p.p.s. Yes, I ate about 33% of this bowl of batter prior to baking the cupcakes which is why they ended up one cupcake short!
Tutorials on soapmaking, bath fizzies, lotions and more
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
p.p.s. Yes, I ate about 33% of this bowl of batter prior to baking the cupcakes which is why they ended up one cupcake short!
Filed Under: Business Musings
I recently fell in-like with Savor Soaps. Check out their Flikr Photostream here.
Who is Savor Soaps?: Lisa Salamida from California is the brains behind this brand
What: (Lisa says:) “I specialize in soap that resembles food, and especially desserts. I love to make whipped soap, like my Spun Sugar and Lime Chiffon.”
“I use only the best melt-and-pour base, purchased from a small shop in Berkeley, CA. I love to use dried botanicals, teas, and I really love to use sea salt for its scrubbiness! It really helps the dry patches on heels. I include shea butter in all my soap, and use vitamin E oil and olive oil in certain varieties depending on the effect I want to achieve.”
“I don’t use goat’s milk often, but I found a fantastic base and will begin using it regularly.”
How: “While I’ve been making soap for many years for friends and family, I only recently decided to open a shop and sell to the public.”
“My husband sells his art prints and he inspired me to take that leap. I opened in October 2007, and the shop has taken off — already a couple hundred orders, and even repeat buyers, in a very short time. I work full time as a computer tech, but with the way Savor has taken off, I’m also putting in 30-40 hours weekly making soap and processing orders.”
Where: “I sell on Etsy alone right now (or in person if I know you!). My shop there is located at savor.etsy.com — I recently bought my own domain and may consider selling directly on my site in the future. But it’s really hard to beat Etsy’s great interface, and lovely customer base that comes with it!”
Thanks for sharing, Lisa! Here’s to great success in 2008 to you and Savor!
Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap
If you’ve missed Days 1, 2 or 3, read them first so you’re up to date on the set-up and secret (shhhhh, it’s liquid glycerin) to making really great jelly rolls.
In the video above, you can see the initial rolling process. Notice that the soap is malleable and though it is quite thick, it rolls with a minimal amount of effort. Unfortunately, this four layer pour is too thick. The thickness is the reason that the soap looks more like an oval, rather than a cute little round.
After the video cuts off, I spent a minute or so massaging the rolled soap into more of a tight, oval shape.
The final soaps are different and unique but the oval shape is not quite what I wanted. Check back tomorrow for photos of the final soap. Plus, we’ll have photos of the same recipe with thinner layers and a clear concise recipe so you can make perfect jelly rolls at home – every time.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
These soaps were made by first timers at Otion’s Soap Bar. Aren’t they amazing for first timers? Our soap bar is open to anyone that wants to come make soap. You rent the bar for $7.50 (and get unlimited use of fragrance, color and molds) and only need to buy the soap base that is used.
Of course, Erik did a great job instructing them and helping out in between customers but I think that they had some soapmaking blood in their veins because these are very artistic soaps.
Copious use of glitter makes these Alien Head soaps really stand out.
Today, Monday, I teach a Cold Process Soapmaking class at Otion. We have two spots left for the 5:15 class. If you’re in Bellingham, sign up by calling the store at 360-676-1030.
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
I had a fun afternoon today, testing new trends forecasted for 2008. These are the same exact recipes but look at how different the soaps look. The color, the texture and the trace thickness are all vastly different.
This small test batch shows the importance of using fully tested fragrance oils for cold process soap. After all, when you are making a 5 pound soap batch, it’s always nice to know if a fragrance will accelerate trace or turn a nice shade of brown (ruining the perfect swirl or geometrically balanced layers).
In the photo above, the soap on the right top looks lumpy. It is in fact, very lumpy. The fragrance made the soap get all clumpy with the appearance of cottage cheese. Whoops. That is one fragrance that Bramble Berry will not be bringing in.
In the photo above, the soap on the left is starting to rapidly heat up. It also showed an alarming propensity to accelerate trace (as evidenced by the nicely formed peaks on the soap).
For every fragrance that Bramble Berrycarries, we’ve tested at least 100 more to find that one fragrance. The two problem soaps above are not the end of the testing. Each of the bars in the batch will be sniff tested at the 6 week mark and, if they happen to make it through that (they normally won’t), we’ll retest the same fragrance in a 5 pound batch and a 8 pound batch to ensure that they will hold up to the rigors of real life soaping.
Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials
Click here for Day One – Set Up
Click here for Day Two – Color and Fragrance
Click here for Day Three – More Color and Fragrance
Making a shimmery evening dust to enhance your shoulders and collarbone is easy with a little bit of mica. The best micas for enhancing shimmer without making it look too obvious are gold, light pinks, silvers and white.
