Joanna

Endicia has been around for a long time. It's a service where you can pay for USPS postage and print out labels instead of going to the USPS website. We use it to ship pkgs that go 1st class.

Michaels and Walmart usually have them. try Target or your local supermarket. That's where I got my "flat" of cupcakes. Brown silicone. Works great!

Her soaps are high quality, for sure. She sent me over a dozen soaps a few years ago and I was blown away by her abilities. I think they are all goat milk soap and I haven't found one yet that I've disliked. In fact, this year I got a hold of three more. Yum yum yum.

I didn't find the youtube video yet but is that ever a nice site. Now that I see how a slab mold works, I might want to go with one of those. I was going with a loaf b/c I thought I wanted to be able to cut straight, with the wavy cutter and rustic type looks. This slab mold shows so many things one can do with the flat side of the bar upward tho'.

These are expensive or maybe all quality soap molds are as well? The one I bought (still in box) was no where near that much. I'll have to save up for any of these nice ones with buying candle stuff so often but in the meantime it might be good I'm starting out with a cheapie until I gain more experience.

If you haven't made soap yet, I'd start small and not purchase a slab mold at this point. I worked up to that. It's harder to make that much soap as a beginner. Must work really fast sometimes and losing that much raw material is a big bummer. I left out an oil once in a 52 bar slab mold and the whole batch was unuseable. Almost $200 in raw materials in the trash because I have rebatched one too many times.

I write The Soap Bar blog and Ladybug Soapworks generously allowed me to post her salt soap tutorial, so feel free to check it out. Makes a great salt soap!

http://thesoapbar.blogspot.com/2008/07/salt-soap-tutorial-by-ladybug-soapworks.html

-joanna