TallTayl

Brambleberry sells liquid soap pastes that you dilute and scent. http://www.brambleberry.com/Liquid-Bases-C15.aspx

Jcandleattic... Same here. I may use EO's in salt for a warmer, a room spray, or in rare cases in a wax melt. Candles never worked well enough to justify the cost&price. Ubure, you are so right! It takes an awful lot of resources to produce essential oils! Most of the appeal, it seems, is the overwhelming momentum of the "natural" movement. I have never found any studies or toxicology reports about combusted essential oils. Would be pretty curious to read though.... What off gasses as essential oils are burned? I have tried to live by the wise words of my dad, use the right tool for the job. My interpretation of that is to use oils designed and engineered for candles.

Love it! I'd wear it

Sometimes those shows are great. Sometimes a total bust. It depends on so many variables. If you have not done a show in a while, and are having misgivings about jumping in to a huge one, why not apply for a few smaller ones to get your confidence back and test ut your booth set up?

Good idea Ravens . Keep them coming

My pleasure, Steve. I hope it helps with your formula. I was bound and determined to find a way to make my "impossible" formula swirlable A few close soaper friends sent their fast-moving formulas to me, and the method worked just as well with theirs as my own. They now use the method successfully too. It takes a couple of tries to get the timing and feel, but once you observe how it works, I think you'll gain some decent working time. Let me know how it goes

OK. First measure out your hard hard oils into the soap pot. Next, measure the liquid oils into a separate pot/pitcher. Make the lye solution. When the lye solution gets clear, and is still super hot, pour it into the pot of solid oils. Stir once in a while to move the heated, melted oils around and expose more melting oils to the lye. Depending on your batch size, this can take from 2-10 minutes. The soap 'batter' in the pot will start to look thick, like cake batter. Pour in the liquid oils, reserving a bit to mix your fragrance into (optional). Stir, and use your stick blender in short bursts until you see it look uniform. At this stage, my formula thins to about the thickness of whole milk. Add the fragrance (optional), split to color, etc. and pour into your molds. Notes: When it is very cold in my shop I may melt the cocoa butter and sometimes the shea first. I could let the heat of the lye solution do the job, but sometimes it is just so cold the lye solution does not have enough oomph to melt it enough IMO. I can get around this by adding the hard oils to the pot one at a time, in the order of their melt point (cocoa butter first, then shea, palm and finally coconut for me). I tend to work on several batches at a time, all in different stages of the melt, so I choose to do the hard oils in one go so I don't forget anything. If the hard oils seem to get too cool during the melt, I can heat the liquid oils a bit before adding them to the pot. (isn't it nice to have OPTIONS!!?) This only happens when my batches are super small (like 16 ounces) and my shop is very very cold. When the hot lye solution (I use 40% usually) mixes with the hard oils/butters the temp when it all finally melts is 120*F. I use a whisk and stick blend as needed to finish the job if some of the hard oils remain as soft blobs. The thickness is similar to cake batter in my formula which is pretty heavy on solid oils. When I add the liquid oils a(reserving a bit to mix the fragrance with) the temp in the soap pot drops to 100, then climbs steadily back to 110 as I stir/stick blend. The thickness of the whole solution is like light chocolate milk leaving me plenty of time to thoroughly mix fragrance and split for colors. Sometimes I have to chase the mixture with a stick blender to get it thick enough for thicker swirls. I took temps for several batches over several days and the temps were all consistent within a degree or two. *caveat* when making milk soaps I do melt the hard oils to a slurry (not fully melted they still look opaque) before adding the milk/lye solution. Since I use a totally frozen block of milk by the time the lye melts the milk, the overall solution doesn't have enough heat to melt the hard oils well enough in my formula. The rest is the same. I can achieve nice pale milk soaps with swirls galore this way.

The 'Thermal Transfer' method has solved a load of aceleration anxiety for me. My formula should be soap on a stick every time, according to all the myths, as it contains pomace, shea, cocoa butter, castor along with coconut and palm. I SF at 6-7% usually and use a 40-45% lye solution. I can multi color swirl florals like those mentioned above. Very basically, you use hot lye solution to melt your hard oils, then add liquid oils last. If you think it might help i will post my whole process....

Way back when i put one of those metal candle toppers on a sputtering candle and it settled down quite a bit. I don't remember any specifics about the candle other than the topper was a flat metal thing with cutouts.

They should be able to tell you the INCI if you contact them. It will be on their Certificate of Analysis for the batch of Shea (Which is usually required documentation by the main distributor to a reseller). We need to know what the product is as formulators since each kind can behave differently in our products. You spend a lot of time and $ making products. If you switch suppliers and their shea is a different species your finished product may not be the same, possibly forcing you to reformulate. It is a good idea to melt and filter any unrefined shea butters you use. I have found some.... Interesting... things in unrefined shea.

