It was a wonderful class. I’ll be teaching a goatsmilk lotionmaking class this upcoming Wednesday. There are still a few spots available here. If you’re in town, sign up and learn how to make lotion using goatsmilk as your base.
Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
Filed Under: Cold Process Soap
It was a wonderful class. I’ll be teaching a goatsmilk lotionmaking class this upcoming Wednesday. There are still a few spots available here. If you’re in town, sign up and learn how to make lotion using goatsmilk as your base.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
This necklace is going to be my reward for reaching a stretch goal. A stretch goal is something that’s achievable, but only through a large amount of effort, dedication, follow-through and maybe a bit of luck. You can even personalize the necklace here.
Goals should be achievable through daily amounts of small incremental effort. Meeting this sales stretch goal requires making 5 phone calls per day. So far, I’m 300 phone calls into the goal and 50% there. I’m refining my technique and getting better. Fingers crossed, the goal should be hit within 200 phone calls.
I’ve designed a photo of the necklace into a poster with the goal printed below. The poster reminds me, every day, about the goal and the reward when I meet (or exceed!) the goal. Wish me luck! I’ll let you know when I reach the goal and get the sweet reward.
Filed Under: Business Musings
Bob Parson’s 16 Rules:
The above rules for survival are included with the permission of Bob Parsons (http://www.bobparsons.com) and is Copyright ) 2004-2006 by Bob Parsons. All rights reserved.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Enter to win a gift set of Organic Fusion products here. Scroll mid way down the page, it’s about 2/3 down on the blog. Rare Bird Findsis one of my favorite blogs. I read it at least once per week to keep up on cool indie finds.
Filed Under: Business Musings
Donna Maria from the Indie Business Blog has written an article about how to get your products into the hands of beauty bloggers. Click here to read this informative, helpful article and ramp up your press coverage today!
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Craftzine has added to their fun crochet tutorial. If you’ve never crocheted or knitted, this is the time to start learning. Needlework can be done at any time when you’re not actively driving or using your hands. My favorite time to knit is when on long plane flights, during movies or as a passenger in a car.
Once you’ve learned to crochet, it’s just one more needle to add and you’re knitting with ease.
Filed Under: Business Musings
Jelly Belly‘s got fragrance!
Doesn’t this fragrance description of their Wild Blackberry & Peach Cobbler blend sound delicious?
Wild Blackberry Peach Cobbler is a light, sheer fruit and citrus fragrance with unusual body and depth. The depth comes from the wild blackberry, which is the center of this fragrance, supported by peach and topped with lemon. It’s unusual to center a fragrance around blackberry, and that unique perspective is both apparent and well served in this one-of-a-kind scent
.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
I recently received this question from Karen. The question is a serious one involving business and liability insurance. My response to her is below the question.
hi! say i want to make a real strawberries and cream soap(actually i did in Mexico where there are few rules and regulations for soap making;it was a delicious, yummy, creamy bar and no one had any trouble with it- i made a sign saying real strawberries and real cream were in each bar) here in the states and i put all my ingredients on the label. the person breaks out with a rash due to an allergy to strawberries. if i put all the ingredients on the tag,why then, liability insurance? wouldn’t that be up to person to read the label or maybe they didn’t know they were allergic up to that point? i realize insurance is important but isn’t it part of the responsibility of the customer to read the label first? my question may sound silly but just how valuable is liability insurance?? thanks, Karen
Thanks for your note.
If a person breaks out in a rash due to an allergy to strawberries, you could be liable. If a person breaks out in a rash due an allergy to soap, you could be liable. Even if they KNOW that they are allergic and still use the product, you could be liable.
The realities of this happening are slight as most people need to ingest strawberries in order to get an allergic reaction to them. In the 10 years that I’ve been selling to over 29,000 customers, I’ve never heard of anyone being sued *but* that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t and won’t happen.
Our society can be quite litigious when it wants to be. That is why basically all food now says “Processed in a facility that processes nuts” whether it has been or not because the general public has proven itself to be not responsible for reading ingredients labels.
In theory, if common sense law ruled the world, yes, the customer would be responsible for their own actions but when you read about buglers suing home owners for injuries sustained during the burglary, you know that the legal system has gone a bit amuck! =)
The best way to protect yourself against frivolous claims is to make good, safe products and to get product liability insurance. Two places to buy insurance specifically designed for soap and candle makers are: Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild www.soapguild.org has insurance for about $450 per year. Indie Beauty Network also has insurance for $395 per year through a broker. Click here to find out more details about IBN’s insurance.
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
Love to Know Crafts recently did an interview with me. The interview is on their site now. You can go read it here.