Why mica? Micas provide shimmer and sheen, while adding a sophisticated subtle amount of color that does not look garish or overpowering. Micas provide shimmer because a mica is a flat platelet that reflects and refracts light, similar to a diamond in the sun.
Depending on the amount of shimmer and sheen you want, 2 Tablespoons of mica in 16 ounces of powder can provide a healthy glow. In the photo above, the blob of yellow is the fragrance oil and the mica is on the right hand side.
Some ideas for mica in powders are:
Golden Decolletage Powder
Shimmery Fairy Dust Powder
Teenage Rave Powder
Sparkle Cheek Enhancer
Making powder is a messy operation. The powders are lighter than air and float everywhere. It’s delightful when the powders are floating gently out of the shaker and onto your skin. It’s not so delightful when the powders are floating gently all over your counters, into grout crevices, and into your lungs. A mask helps that last bit. The rest can’t be helped and you’ll want to keep a damp rag close by to stay on top of the cleaning process. If anyone comes up with a better way to keep the house clean during this process, please let me know.
Tomorrow, I’ll be in Seattle so will finish up the Talc Project instructions Sunday.
Filed Under: Home Crafts
Crafting with soap and candles is a wonderful family activity. For this Container Candle experiment, my Dad and I took the opportunity to spend the morning crafting and laughing together.
I’ve mentioned my propensity to ruin the kitchen (here and here), much to my husband’s bemused chagrin. This time, it was my Father that betrayed the sanctity of our otherwise clean kitchen.
As I was chattering away, wick centering and placing, my Dad helpfully pulled the hot wax off the stove and gingerly walked over to the table to gently pour the wax into the metal pouring pot. It was a particularly graceful arc of wax that flowed right over the cannister and directly onto the table, where it slowly started splattering on the floor.
Silence filled the room as we both looked at the wax, congealing on the hand-installed cherry wood floors. We both looked at each other sheepishly as the error of our ego and hubris set in; why hadn’t we covered the table with newspaper?
My Dad is a doctor. He’s been stitching people up for over 30 years now. One would assume that he would be able to easily pour with a steady hand. I pointed this out, in a gentle, loving respectful manner (of course). He sputtered back that the viscosity of melted beeswax is different than urine and blood, the two things he most commonly pours. There’s really no rebuttal to that statement so I let him work in silence as I thought up funny ways to tell my husband of this latest mishap.
To clean your wax spill: Freeze the wax to make it easier to scrape.
Find a flat knife, such as putty knife or a baker’s scraper cutter. This is my Dad, scraping away at the wax with one of my best cheese knives.
I have a video to post later tonight of my Dad scraping away at my table. The clean up was slow and tedious. It took approximately 30 minutes until the table was wax free (albeit with nice divots and holes where Dad gouged the wood).
To hide the dark wax stain, we decided to buff and wax the table with a commercial furniture polish. It comes in a yellow can and looks remarkably like Pam, the vegetable oil. After Dad and I finished buffing the table to a shine, we both looked at the bottle in my hands and realized one of us (finger pointed squarely at him!) grabbed the Pam bottle rather than the furniture wax bottle. So, we repeated the entire process – only this time with real furniture wax! My table has never been so moisturized!
We then covered the table with newspaper and started our container candle production line all over again.
Check back tomorrow for pouring and wick straightening tips!
Filed Under: Home Crafts
Bramble Berry has a substantial line of candle fragrances, colors, waxes, wicks and candle glass containers. I love making candles but don’t make them enough. Once you get a perfect recipe down, the outcomes are more predictable than cold-process soapmaking.
For this Beeswax Container Candle project, the set up includes:
a double boiler
cotton core wicks
candle fragrance
glass containers
beeswax
Metal pouring container
If you don’t have all these things, you can melt beeswax in the microwave. It takes 6 to 10 minutes to melt the wax. It’s not advised because Pyrex will not always withstand the sustained heat. I have personally broken (exploded is a better word) two Pyrex “heat-safe” containers and a microwave glass rotating plate attempting to melt beeswax in the microwave. Do not melt the wax in a normal pot, directly on the stove. The wax needs diffuse heat from a double-boiler to best melt.
Why cotton core wicks? Cotton wicks are all natural and do not use zinc or metals to make them stiff. For beeswax users, the cotton wicks also carry the fuel (the melted beeswax) up the wick in a more efficient manner. In normal situations, cotton wicks are smoke free. The wick needs to be large; approximately double what you would use in a paraffin candle. Beeswax is a hard, dense wax and has a high melting point, needing a larger flame for a consistent melt-down.