Did you try any of the four listed in the first post? They all offer coverage in the US states.

What is the INCI of the shea you received? That will tell you what species it is. Butyrospermum Parkii is the most commonly available variety from retailers. It is often beige when unrefined, but can be yellow, and ends up pretty white when refined. Shea Nilotica is a softer, yellower variety with an INCI of : Vitellaria Nilotica (Shea) Fruit Butter. This is a different butter than the common shea,and is not available as readily or as inexpensively. Lotioncrafter carries it. Then another relative of shea that is also yellow, but crumbly dry, is Koangnan (INCI Pentadesma Butyraceae Seed Butter ), sometimes called 'Painya'. This is my favorite of all for effortless powdery dry, velvety skin feel. This is super hard to find, but is a cadillac of shea-like butter.

Is your phone number dedicated to the business, or shared with your personal phone number? If it is shared, i'd get one dedicated to the business right away. Calls like that would drive me and my family nuts. Many businesses have posted operating hours, after which the calls go to voice mail. It is tempting to want to be at your customers' beck and call 24/7, but that is, as you have found, a formula for burnout and exhaustion. Unless you are on call for some emergency service it should be perfectly fine to give yourself a break. Turn off the phone and enjoy your time off.

In the US i use McKenzie Crest. For custom printed and sized boxes. http://www.mckenziecrest.com/box/

Welcome!

That's where i go too.

A drop of key lime.

Keep us posted Lisa. A nice little formula i used for a lather additive project used just 50% Olive, 25% Palm and 25% Coconut. Tests were done at 5% and 8% superfat, along with 25+ different additives believed to improve lather. The simple little formula was pretty nice. Easy to work with. And lasted a decent amount of time in the shower. Soap making is a fun journey. I hope you love it =)

Whoa mama that's a piece of art.

In a word, Marketing. Figure out who your ideal customer is, then get in front of them where they shop. With start ups you really have to get out there and market yourself. The online store is where most returning customers come to repurchase my stuff. In the online candle and B&B business where you can't smell or feel it is very challenging to gain new customers. Not to mention, there are so darned many people competing for the same customers! It is not one of those, "If you make it they will come and buy" worlds any longer. Home parties (and open houses) can be a great way to get going! You have a target group of people who are in the frame of mind to shop in a place where you can give the infomercial, and little competition to distract them. Farmers markets, fairs, festivals, celebrations, etc. where loads of people gather to have fun can be great if you do well in person. Personal networking... The more people you know, the more you can expand your potential customer base. A new person will take the word of a friend almost instantly. That same person will often ignore billboards and ads that costs thousands to millions of $. I never found Facebook to be a great media for gaining new customers. Facebook is crowded and passive. It is hit or miss if people even see your posts. Keep at it. It takes energy, time and money (and sometimes a lot of luck) to find the right formula for you.

If you ever find a texture that you love and want to DIY, nizzy shows you exactly how here: http://nizzymoulds.com/SiliconeMouldInsert.pdf I use Smooth-on RTV silicone for stuff like this. Their latex works too. http://www.smooth-on.com/

I do not prime my square braid going into molded tapers or pillars. It primes itself as it soaks up wax in the mold. (No wick pins). Finding i don't need to in containers either. When i finish the candle i usually dab a bit of wax onto the lighting part of the wick to make it easier to light.

Super pretty.

I don't specialize in M&P, but do have a very old bar (15 years or so) received as a gift that i found in a moving box recently. the bar looks the same as the day i received it having been packaged in a mylar zip bag with the foil on the back and clear Side on the other like what people use for bath salts or laundry detergent. i never opened it, so it has been hermetically sealed this whole time. The packaging is not the most attractive, but it was effective against moisture loss. Eta a link to an example: http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/ProductDetail.aspx?CatalogID=9&GroupID=443&CategoryID=793&ProductID=6201&ProductName=Zip+Pouch%3a+16+oz.+Clear+Side+%26+Silver+Side

Be very careful when using pheno. Gloves and eye protection at a minimum. And don't add it to the main batch of what you are testing, or even to a bar of soap you intend to use later. Always pull a sample off and do not recontaminate the batch. http://www.btps.ca/files/PDF/MSDS/Phenolphthalein_Indicator_Solution_528.00.pdf http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/MSDS/phenolphthaleinsolution.html http://avogadro.chem.iastate.edu/msds/phenolphthalein.htm All that said... Testing for free lye in a finished, cured bar soap is very simple and safe. Wet a finger, rub it on a soap surface, then touch the soaped finger tip to your tongue. Zap, free lye. No zap, no free lye. This is a much more reliable test than pheno which may or may not be used correctly. You will know if you get a zap as it will feel like you are licking a 9 volt battery.