Reader’s Digest, the October Issue, has a very nice little article about Bramble Berry and the importance of following your dreams and passions. It’s on newsstands now. The article is on page 88. This company purports to give you a free online copy of the magazine, though you do have to sign up for it. You can find the Reader’s Digest website here. The article that we’re in is called “Yes, I Can” and it is not up on the Reader’s Digest page so if you want to read it, head out and buy your $2.99 copy.
Thanks for all the free press. We are definitely feeling the love here at Bramble Berry. As my friend Heather Othmer says, “It’s a love sweep!”
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News, Business Musings
I got this note a while back from Kelly S. in NYC.
I was a bit bummed to see that you ship using Styrofoam peanuts especially after reading your Social Responsibility commitment. Is there any way you can use a different packing method?
First of all, I really appreciate Kelly for writing. So many customers would have just gone, “Hey, what gives? Bramble Berry says they strive to be environmentally friendly but then they send me these hideous, terrible-for-the-environment-green-packing-pellets-of-Mother-
Earth-death,” rolled their eyes and moved on. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell you why we use those little hideous green puff balls to get your package to you safely.
First things first, we get it. We don’t like those little green ecologically damaging messy ball of air more than you do. In fact, given that they litter our office, cost us a minor fortune and take up a bunch of storage space, I’m willing to bet we like them even less than you do.
But, we haven’t yet found anything better to ensure your package gets to you safely. We have tried what feels like everything – from the air packets (disaster disaster disaster), to the bio-degradeable peanuts (one broken bottle and they totally disintegrate, ruining the entire package), to paper (heavy, expensive, and doesn’t provide great cushion when wet) to strange, crinkly, weird , cut up randomly odd paper strip thigies with foam inside them (didn’t work) and a couple more that I’m not remembering. Oh yes, and the cut up cardboard strips that cost a fortune, were heavy and left the package-reciver with 5 pounds of cut up cardboard strips. That was not a popular experiment.
So, we do our best. We recycle. We give back to charitable causes. We’re energy neutral. We buy solar and wind power. We donate our time to non-profits. And we try not to waste anything in our office. And, I compost at home (do I get extra bonus points for that?). But, when it comes to getting your packages to you safely, in the lightest weight shipping box we can, for the best price… Green packing peanuts can’t really be beat.
If you have a better option or are using something different at your company, please write me. I really want to learn about it and try it in our company. Anything to help save the planet, one box at a time.
Filed Under: Business Musings
The New Yorker has an informative article about adulterated olive oil. If you make soap, getting a mislabeled oil could cause your recipe to be significantly lye heavy or short. Click here to read the article.
An excerpt from the article:
In 1997 and 1998, olive oil was the most adulterated agricultural product in the European Union, prompting the E.U.’s anti-fraud office to establish an olive-oil task force. (“Profits were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks,” one investigator told me.)
… fraud remains a major international problem: olive oil is far more valuable than most other vegetable oils, but it is costly and time-consuming to produce—and surprisingly easy to doctor.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Thank you to Deb G for sending me this link to Choco Choco House in MA. Oh how I wish I was visiting MA, at least for a time long enough to jet over to their shops, inhale a cupcake and take a pack of the handbags to go.
Aliya’s real claim to fame is her chocolate handbags. The handbags are so cute that they were even sold at the Museum of Natural History during their chocolate exhibition.
They ship mail order ever Wednesday if you simply must get your own chocolate handbag to munch on.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
A few weeks ago, my dear friend Amy (that’s her, 2nd from the right in the red top) turned… Well, she had a special birthday. Rather than the traditional party, Amy planned an entire weekend around strong women. She designed a trust walk around a local lake, an evening of sharing (complete with tears and personal revelations) and a assigned a morning activity around balance and strengths. Each person who attended had a part to play and a leadership role to fulfill.
We all went to Vancouver (Canada) for Thai Food, raucous laugher and strong bonding. The gals were kind enough to let me stop by Open Sundaes, one of my fave bath and body producers. Check out their web site here.
My assignment was the Balance Activity. I led the women through an exercise similar to what my friend Lynn Guiliani from Progressions Coaching guides busy executives through. In summary, the exercise had each participant go through their goals in life and compare those goals to how they are living their life currently. Where there were deficiencies, an achievable plan was designed to help everyone easily meet their goals in small, bite-sized goals.
“Small” means manageable. The goals are not superwoman goals. They are easy steps to work towards achieving whatever is important in our lives. For example, one of my goals was to meditate for 15 minutes, just 3 times a week. It’s a tiny goal on the face of it but will get me closer to my larger goals.
It wasn’t all work though! Here we are, goofing around in the middle of the street, in Vancouver BC after walking, shopping and cupcake eating.
Thank Amy for designing such a great birthday weekend!
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
Look at this beautiful soap made by Mark at Otion the Soap Bar here in Bellingham.It was made using one of Bramble Berry’s newest molds – the white tailed deer.
And the paper in the background is from one of my favorite scrap book paper makers The Paper Element