RobinInOR

Fragrance and essential oils should always be cut with other oils before using them on the skin. Some such as lavender or tea tree essential oil can be used neat for specific reasons, but it's very easy to become sensitized, even with 'safe' ones.

To formulate well you have to understand *why* you're picking the ingredients. You can pick up recipes on other sites, but you'll probably always want to tweek them to feel better or last longer or look better. For lip balms, MMS has a great generic guideline for making lip balms - they're pretty forgiving. http://thesage.com/recipes/recipes.php3?.State=Display&id=19 It's a 25/10/15/40 combo, but a lot of other people also use rations of 1/3 wax, 1/3 butter-hard oil, 1/3 soft oil. Playing around with different combinations of oils. For lotions, what I did was learn about some basic ratios of water to oils to butters to emulsifiers. Then pick the oils that interested me, and give a try to see how it worked out. Or you can find someone elses lotion on the web (there might be one in the recipe section), try it, and tweek it if you don't like the feel. You start to learn what oils feel heavy, what feels greasy, what soaks in nicely.

I only do bases for lotions, for safety reasons. And those I won't even scent - I buy them scented and just transfer them to small bottles. My business is built on making things from scratch, so bases don't really fit into my philosophy. I'm tempted sometimes to get more bases, to have more items, but I resist. I'm not a store where I have to have a ton of different products for variety. I want to concentrate on the products that I do best and have the most benefit for someone - soaps, lip balms, facial cleansers. Buying a base and sticking a nice scent in it isn't where I'm at. Nothing wrong with it, just not my style.

Only you know when you're ready. And the problem basically solves itself - if you do go off and sell before you truly are ready, you will eventually leave the business. Either you never learn to sell, your product doesn't have a wide enough appeal, or it truly isn't very good and you won't have any return customers. Sure, people will say "you give the biz a bad name and it's harder to sell". But, I've never found that the case in my area. I *sell*, so if someone has had a bad experience before, I can ease their concerns. This is my fifth year in business. I just got insurance this year. I didn't kill anyone in the last 5 years - I knew my market, what type of people I was selling to, and my exposure. I know a *ton* of local people that do candles, and b&b, and guess what - they don't go to online forums. They've done it the hard way, having to learn everything on their own. We're lucky that we're exposed to many different concepts on the boards. And sure, I've spent thousands testing. But I'll still help people with the basic ideas. I won't give specific recipes, but I'll try to help with concepts. I learned everything I know from being on 3 different boards. If they had been as tight as many boards are getting now, I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I guess I've got a choice - I can get upset at the get rich quick newbies, or I can point them in the right direction. They'll learn.

Still busy or is the summer heat slowing you down? I always seem to slow down in the summer, just when I need to get moving. Mostly labeling this weekend, and the lip balms I didn't finish last weekend. Market Saturday, and then Sunday is bath tea, face serum and cleanser, maybe I'll throw together some bubble bath in a bag, wrapping soap logs... First true fair of the year next weekend - 2 days on the Rogue River, so I want to make sure I'm ready now. What's up with you guys? Trying out any new scents? Anyone starting their fall scents?

IN the osCommerce adminstration module, My Store section, there's a configuration for "Send extra order emails to". Put your email address in there, and you'll get a copy of the customers order. It has the full list of what they ordered.

Leave some on the stems - there's a market for plain bunches, lavender wands, packaging additions. I use my lavender in my soaps, in scrubs, on my gift packaging, in straight bundles, as firestarters...

By the numbers it will harden up (an iodine of 70 - my basic recipe is at 72), but the Crisco will probably make it softer than the numbers say. For rounding - round your lye down (5.0 oz). Oils I'll usually round up. With a 5% lye discount, you'll be safe with those little changes. I always use the calculator in ounces or grams instead of pounds

And just so you know the conversion, Sally's .5 oz per # of wax is about equal to 320 drops

Sometimes when a purchased mold says "3 pounds", it can mean 3 pounds total, not just 3 pounds oils. Why, I never know, because most soapers talk in oils only. A way to estimate how much oil will fit into a mold is to take length * width * height of the pour * .4 : that will give you the number of ounces. Divide by 16 to get pounds.

