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The Christmas Specials 2019

The theme for this year is ‘Let it Snow’, for what are, I hope, obvious reasons. There are five different fragrances to enjoy:

Sugar Plum

Fruity and warm, this fragrance combines berries, orange and cherries with a hint of vanilla and sugar:

Sugar Plum

Candy Cane

Back for a third year, this fragrance has proved so popular in the past that I couldn’t NOT bring it back.  It’s a delicious blend of buttery peppermint and sugary vanilla – do not eat!! 😀

Candy Cane

Snow Queen

I’ve never made a blue Christmas soap before and with a color like this I couldn’t resist a Frozen reference.  The fragrance is a complex blend combining herbal and fruity top notes, middle notes of jasmine, cinnamon and clove and base notes of amber and patchouli. It’s a really difficult scent to describe but it’s heady and exotic and perfect if you’re looking for something a little less traditional.

Snow Queen

Warm Gingerbread

Back for its second year, this fragrance is absolutely gorgeous and proved hugely popular last year. Ginger and cinnamon, vanilla and freshly baked cake give a warm, comforting scent perfect for winter days.

Warm Gingerbread

Spiced Orange

A strong, rich and spicy orange and cinnamon blend, heartwarming and cosy.

Orange Handmade

All available from week commencing 11th November. Pre-orders being taken now, £4.50 each.

The Week in Soap: 27th October, ’19

Today’s weekly catch up is going to be an experiment in speedy posting, I’m officially on holiday, but won’t have anything soapy to share next Sunday and I didn’t want to miss two weeks. Every week seems to get busier and busier, but I think this week that had more to do with being off this coming week and wanting to get all orders out and loose ends tied before I go away.

The main thing I wanted to show you before I go away is…. Drumroll please…. the Christmas bars!  The theme is ‘Let it Snow’, and there are five in the range:

Ice Queen

Spiced Orange

Sugar Plum

Gingerbread

Candy Cane

What do you think?

This week I delivered my first batch of 840 bars to Babipur, a local online company who offer ethical shopping for kids (and the grown ups in their lives).  I have many more bars for them ready to be wrapped, yet more curing and more still to be made, so they’re keeping me extremely busy but I’m SO grateful and happy to be working with them to spread the love of handmade soap 😉

I was lucky enough to secure two new stockists this week.  Firstly The Eating Gorilla is the areas newest vegan eatery which has had seriously great reviews in the few short months since it opened. The owner Diane was already a customer of mine and she was keen to share her love of my vegan friendly products with her customers

The Eating Gorilla

The second, Celyn’s is an independent shop which stocks a fabulous range of locally produced goods for the home and garden. It’s located in Llanbedr, on the west coast of Wales, just south of Harlech:

Celyn’s Llanbedr

In addition to all the deliveries I had to get out this week I also had my regular monthly craft fair in Porthmadog on Saturday:

Craft Show Display

and spent most of Friday night wrapping and labelling stock for that (oh, and a special order for 40 (FORTY :-0) gift sets that were being picked up on Saturday evening – I was wrapping THEM in my sleep Friday night lol, but sadly I forgot to take a quick pic of them before I handed them over).

Finally, because we’re away next week over Halloween, my kids decided to carve their pumpkins early, and I did a bit of seed roasting for the first time.  Oh my word how have I never done this before? Home roasted Salted, Spiced and Honey  pumpkin seeds are DELICIOUS!  And the children agree, so that’s a win 😉

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Tomorrow we head off on holiday for five days – taking the children to do the whole sightseeing shebang in London.  There’ll be no soapy stuff going on, but hopefully lots of exploring, fun and… walking. Unfortunately I managed to twist BOTH my ankles this week – my right one last Sunday while out with the pup, and then on Wednesday my left one went and I took a dramatic tumble. Ouch 😦  They’re improving and I’m hoping that all of the walking to come this week won’t make them worse.

Thanks for reading – I’ll be back in a fortnight if not before!

Vicki

The Week in Soap: 20th October, ’19

I can’t be the only one who’s incredulous that there’s only a week and a half left of October? They say time flies when you’re having fun so I guess I must be having a whale of a time 😉

I didn’t manage to get a weekly update out last week, I posted the info about the solid conditioner bars (here) and that, it would appear, brought me to the limit of my available blogging time. However, you really didn’t miss much. I made soap. I wrapped soap. I labelled soap. I dispatched soap to retail and wholesale customers. I read about soap and talked about soap soap – in person and online.  Oh, I took the dog for a few walks as well.

