brain down this path with its own philisophical nature. For myself, I make sure that I do something business oriented every day. Something that is geared towards actively bringing in money. It's often writing a newsletter, or posting some ads. Then I also make sure I do something creation wise every day. Make lotion, lip balms, soaps. Fill Flavor Oil bottles. Then if my day isn't completely taken over by those two tasks (and my household and family are running smoothly, and not a total disaster ), I try to do some of the other business tasks that are always always necessary, but don't directly bring money in. Like paperwork (), website work, ad copy, label creation, etc. All necessary tasks, but don't always get done every day (which my overflowing desk is a testament to!!!). So this is my very long answer to what seemed like a deceptively simply question, that at least to me, wasn't simple at all.

The faieries have been haunting me a bit this week, too. Have they multiplied lately? I've been seeing lots of complaints about them. But I finally got around to making some soap (it's been AGES). Made four different types, only 1 turned out exactly as I pictured it. One turned out okay, just not quite what I envisioned. And then one, well, it's just weird. Even when DH saw it, he asked "what's up with this one?" He did think it was kind of cool, but I doubt I could ever recreate it. It looks like it's layered, except it wasn't. :undecided Sounds like we need a Soap Faierie Convention, and stuff 'em all full of chocolate!

Looks like the Lindsays are thinking alike on this one! I liked the wave texture behind the blue labels. It made my eye draw to the text on it, which IMO is important. However, with the cherry scented one, Honestly, I skimmed right over the one with no picture. After reading someone else's comment, I had to scroll back up, and look again. I completely missed it. The Colors were too similar, and it just become a solid and ignorable block. If you were to change the color to something that made the text section "pop", I think it would work well. And now I'm so not going to be any help at all. I liked the wave texture over the island picture background. And even if you were to change the color on the cherries one, I still really liked the actual pictures of cherries. See? No help whatsoever! LOL! While I love polls, and seeking other people's opinions, I've always found that I end up going with what I leaned towards in the beginning. Everyone is going to prefer something different. I think here, consistency is going to be the key? Are you going to be able to come up with picture for each scent if you go with the pictures option? Are you going to run into copyright issues on them? There are a lot of legalities there, so you have to tread carefully. Go with what appeals to you the most. What you like the look of, and you're comfortable with work wise (hunting down pictures for each scent could take quite a bit of time). I love those jars, btw!

Thank you! I never looked that closely at the options on that last page, other than schedule a pick up. Thank you so much!

Is there a way to print two shipping labels from one paypal order? I could have sworn there was, but we can't find it. The order is too big for one box, so it's in two. But I only have one payment to print a label from... Can anyone help Quick?

Oh, and I've talked to both HP and CP liquid soapers, and that scent always seems to be there. To whomever asked about the Olive Oil content...was there a reason why you asked? Some knowledge I don't know about perhaps??? I'd love to know! I make it a goal to learn something new every day, and I usually don't even have to go hunting for it! LOL!

Basically, the normal way to make liquid soap, via hot process, is like hot process bar soap. It forces the saponification, and it's usable right away because of it. Cold Process Liquid Soap (CPLS) is like CP Bar Soap (CPBS). You stick blend and stir until it's that nice thick paste and no longer separating. Then it sits and cures for two weeks. Then you dilute. The overall process takes longer, but it's easier for me to make with my boys (6,4,3 - so they're always underfoot). It doesn't need to be watched over nearly as much as the HP method. During the stirring time, once I get it to a thicker consistency, I let it sit for 15-20 minutes at a time, then come and blend again. Once it stops separating, then I know I'm done with Phase One. And for Diluting, I pour Boiling distilled water over the paste in a large bucket, and then stick it back in my cabinets. Usually, a week later it's fully dissolved. It's not fast in the beginning to end stages, but it's less involved, and therefore a time saver for me.

Some have and some haven't. But I've had the smell with all of them...

My vote is for Handcraft Market. Sharon is the owner (Prairie Annie) and on the CT forums. She's been helping me rebuild both my websites. www.blsoaps.com just went live last night. There are still some tweaks to do, and some products that need new pictures take before they're added, but it's in pretty good shape. I've been a pretty demanding customer and Sharon has been wonderful through the whole thing. She has a very strong talent for visualizing what you're looking for and making it come alive. Our Soapers Workshop site should be going live with it's new look and shopping cart either end of this week, or early next week. I would recommend anyone looking into a website to talk to Sharon and Frank. They've gone above and beyond for me and everything I've needed for our websites!

I've got a request for cherry soap. I was hoping someone has soaped Wild Cherry from Peaks, and can tell me how it behaves. Thanks!