Sounds like someone else has been reading the last HAPPI That was a great article about sales. Makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? Fat and oil *was* limited in WWII, so that's the beginning of the syndets. And, that's about the time that automatic wash machines were becoming popular, and syndets for that kind of cleaning became popular. It probably just spread from there back to bathing soaps. The syndets at that time were probably gentler than any of the bar soap around. And profit is always a motivator Now we've come full circle again, making gentler, "real" soap. We know more about fatty acids, how to measure properly, how to decorate and entice with scent.

I sell the whole bar. It's actually half of my standard - 9 inches long. I don't have time to cut to order, nor the space. When I make a full log I keep half of it uncut. If it doesn't move after awhile and I need the individual bars I'll cut it up and package it normally.

I've started doing logs this year for Market, and it's working out great. I tested my main recipe - left a log uncut for 4 months, and it was easy to cut. I can put out a log at 3 weeks, and tell the customer that when they cut a bar, they should leave it out for 3 days because the interior is a bit softer. They love it! And they get a good deal, it's 25% aff my normal price.

I superfat at 4% on the MMS calculator, which is 3% on soapcalc. The reason they warn you is that SAP values are actually a range - each batch of oil can be slightly different. The calculators usually pick an average. If you are discounting down around 0-1%, and you are doing small batches, and you get a batch of oil that might actually be on the low end of a SAP range, you might end up in trouble.

Probably heat stroke with the way temps are in the 90s around here - it'll feel good to hide in the basement. This is a lip balm weekend - so tangerine, marionberry, cuke melon. And something with oatmeal - I'm in the mood to design something new with oatmeal. Last weekend I had fun with 4 new florals, I need to do something new besides normal production. Have a great weekend!

I was curious - I was a Coast user, so I went to look up the ingredients - nothing unusual declared - it must be included in the 'fragrance'. It's a basic tallow/coconut/PKO/Palm bar: Active Ingredients Soap (Sodium Tallowate; Sodium Cocoate or Palm Kernelate Types; Sodium Palmate); Water (Aqua); Palm Acid (or) Coconut Acid (Emollient); Fragrance (Parfum); Glycerin (Moisturizer); Sorbitol; Sodium Chloride; Titanium Dioxide; Pentasodium Pentetate; Tetrasodium Etidronate; Chromium Hydroxide Green; Ultramarine Blue Actually, the more I look at bars, I think this list is wrong, it's missing the true active ingredient, probably Triclocarban. Bet the web site I copied it from is wrong.

Lip balms are pretty forgiving to make, though. MMS has a good guide to making your own if you want. http://www.thesage.com/recipes/recipes.php3?.State=Display&id=19

Well, Mountain Rose Herbs is a great supplier, and they do ship international Does UK require you to register your product if you buy it already made from outside the UK? Not sure if room sprays come under the cosmetic classification. Their sprays are hydrosols, EOs, and witch hazel, and are pretty easy to make. Do you have suppliers for EOs an hydrosols over there? If you wanted to do your own, all you'd need is the witch hazel, which you could probably find at a pharmacy/chemist or a health food store.

I've seen organic room sprays that are just EOs and water, but it's going to be something you'd have to shake, since it would separate. How about an organic hydrosol? I don't know how long that would 'stick' for scenting in the air, but sprays feel great on the face.

I find that dropping the superfat % works a lot better than using so much coconut. I superfat at 3% with 25% combo coconut/PKO and I get plenty of lather. And I have quite a number of men clients. Guys like bubbles, no question about it.

$3 here. Most specialty ones in the stores here are $4-$5

Since 2003 And when I go on trips I bring my own as well, so no hotel soap either. Well, I take that back. Last month I bought a bar of Tom's. For research. One shower and I threw it away

When you think of dropping a high paying day job just so you can do a mid week farmers market lol... Yeah, like that makes real financial sense But I'd sure be happier!

Excellent niche!

For first fair, I just expected to enjoy the experience, practiced my marketing and display, and hoped to pay for the booth and expenses. Where else can you learn marketing and get paid for it All of us need to learn now to sell - it's not a natural thing for most folks. Even now after 5 years fairs and markets surprise me. I guess one of the best things to learn is you'll never truly understand customers buying patterns And on your first one, don't take it personally if people walk by without even glancing at you. Sometimes you get that feeling of "gee I must be invisible or something". I had that last weekend as a matter of fact! Some people just aren't in to your product - it doesn't mean it sucks or anything like that. Just watch people, how they flow through the fair, what you might do to catch people's attention. Good luck!