Seriously though, I am living and breathing soap at the moment (with the odd foray into solid conditioner bars). I’m running out of space in my rented office space (a 20 second commute over the road above the village Tourist Info Shop – I should share some pics sometime), and I definitely need a larger making area at home.  It feels like I should be expanding my space, but there isn’t really anywhere local I could move into, and the children are still too small for me to travel too far afield.  We’ve talked about the possibility of building a workshop in the garden, which would solve the studio space issue, but I’d still be struggling for curing / wrapping / packing space. It’s one of those things that’s on the back burner, but always there, niggling at me to find a solution, so I’m trying not to fret about it too much during the run up to Christmas, and will give it some more thought in January / February (supposedly my ‘quiet’ time, but it didn’t quite work out that way this year so we’ll see).

I’ve had a big run on guest bars this last couple of weeks. The guest houses and holiday lets around here continue to be occupied throughout autumn and are always full over Christmas and New Year, so I think everyone’s getting their orders in now to be sure they don’t run out over the festive period.  I have 250 of these mini bars to cut and bevel over the next two or three days. Thankfully customers are becoming increasingly eco-conscious and don’t always want them fully wrapped – the ‘naked’ option is becoming more popular, and I always provide a full ingredients list and other mandatory info for the customer to pass on to their guests.

Lavender Guest Bars

Ooh, and I’ve added a new fragrance to the FO range… During the summer I released four limited edition bars, one of which was Watermelon, which proved to be extraordinarily popular. And justifiably so – it smells utterly delicious.  When I dropped Tutti Frutti from the core range I had room for a new regular fragrance and adding Watermelon was a no-brainer.  Here’s the very first batch of 60 in the mould:

Watermelon in the Mould

I said in my last weekly update that I would share a bit more about the Christmas range soon but I’ve STILL not managed to take any photos. I hereby undertake, no, I PROMISE, that I shall reveal the Christmas range in my next update post. *Adds another thing to this week’s to-do list*

I’m still working on my HUGE order that I alluded to back on the 22nd September.  The first batch are now all fully cured and are bevelled and ready for wrapping. There are almost 800 bars just in this first delivery to get labelled up with a cigar band wrap, and I’m so grateful that my lovely friend has been willing to come round and help me in return for a cuppa and a chat.  Now these are new to me, but I love the way they look, and I’m edging more and more towards doing my own this way. They’re eco-friendly, look great, and are quick to wrap once you get into the swing of them.  However my customer is an online only company, so these bars won’t be sitting on a shop shelf for any length of time, whereas mine would be, so I’m not sure whether it would work for my wholesale customers? I think I’m going to give it a go though. Here’s a sneak peek of some we’ve wrapped already:

Custom Order Packaging

And finally, here are some pics of cut soap and soap in the mould from the last couple of weeks…

Triple Coffee Scrub

Luscious Lavender in the Mould

Thursday Night’s mega-making session

Serenity Essential Oil Bars

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

Solid Conditioner Bars – What’s in Them?

Solid Conditioner Bars

With the continuing drive to reduce single use plastic, solid conditioner bars have become more and more popular in recent months. I started experimenting with mine sometime last year, but the development / certification process can be a long one, and it wasn’t until the 2nd of October that I received the *Cosmetic Product Safety Assessment (CPSR) which meant I could finally offer solid conditioner bars to the public (and you can be sure that they’re perfectly safe to use)

So what are they made of?

Here’s the full ingredients list for the unscented version. Beneath I’ll give the same list in plain English.

BTMS25 (Behentrimonium Methosulfate, Cetearyl Alcohol), Cetyl Alcohol, Cocos Nucifera (Coconut) Oil, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Glycerin, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Phenoxyethanol,

Plain English:

BTMS25 (Behentrimonium Methosulfate, Cetearyl Alcohol), Cetyl Alcohol, Coconut Oil, Jojoba Oil, Glycerin, Shea Butter, Preservative (Phenoxyethanol)

The chances are some of these ingredients will be unfamiliar to you.  It’s possible that they might even ring alarm bells and I’m guessing that the ones that may cause concern are BTMS25 (Behentrimonium Methosulfate, Cetearyl Alcohol), Cetyl Alcohol and Preservative, so let me address these in turn.

1 Behentrimonium Methosulfate

Unfamiliar though this sounds, don’t be alarmed into lumping this sulfate with the ‘bad guys’ (eg sodium lauryl sulfate SLS) It’s a gentle surfectant, non irritating to the scalp, and one of the mildest (yet effective) detanglers, giving ‘slip’ to your hair after washing. Made from Rapeseed Oil.

