arkangel

Remember, your botanicals aren't going to behave like they do in M&P - they'll turn brown when they react with the lye and sometimes can look very unappealing. I suggest a basic soap, minus the botanicals to start. For ease, I like this one for beginners:

Basic Soap

Olive Oil - 16 oz.

Coconut Oil - 16 oz.

Crisco - 16 oz.

Water - 16 oz.

Lye - 6.8 oz.

I use it for my basset hound's email list to make photo Christmas postcards of my basset each year to send out. I've done it the last 2 or 3 years. What parts don't you understand? Is it the file to import for the addresses?

This is a great site for starting a small business in Florida

http://www.floridatrend.com/small_biz.asp

It also has some excellent general small business articles and tips too!

Absolutely beautiful - I wish you much success!!

You can get very large size bowls from restaurant supply houses. Most times they have a cash & carry for the general public.

:laugh2:

Some others I came up with are

Virginia Commonwealth Candle Company or Shoppe

ok, so you didn't buy Old Virgin...

I actually like just Commonwealth Candle Company - it's catchy!

Potomac River Candle Company

Old Dominion Wax Works

Old Virgin Candles

I don't often use fragrance oils, but the times that I do, I only add .5 oz per pound and I get a very scented soap! Your temps are fine. When are you adding your FO?

Absolutely that's too close in naming. If their's is trademarked, they could and might sue for trademark infringement. True, there are lots of 'Old Dominion...' names, however seeing that you both make candles, that name is not going to fly.

This looks very nice - thank you! I have some rose absolute that I am very stingey with, but I may part with a few drops for this recipe!

Hi Michele - I don't think you had the PM function enabled on your account. I emailed you though.

Nancy

I buy mine from a local chocolate factory. I don't know where you are in Tenn., but give these folks a call. You may be able to buy it directly from them, or they can give you a supplier.

http://www.chocolatelovers.com/

You could always do a Monoi bar. Mmmmmmmm

what's tkb trading ???

Pigments for everything!

http://www.tkbtrading.com

ooh ooh - pick me, pick me! I just saw these

Bitter Creek has them

how about here

http://www.paramold.com/catalog.asp?gpcid=22&cid=62&scid=187&ItemID=139

Where does one find natural colorants such as carmine and carotene?

tkb trading has powdered carmine and many colored clays - also colored micas and oxides

You'll need a transparent gif for your image. You can do this in photoshop - if you don't have it, you can download a 30 day demo at adobe.com.

The same file will not suffice for printed labels. For this you'll need a high resolution version of your file. PM me if you need a reasonable quote for both.

Those are nice blends. I find the opposite, actually, from the person above. My lavender sticks like crazy, but my orange fades out - even 5x orange. I anchor it w/ a little litsea. I also discount my water a little more in citrus soaps as I find they seem to be soft soaps for a while otherwise.

You may want to experiment w/your lavenders, too. I prefer Bulgarian lavender as to me it smells a bit more floral.

Love the color! Did you use oxides for that?

oops - I see you used select shades. I was too excited about the color to read all 4 pages of posts!

If you use a lavender infused oil as the major oil in your soap, along with chamomile tea for the liquid, it will be a very mild soap with a nice scent.

I made it once - it came out jet black. I used a teaspoon of activated charcoal per 16 oz. of oils. My son used it on his skin at the time. He thought it was cool It was too drying for me.

I like the KC on this - it stands out and there's a nice space under the 'scentsations' part to put a candle scent for a label or whatever.

Sorry - my bad. I was thinking of another formulation with poly. Cylco alone with fragrance oil works as good as Febreeze. I don't think Febreeze eliminates odors - it just replaces it with a different one

Ok, I'm on firefox and a mac but I get no popups

For the rest, yes, you'll need to upgrade or get another host. Excellent hosting can be had for as little as $3.50 a month.

Other than that, from what I can see - I'd drop down the beige bar on the left to cover your whitespace below instead of cutting it off. You can always put a product photo in there, or a slideshow of products if you don't have any more links at this point.

Also - your photos need to be bigger. Your photo on the main page is foreshortened. It's out of proportion....and as I said, it needs to be larger. Your product photos on the other pages need to be larger too, or at least an 'enlarge' link so folks can see them.

I'd have contact info on every page, if not just small on the bottom.

You'll need a shipping page or an explanation of your shipping somewhere. You advertise $6 flat fee shipping, which is great - but what if someone orders 12 candles to ship to Canada? You need to put an asterisk on that and a disclaimer somewhere.

Speaking of disclaimers, you should have one of those too - for both the candles and B&B items.

You're off to a good start though. Getting all your info for a site is hard and everyone has to start somewhere. You just need some modifications at this point!