Charity Craft Fair

It's the most craft fair time of the year. There are craft fairs everywhere, some lasting a day, some the entire weekend. This last one I did was a one day one. I'm finding I like these more and more; yes I have to do everything in terms of set up and take down in one day, but it also leaves me one day on a weekend to do everything else.

This latest one was the Charity Craft Fair held in the beautiful Woodwards building. 

The window in the building showing the riots of 1972 when the Rolling Stones came to town.

The organizers had said to dress warm since there were 3 entrances to the atrium where the fair was being held. Holy chilliness Batman! There is no cold like a damp cold which gets into your bones and refuses to leave. But they had a beautiful tree set up which made it seem less chilly.

I had made some extra soaps because their Facebook page said there would be lots of people attending. 

There was also a lot of traffic going by because of the stores that surrounded us. Funnily enough, the soaps I thought would sell, all the Christmas soaps, didn't. On the bright side, that means I don't have to make any more for the next show.

Hope you had a lovely weekend. Have you started your Christmas shopping?

SaveSave

'Twas the Week before Hallowe'en

And all through the place,

was the sights and smells of soaping

And stuffing apple pie in my face.

The Hallowe'en soaps are crafted with care,

In hopes that buyers will come to sniff and stare!

The bath bombs were fragranced,

With fall scents of ginger and more

Chai FO and cinnamon, 

To make bath time a non-chore.

A big thank you to Teresa for giving me the bags that I used in my background. Needless to say, poetry is not in my future.

Here's to having a great week!

The beginning of craft fair season

Well I'm sure it's started for many people, and for some it's never-ending, but this past Saturday was my first for this year.

It was the first time for these organizers, and my goodness, what a huge job it is! I admire people who take on the job of organizing fairs, it is enough work for me to make all my soaps and bath bombs for fairs, I can't imagine trying to set up, promote and take down everything around the craft fair as well.

It was going to be a dark and stormy day, so that could either work in the fair's favour in that people would come in droves to have something to do but be out of the rain, or it could work against us in that people would rather cozy down with Netflix.

We lucked out with the weather, in that it didn't rain during setup or take down. However, it also didn't seem to drive people to the fair in droves either.

Fortunately for me, I did make a few sales with the hopes of getting some future business from them. Craft fairs are always a learning experience, and I've learned that with the help of good friends, I can have it set up in less than 1.5 hours. :D

Hope this season stays relatively dry and free of power outages for everyone. Have a great week!

And more hearts

Because I went overboard in making the small hearts and needed a way to use them up.

It's a party in a soap! 

These are great little guest soaps.

July isn't really heart month is it?

But it is for me. Since I acquired some new heart moulds (my old one is dying a slow death) I went a little crazy with using up leftover bits of soap to make new ones.

It's hard to see the colouring since I still haven't gotten around to getting super clear soap, but you get the idea.

Kinda hard to see in this one, but there are 3 hearts inside the big one. The red background makes it hard to see the yellow heart.

This one shows I need to work on my embed, clear portion and photography. It's supposed to be 3 hearts  but the middle one, which is yellow, gets kinda lost. Kinda like a lot of middle children, right? 

This one is my favourite, partly because you can see the hearts more clearly (even with my bad photography job) and I like the white background seeing off the clear red portion.

Have a lovely week!

Leftovers

I'm trying to clear out any bits and bobs of soaps I have while still doing something interesting. I have made these soaps with scraps that were left over from making other things, shredding  some of them for a prettier effect. Okay, that's a lie, I was trying to make curls and they weren't turning out, so I ran them through the grater. But I think they do add some interesting texture.

This one was using leftover leftovers. I had some soap left in the cup, so I added some more into it, didn't bother stirring and this is the result for the first layer. I like how the colours are kinda melted into each other giving it a sort of planet like look.

I had angled the mould for the next two (or is it three, I lost track) layers hence why the colours are slightly different on each side.

More shredded ones, this time with a goat's milk bottom.