2. Cetearyl Alcohol / Cetyl Alcohol

These are both fatty alcohols that occur naturally in plants and animals. I have been given a personal assurance from my supplier (The Soapery) that not only are the ones I use vegan friendly, they’re also palm free, being derived from coconut. They are used in conditioners for their emulsifying and moisturising properties.

3. Preservative (Phenoxyethanol)

Any solid conditioner MUST, by law, contain a preservative before it can be made available for sale. This is because once it comes into contact with water, there is the opportunity for bacterial, mould and yeast growth.  Preservative or botulism? Regardless of the legalities, I know which I would choose.  Phenoxyethanol has been called a ‘natural’ preservative, but this is a little misleading. It does appear in nature (in green tea, and chicory) but the one I use is a nature identical version created synthetically. It is free from parabens. This article gives a good, balanced overview of the use of Phenoxyethanol in cosmetic products.

The other ingredients (coconut and jojoba oils, shea butter and glycerin) are added for their moisturising properties.

I currently offer three versions of the conditioner bars to match the shampoo bars: Unfragranced, Lemongrass & Spearmint and Bergamot & Lime.  The ingredients are identical, other than the added essential oils.

*A CPSR is a legal requirement for ANY cosmetic / skin & body care product before it can be placed on the market in the European Union.  Please make sure that any handmade product of this type has been certified before you make a purchase.

The Week in Soap: 6th October ’19

Monday and Tuesday of last week were the big soaping days – this was the result of Monday’s session:

180 Soap & Shampoo Bars

On Tuesday I was mostly speed (read: ‘panic’) making Christmas soaps.  I made a  load weeks ago, thinking I was really on the ball, but I wasn’t happy with them.  AT ALL  😦

I prevariacated for a while, conscious that time was getting on and that I needed to make a quick decision, and finally this last week I redesigned and made bars that I’m happy with – phew! They’ll be released a little later than I’d hoped, but still in plenty of time for the holiday period.  I don’t have any pictures yet, but I’ll share the fragrances next week, and perhaps a photo or two the following week – maybe 😉  In the meatime, here’s a sneaky peek that doesn’t give too much away 😀

Festive Collection Sneaky Peek

A brand new stockist came on board last week, Snowdonia Nurseries in Glan Conwy. They’ve taken a lovely range of soaps for their gift shop, and shared these photos with me over the weekend:

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

Snowdonia Nurseries Display

The next bit of excitement last week was the fact that my Cosmetic Product Safety Report finally came through from my solid conditioner bars.  It’s illegal to sell any body care / cosmetic product in the UK (well, the EU actually) without one of these reports, which proves that your recipe has been checked by a qualified chemist and is safe to use. So although I’ve had them ready for a while, I’ve not been able to sell them until that report came through.  These are some of the ones I made during the formulating / testing process:

Solid Conditioner Bars

They’ll be available in three varieties initially, to match the shampoo bars – Bergamot & Lime, Lemongrass & Spearmint and Unscented – but more varieties will be coming soon.  Now I just need to get making!  A few people have asked for more information about the ingredients etc so I’ll be writing a dedicated post about the conditioner bars later on this week.

Lastly, I’m giving away a free mini Peppermint Scrub bar with all orders over £10 this week (while stocks last).  These are what’s left over when I make the full size peppermint bars – I use the usual amount of soap mix but because there’s so much extra stuff in there (ground apricot stone and oats) there’s far too  much to fit my regular moulds and I have plenty left over to make these little ones – a little treat for my valued customers 🙂

Mini Peppermint Scrubs

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

 

 

The Week in Soap: 23rd Sept ’19

I’m clearly  not back into the habit of regular posting.  It’s 10pm on Monday and I just realised that I haven’t written last week’s roundup post (I would normally do it on Sunday evening if not before).  So this will be a short one, forgive me!

I didn’t get half as much soap made this week as last because, as much as I’d like to make soap every day, there is a lot of other stuff that needs to be done when running a  business, however small, and it was a lot of that that got done this week ;-D

Monday I spent wrapping, labelling and dispatching retail orders from the weekend, cutting and wrapping guest soaps and putting together wholesale orders.

On Tuesday I travelled to Pwllheli, about half an hour away, to take stock to a new stockist – Oriel Pwlldefaid.  I’ve been keen to find a stockist in Pwllheli for a while so I’m thrilled that they agreed to stock my soaps.  In the afternoon I made soap – hooray!

