Practice makes...well better

Guess what I've been doing all week? Well besides talking on Twitter and posting some pictures on Pinterest. Yep, making alphabets upon alphabets. It's actually going more quickly than I expected, but it helps that I'm currently home and can spend all day on them.

The good thing about repetitive work is that it does go quicker once you get the hang of it. The pouring of the soap isn't bad although I still have spills or too many air bubbles or make too many of one letter. But you know what takes some skill? Heat shrink wrapping. I think I've finally got it sort of figured out, but that doesn't mean I'm still not overheating and creating holes in the wrap, but I'm doing less of that than I was at the start. I've also figured out how to heat it at the right angle so that it actually shrinks down.

I think I'm about 3/4 of the way complete, but I'll have to make sure to count it all before I ship them so that I haven't given them too many or too few.

Laying it all out to see what still needs to be made.

Happy long weekend!

Update

Remember how a few weeks ago, I had made some alphabet letters for a potential client? She got the package in the mail (I was so nervous the soaps would melt in the sweltering heat) and after a few days she got back to me.

Her subject line? Beautiful soaps! I couldn't have been more excited to read that. She requested a total of 425 letters in bubble gum pink, cerulean blue, dark chocolate brown and black. Thank goodness I had picked up some bubblegum mica from Brambleberry a while back.

The hardest part of this is to wrap each letter individually because she'll be using it to spell out the kids' names, but it will be worth it. It just means I will get better and faster as time goes on right? And with luck this will lead to making soaps for other businesses looking for something extra to complement their main product.

Taking baby steps

I chickened out. Actually I'm thinking it's a smarter way to go, rather than going straight to the big guys that I had mentioned in my last post, I think I'll start small.

Someone posted on BC Artisans page on Facebook that there is a store in Vancouver that carries local artisans' products, so that's where I'm starting. By starting with the smaller companies I can try and hone my writing skills as well as my actual crafts.

My big problem right now with my soaps is wrapping it well to keep it from getting glycerin dew. I guess I'll just have to keep re-watching the Soap Queen tv video on how to wrap.

My "dove" soap

It's a Sign

Remember Steve Martin in "The Man with Two Brains" where he says "Just give me a sign...just any kind of sign". Well that's me, sometimes I need to be hit on the head with a sign.

I think not succeeding in this last position is a sign, a sign that I really should pursue soaping with more fervour and determination. I've slacked off while working full-time and now that I'm not working for the time being, I have more time and reason to work a little harder for myself.

As I mentioned in my last post, I want to try and get my soaps into Science World and the Aquarium, as well as getting the alphabets to Little Dreambug. Little Dreambug have specific colours they're looking for, so I've created these samples for them. I hope they like them.

Also, when I was trying to put together something for the Aquarium, it seemed to me that I didn't have a lot to offer them. So I decided to make some more things that belong in an Aquarium. I still have to make some shells and a tree frog, but this is a start. Which one do you prefer?

My sister also gave me (yet!) another mold I had been wanting to try out, so what better time than now? I haven't quite figured out how to do this correctly which is why these aren't true LEGO colours, but I'm thinking what I should do is pour the entire thing in the main body colour, then give in to my sociopathic side (hee hee) and cut off the hands and head and pour it in yellow. Any ideas if that's the best way to do it?

Now that was the easy part, now to work on my proposal.

Listen to your mother, she's always right

That's a note to my nephews, not to myself. :)

My sister told me to not to get discouraged when I hadn't heard back from a potential client, but rather ask again. Silence isn't necessarily a no, it could be that the person is busy, forgot to write back, or lost the original request. So, having learning from past mistakes, I listened to my sister this time and wrote again to this person. This time, she did respond and said she's still very interested and looking to order 425 letters from me! This won't allow me to quit work and retire right away but it's a good start to hopefully something bigger. She's looking for alphabet letters like the ones below, but in bright colours. Good thing I picked up some hot pink colouring earlier because that's the sort of colours she's looking for.

In the meanwhile, I'm also working on putting together a presentation for the Vancouver Aquarium and  Science World.  With any luck, they'll want to support a little local company that has a good product to offer.