Not sure why this one ended up on it's side. Maybe it thought it's Humpty Dumpty.

And this is where the curls ended up. Like I said, it didn't work out as well, but it did use up some of the remaining bits of soap.

Have a great week!

A gift

One of our teachers is retiring at the end of this year. I'm happy for her because she will have time to go relax and enjoy life, but it will be sad for all the up and coming students who will not get to learn music under her tutelage. From what I've seen, she's a great teacher and the stuff she teaches the primary kids are so much fun, while the intermediate students learn to read music and play instruments.

As a farewell to her, I've made a music themed soap. I would love to have had a musical note or something, but the closest eraser I had to that was a guitar. The colours are our school colours, and I scented it with sun ripened cherries by WSP because, well it's just about cherry season.

Have a great week!

Mmm, donuts!

I've always made my donuts (soap donuts that is) in the same manner:  pour a thin layer of clear on the bottom, sprinkle some jojoba seeds, then pour in the rest of the bakery brown soap. Pour the other half of the donut, let both sides solidify, then curse when they won't stick together properly.

After seeing how some others make their donuts I tried to emulate it. I still cursed the two sides for not sticking properly, but by glazing the top and letting it run down the side, I think it helps to hold it together a bit better. Plus, I added more colouring this time, which I think makes it look much better. Scented with WSP's Grandma's Griddle FO, it smells like a real donut. Also, this time I used real sprinkles and I think that adds to the real-ness of the donut.

Hope you have a lovely, donut filled week!

Another experiment using the wrong bases

But this time, I'm quite happy with the results. Those soapers who've been using suspension bases create the most beautiful designs, and while this isn't the same, it's not bad.

I used my usual guest (or in my case, experiment) sized loaf mould, and even though I thought I had divided the amount of soap correctly, I forgot to factor in the fact that not all the soap comes out of the container...ever. So these turned out smaller than I was expecting, but they still look cool. And you remember the flowers from a couple of weeks ago, right?

I took the advice of some other MP soapers and used leftover coroplast as my dividers. Next time, I'll have to remember to wrap them in plastic wrap, otherwise soap seeps into the crevices. The soap set up a little quicker than I wanted, partly because I'm still learning how to use Stephenson's bases properly, partly because when you heat the soap too many times, it tends to harden a little quicker each time. So I didn't get to make the swirls as nice as I wanted, but I think it still came out pretty cool looking.

Have a great week everyone!

Packaging

We'll now take a break from our regularly scheduled program to bring you some packaging ideas.

Last week, I was admiring the packaging of soaps done by the very sweet and talented Madame Propre. She had her beautiful soaps wrapped in cellophane with ribbon, all done so nice and neat, they looked perfect. I told her how much I liked them and she suggested ali express.

Then I remembered, hey, my sister gave me a bunch of swatches to make into bags, why don't I use up those first? So here are some of the bags I've made so far.

I'm still working on the best way to close the bags. The straight ribbon tie is fine, but I'm not great at tying bows, as you can tell. The side ribbon, I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, and it really should be pulled into the middle, not the side. The one that doesn't look like it is closed has snaps on it, and the last one, would use up my random collection of buttons, but is a bit more time consuming. Any ideas?

How do you like to wrap things up, so to speak? Have a great week!

I can see clearly now...

No wait, I can't. Why? Because I'm still not using a clear base. I thought the honey base would provide a nice glow, giving the soap a sunshine-y feel to it, but it's given it more of a "I haven't cleaned my sunglasses so things are kinda blurry" feel to it instead. But it smells nice at least, scented with black raspberry vanilla.

This was supposed to be a beach-y scene, but it's hard to see the sand and sky.

Also, you can't really see the hard work (hah!) put into making the embeds different colours

Almost looks better from the back

You can see more details from the side, but who looks at soaps from the side?

Take my picture at 3/4 angle, that's my best side.

See, so much prettier at an angle.

Hope you're having a sunshine-y week!