Triple Coffee Scrub, Serenity & Lavender & Orange Solid Shampoo

Wednesday saw me making more soap again, this time 60 bars of Botanica (Lavender, Lemon & Lime essential oils) and Lavender & Peppermint Shampoo:

Botanica and Lavender & Peppermint Shampoo

See the orange in those bars above? That should be yellow! This soap has always been a white base with drops of purple, yellow and green (lavender, lemon & lime) but I used a different yellow mica this time and POW! Bright orange!!  Luckily it morphed back to yellow by the time I cut it.

Thursday and Friday I spent getting ready for my monthly Craft Fair in Porthmadog on Saturday, none of which I took photos of.  Saturday’s Fair was a strange one – very quiet in the morning but much much busier late morning and into the afternoon and ended up being a great day.

On Sunday I spent a few hours masterbatching enough oils and butters for 24 loaves, and took the dog for a looooong walk in the late afternoon.  (Oh, I’ve just realised that Jac the Border Collie joined our family during my blogging break, so I won’t have introduced him yet – I’ll try to rectify that very soon!)  Anyway here’s just one of the photos from my walk through classic Beddgelert weather – clouds, drizzle and a glorious peek of sunshine highlighting the autumn colours on the mountains.

I took very few ‘cut’ pictures this week (another thing I’ve got out of the habit of since taking a break from the blog) but here is the current batch of Eryri (Snowdonia), more of these are on the ‘to make’ list for this week or next…

Eryri Handmade Soap

That’s it for now. Apologies for the rather rushed and superficial post – maybe I just need to get back into the rhythm? I hope so…

Thanks for reading if you got this far, back next week!

Vicki

 

 

The Week in Soap: 16th Sept ’19 Ramping up Production

Last week I set myself a challenge to make a minimum of 600 bars of soap in seven days with today (Sunday) being the last day.   As well as trying to restock after a busy summer season and getting ahead for the festive season, I have a new wholesale customer who has placed a very large (for me) order that I’m steadily, but surely, fulfilling (I’ll share more about them once the first shipment has been delivered in a couple of weeks) and all that means I need to increase my rate of production.  This week was a bit of an experiment in masterbatching larger amounts of oils & butters and working out how to work smarter and be more productive. That 600 bars was a fairly arbitrary goal – more than I’d ever made in one week before, but  hopefully doable given my proposed new processes.

In the past, each soaping session has begun with the mixing of the lye solutions – usually enough for 8 loaves in four separate containers, which were put to one side to cool. I’d then weigh out four separate lots of hard oils & butters and melt them while also weighing out four lots of the liquid oils, ending up with four 5kg capacity buckets each containing enough prepared fats for two loaves (30 bars total) of soap.  I would then go ahead and make soap, ending up with two loaves of four different varieties, giving me a total of 120 bars each full soaping session.

This week I decided to get all the oils / butters / lye prepared the night before production, and also to make more, and bigger (four loaf) batches. This gave me far more time the following day to make soap and I was able to get this lovely lot, a total of 632 bars (woop!!) made over three separate days:

Tuesday’s Makes

Thursday’s Makes

Sunday’s Makes

So what about temperatures? I read a lot in online soaping groups that temperatures are important in the soapmaking process, but I haven’t used a thermometer since my very early days of soapy experimentation.  I generally soap cool anyway, so using lye solution that was mixed the day before isn’t an issue, and I found that I needed to sit the buckets of oils & butters in some hot water in the sink for a little while to remove any granularity from the cooled hard oils. I dream of having a large insulated tank with a heating band in the future, but until then, this works really well – hooray!

Next week I aim to make as much, if not more, again. Keep rooting for me 😀

Thanks for reading, back soon!

Vicki

PS Thought I’d share this little vase of nasturtiums, freshly picked from the garden today. I have a mass of them at the bottom of the garden where they’ve self seeded and they just keep on coming, in beautiful autumnal colours. Just lovely!

Autumnal Nasturtiums

 

 

 

 

 

The Year in Soap: 19th Sept 2018-2019

One year.  One whole year, exactly.  My last post was on 18th September 2018, a year ago. 365 days ago.

Right, well then, erm… Hello!  Gosh, this is awkward. How’ve you been?  Sorry I didn’t write, or call, or, well, you know… I’ve missed you though. Did you ever think about me? I thought about you a lot, even considered typing a few words a couple of times, then decided it had been too long. Didn’t think I could just jump back in like nothing had happened. Thought you might have found someone new. It would be rude, wouldn’t it? To try to muscle in on your new blog relationships, when I’d deserted you without so much as an au revoir?

