Necessary (non-soap making) work!

Monday, April 28, 2014

We worked hard on Monday, and our brains were screaming by the end of the day.  Why you ask?

Shopping!!  Neither of us are big shoppers.  In fact, we rather hate it.  But necessity called.

Our supplies, scent, colorants, basic ingredients and such are dwindling fast.  Since we've been soaping almost 6 months now, we are trying to be smarter in our buying habits.  This "smartness" involves searching, (and searching, and searching) for the best possible pricing and shipping we can find, which is why our brains were screaming.

Who knew math skills learned in elementary school would be so necessary!  How many ounces of coconut oil can you get for xyz, then add shipping cost, etc.  

We know we need basic oils, coconut, palm, olive, castor, avocado, sweet almond, sunflower and more, so there isn't much to think about other than just getting the most we can for the money.  The hardest decisions were choosing scents, there are hundreds of them, clean, sexy, exotic, manly, green, spicy, floral, citrusy, calming and on and on.  What do we choose???

The descriptions created for each scent are like bait: ohh this one is the perfect one, or that one is sure to please your customers. All descriptions are obviously written with selling the scent in mind. 

We finally picked several essential oils (EO) which were easy because they are just one scent like lavender, lime, lemon, etc. with nothing else added.  EO's are the back bone of our scent mixing.  They are made from either distilling or expressing the oils from the original source (lavender, lemon etc).  They smell quite strong, and not much is needed to achieve the scent we want in the soap.

The fragrance oils (FO) were harder to choose because they are blended scents with top notes, middle notes, and base notes.  All notes can have several different fragrances added to create an overall scent.  Many of the FO's are created in a laboratory, some are plant based, but all react differently in the soap making process.   Due to our recent "seizing" experience we now read ALL information (including reviews from other soap makers) about each and every scent we consider.  

So it takes us time, lots and lots of time, to choose what we are going to buy, and that is our excuse for not making any new soaps on Monday.  We figure it's a legitimate excuse because now we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of our many, many new scents and supplies.

We decided not to post pictures of our pile of papers, printers and computers; it wasn't a pretty sight. Take our word for it.

One picture we WILL show you, though, is our packaging.  We took some time away from price gathering and supply ordering to begin packaging and labeling the soaps that are cured.

Aren't they cute?!

We really must be as frugal as possible - the ingredients are too expensive for us to spend much on anything else.  So, our frugal creativity led us to an abundance of material in K's sewing room that we think looks quite lovely on the soaps.