Critters

The weather was nice today, so I had to get out and enjoy it before it turns cold and wet again. That meant however, that soapmaking was not part of today’s plans, well not completely anyway. I had tried out some molds I hadn’t tried previously, so today was the day to unmold them. I’m going to have keep working on the colours, they’re not as brilliant as I’d like. Although I normally hate it when my molds don’t come out, I’m actually glad the dog came out missing his nose. I can now try and re-colour him. This is what I have so far.

 

I melted the pink highlights when I poured in the yellow body. So much for my thinking I could tell the temperature of the soap without the use of a thermometer.

I'm going to have to fill in his ears and maybe highlight his whiskers and mane.

I'm going to make the cat a different colour, maybe more brown, what do you think?

I think he's turned out the best. I used Anne-Marie's technique in making seashells on this frog. I poured a thin layer of green soap, then scraped off some of it and added a thin layer of black before filling up the rest of the mold with green. He's rather cute, isn't he?

Company's coming

Actually they've come and gone by the time I get this post completed.

We had people over on Saturday, it's a good excuse to try out new recipes and ensure the house is clean. The above pictures are the two bouquet of flowers people brought in lieu of having to bring food. They ended up in the same vase because I'm not a big fan of cut flowers, so I don't keep vases around.

I also got this birthday card. We hang out with weird people because we're birds of a feather.

Third time's the charm?

Actually the second time didn't turn out badly either. The mod soaps I tried to make using the instructions from Soapylove didn't work out so well, so I altered them slightly. I used a mold with 4 rectangles instead so I wouldn't have to cut a straight line. I can't even walk a straight line most of the time, so what makes me think I can cut one? I think they turned out much better, this is my second batch of mod soaps. They're more geared towards male clients, with their neutral colours and Beau Brummel scent from Otion. Manly yes, but I like it too!

The Waiting is the hardest part

Tom Petty knew what he was talking about.

Now that I know I can make soaps, I need to find a way to package them. I could do the usual plastic bag way, but I want something to help it stands out more. Afterall, it's all about marketing nowadays. I have a couple of vendors who need to get back to me with quotes on their products, so I wait with bated breath since my presentation to my potential clients is dependent on how I package. In the meanwhile, I'll keep working on perfecting my soapmaking techniques.

Matching Soaps and Bathrooms

My latest experiment was trying out a design from the Soapylove book. Maybe my silicone pan was just a little too flexible, but it didn't turn out as pretty as the picture in the book.

It doesn't look too bad here, but it didn't come out quite the way I want. So, more soap for us to use. But it will look fantastic in this just re-organized bathroom, won't it?

Back to the drawing board

Today started out so well, got a bunch of things accomplished, and then I decided to tempt fate and make some more soaps. I had two leftover cut outs from the water soluble paper so I thought, okay, I know what I did wrong last time and I can rectify it this time, I am woman, hear me roar!

Wrong, so wrong. I'm going to have to watch the tutorial on how to embed water soluble paper, frame by frame to see what I'm not doing.

See how the white base soap seeped under the paper? I could've sworn I had pressed the paper into the clear soap hard enough. Note to self:  next time, pound it into the clear base. :P

This one looks good right? Well it fit perfectly into the mold and the white soap went on smoothly, but when I turned it out, the clear soap stayed in the mold.

And to add insult to injury, this is how my bread turned out.

Dammit Google, I'm a new business owner, not a doctor

I admit, I’m a PC user for a reason, and that is, I like things simple and spelled out for me. When I signed up with my domain host, it came with a $77 Google Adwords credit. After completing my website, it seemed like time to put my credit to good use, right?

Holy Hannah, I need a universal translator to figure out how to fill in the blanks. Cost per click versus cost per thousand impressions? What? My eyes glazed over just trying to read their help pages, and that’s supposed to be help. To me, help would be someone coming over and clicking on the right buttons for me. Maybe when I’m super rich, I can hire people to do that sort of thing.

Practice Makes Perfect

I'm impatient, I expect to get everything done right the first time. I think I get that trait from my nephew. ;) One of the new molds I had purchased was a wedding cake mold and decided it'd look nice if I coloured the roses and left the cake part white.

Well, the roses were waaaay more difficult to colour in than any of the other molds I've attempted. I thought I could spoon the coloured soap, but because the roses are small and delicate, I ended up having to scrape it all out and start over with the injector. Also, because the roses go up the sides of the mold, it meant having to tilt the mold while trying to inject just enough soap into the roses to give it colour, but not to overflowing to the other parts of the mold. In the end, I managed to colour it all, and it looked alright, except for the rose right on the very bottom of the mold, the one that should've been easiest to fill in. That one didn't stick to the rest of the cake mold.

You'll have to excuse me now while I go stick my face into a pillow and scream.

It's official

My business cards and banner arrived today from Vistaprint. I can finally hand out business cards when people ask, which is very exciting. Now I just need people to ask me for them.

I had told a friend of a friend I'd make some soaps with his brand on it, so hopefully that will get done this weekend. According to the Soap Queen tutorial, the paper has to cure for a few days after being printed. It's difficult to wait because I'm itching to try out this process. But at least when I do send him his sample, I can include my handy dandy business card with it.

Who Needs a Fairy Godmother

when I have a sister as wonderful as mine? Anyone who knows her, knows what an incredibly sweet person she is. Not only did she send me this wonderful birthday gift and card, all handmade of course because that's the sort of talented person she is, she also sent me a pack of 50 droppers. Which means now I don't have to spill my scents and colours all over the place and I can actually measure out my ingredients which is such a bonus.

Like a kid in a (soaping) candy store

I needed to get some water soluble paper, so we decided to get up early and head across the border to Otion today. Big mistake. Did I mention that it's the Labour Day long weekend? Yeah, mental headslap for not thinking about it sooner. Actually I sort of knew, but figured, hey it's the weekend, people will sleep in and then head down right? Wrong. 1 to 1.5 hour wait at the borders, so we went to the furthest one we could without heading to the next province, and it was still a 40-50 minute wait there.

We did manage to get over the border without any hassles at least and enjoyed the nice weather heading down.  We went as far as Tulalip Outlet Malls thinking we might as well do some shopping while we were there. There was not a parking spot to be had! You'd think it was an Armageddon sale or something or the stores were giving away Coach handbags for free. That was fine, we didn't need to spend money on things we weren't planning on purchasing anyway, so we headed back north, back to Bellingham.

I love going to Otion, it's got tons of nice smelling scents and although I had my list of things I needed, it didn't mean I couldn't be tempted into buying other things. I managed to keep semi to my shopping list, which included the Beau Brummel, Sandalwood and Energy fragrance oils and some mica, but hubby also persuaded me to buy 4 new molds (there's only 3 in the picture because I already started the soaps in the fourth mold). I can't wait to try them all out. It really is like being a kid in a candy store, minus the empty calories and cavities at the end.