Just kidding, obviously.  I will ABSOLUTELY muscle in on your new blog relationship 😉

Yes, I’m back. I lost my blogging mojo there for a while, but with the launch of the website on the horizon, forcing me back onto my laptop to write about the benefits of a soap based facial bar, different types of solid shampoo bars and ‘about us (ain’t we just darn peachy)’ pages, I realised that I kinda miss writing.

So, a quick round up of the a last year in one paragraph. Christmas came, it was busy. January was supposed to be quiet, time for a bit of a break. It was busy.  Spring came and things picked up, and then summer just went nuts – as did I, I think. Over that time the facial bars have become really popular, and I recently launched a charcoal version.  The solid shampoo bars are also now available and are selling well – I’ll write a post all about them very soon.  I’ve also submitted the paperwork for a Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CSPR) for solid conditioner bars which I’m hoping will be approved in the next few weeks, so fingers crossed I’ll be able to offer them for sale very soon.  What else?  I have a few more wholesale customers (more on them in another post), lots more retail customers AND a whizzy new Facebook Group (well, since May new) which now has almost 450 members. Join here.

I’m going to go back to weekly posting, just a round up of what’s been going on, together with ad hoc posts as and when the urge strikes. I hope you’ll forgive my absence and we can enjoy soapy stuff together just like the old days 😉

Here’s a quick pic of the charcoal facial bar in the mould – I promise to include more photos in future posts!!

Charcoal Facial Bar

 

 

The Week in Soap: 16th Sept ’18 – Wherein I mention the ‘C’ Word

My first full week back at work after the school holidays flew by SO quickly, but I did finally round to starting the Christmas range (yup, THAT ‘C’ word). I’m a bit later this year than last so I have some catching up to do.

Monday saw me making the first batch of Christmas bars – a reprise of Candy Cane which has gone down so well over the last few holiday periods.  I also made some Traeth Craig Du (Black Rock Sands) to restock the shelves. Winter and Summer in one soapy session!

Candy Cane & Traeth in the Mould

Facial bar in the mould

I also made another batch of the facial bar. I need to get to a point where I’ve always got it in stock, rather than selling out, which is what’s happening at the moment!

Tuesday was a wrapping and labelling kind of day. I also spent some time researching more stockist possibilities. I’d like to get a map up on my office wall with all my current stockists marked on there so that I can easily see any obvious gaps in the local area before setting my sights a little further afield…

On Wednesday morning I went to my monthly networking group, Women Working Together. It’s predominantly a women’s group (but men are by no means excluded) and I’m finding it invaluable for so many reasons, not least the fact that it’s really good to take time out every now and then to be sociable (a must when working alone!).  The support of others in a similar position, and the wealth of advice and insights that they’re willing to share, are a huge benefit too of course!

I didn’t have much time left in the afternoon before the school pick up but I did manage to unmould and cut the soap that I made on Monday. I only took photos of the freshly cut Candy Cane (I’m not happy with this red by the way – I didn’t use enough red colourant. The next batch will be better)

Freshly cut Candy Cane

Thursday was spent in the office again, and writing up the results of the fragrance oil testing I did for Blossom Oils.  Friday saw MORE soapmaking!  Two soapmaking days in one week – woop!  Four loaves, or 60 bars, of Warm Gingerbread (the second of the Christmas bars) and another loaf of the facial bar. Apologies for the rubbish photo ;-D

Facial bar / 4 loaves of Warm Gingerbread

There was a bit of a first for me over on Instagram last week – this photo here got over 1,000 likes. ONE THOUSAND!! I don’t understand why, but I’m not complaining lol…

Guest Bars

And on a personal note, another first – my first brown belt in kickboxing, 20 months after I threw my first punch.  It’s going to take even longer to get through all the browns though, but with lots of determination, and a little bit of luck *crosses fingers*, I’ll get there:

First brown belt

The weekend was spent in non-soapy, family pursuits, including the longest bike ride we’ve yet undertaken as Team Hinde – 7km  Don’t forget that the little one is only five, with an ungeared little bike, so this was a fair distance for her. She did so well!

Bike Ride

Sadly my husband didn’t do quite so well and fell off his bike, injuring himself, right near the beginning. Being the trooper that he is he soldiered on, but probably shouldn’t have, given that he had to be taken to the local hospital the following day, oops! PS see that bridge there? Built in 1798!!!

Thanks for reading, back soon…