Why specific candle fragrance? You can use soap fragrances (the ones from Bramble Berry are great in candles!) but they tend to be more expensive than dedicated candle fragrances. Soap and skin safe fragrances have higher standards for ingredient safety and purity. Candle fragrances can use a wider variety of ingredients, often cheaper, since they don’t need to adhere to standards like on-skin irritancy or being an allergen when applied to the body. Also, dedicated candle fragrances will sometimes perform better in candles than an all-purpose fragrance. Our soap fragrances (originall line and the Cybilla line) work great in candles. We have many customer using our normal line for their candles because it’s easier to have matching soap and candle scents. But, if you’re just making candles and economics is the main factor for you, choose the candle line.
Beeswax is a precious renewable resource. To make one pound (16 oz.) of beeswax, a worker bee will eat 10 pounds of honey and visit 33 million flower blossoms over 150,000 miles! WOW! That makes the price of $4.00 per pound seem positively cheap!
Why glass containers? Because they require less work than a traditional pillar candle and you don’t need to buy any molding equipment. Make sure if you use a container for your candle that the jar is a heat safe container.
Step One: Melt the beeswax in a double boiler. 16 oz of beeswax pastilles will melt down to about 10.5 oz of volume. One container (as shown in the top photo) takes a full pound of beeswax! This explains why these candles burn for so long – there’s a lot of wax in that little glass! Tip: When the wax is melting, it will congeal into one large lump. Breaking up the lump will help the wax melt faster. Please be careful when you are breaking the lump up – too vigorously chopping might splash hot wax on you!
Step 2: Carefully transfer the hot beeswax (no children or pets should be underfoot during this step!) into your pour container. I like metal for this though you could use a heat-safe pouring container in a pinch.
Check back tomorrow for Wick Centering & Fragrance Use.
Filed Under: Cold Process Soap
This is the scary part. The soap already looks good. The swirl looks like it’s beautiful. Take a deep breath and plunge your spatula into the soap. Go around your entire mold 1 time in an “s” wave pattern from the top to the bottom and from side to side. There’s a fine line between
swirling too little and heading into mush but that line is always further along in the swirling process than you think.
Cover your soap and wait patiently for the soap to harden. You can safely unmold your soap in two to three days for the great swirling unveil.
Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Lip Products
After the Double Boiler did not melt Hershey’s Chocolate successfully, I got impatient. I put 1 Tablespoon of Hersheys, 1 Tablespoon of Jojoba Oil and 1 Tablespoon of Beeswax (pre-melted) into a microwave safe bowl.
I shoved the bowl into the microwave for 60 seconds. My haste was not rewarded.
The stinking lumpy mass of goo that ensued was disappointing. My house smelled of burnt chocolate. I was stymied but regrouped and tried again with shorter microwave bursts.
It was with much excitement that I tried the melt process a second time. I stared intently at the chocolate goo whirring around in the microwave, stopping the process to stir every 10 seconds.
After 1 minute and 20 seconds, the batch with the Hershey’s had melted but was not incorporating. I stirred with more vigor. It held together better.
I triumphantly pulled out my frozen knife from the freezer. I plunged the cooled implement into the piping hot mixture. The chocolate, waxes and oils instantly solidified on the frozen knife. The insta-cooled balm was easy to spread on my lips, tasted delicious and the proximity to sugar made me euphoric.
I carefully poured the balm into the clear twist up tubes. There was some cackling with glee and delight as the chocolate started to cool.
The cackling turned to dismay as the Hershey’s concoction started layering, with the heavier waxes dropping out and the milk solids rising to the surface.
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
My younger brother Erik has officially been on the job for 2 months. He has taken the helm at Otion, our retail store operation. It hasn’t been the smoothest of transitions from a no-managerial-oversight to a full-time, in-store manager but we’re through the uphill part and onto a nice plateau.
In his two months at Otion, Erik has installed new flooring in the soap bar area (faux tile – it looks great!), implemented staffing policies and hired a new employee for the store. He also has learned how to make many toiletries and Cold Process soap. Here is his latest CP soap on the right. The soap on the left was one of his first. He has come a long way in his technical expertise! He’s actually got a bit of a swirl motif with his latest batch. The color choice is interesting for a champagne fragrance. It’s certainly eye catching.
I had the privilege of co-teaching a private soapmaking party last night. Some of the gals flew in from Boston. It was fun to have a group of happy, giggling, laughing ladies to teach soap to. They were all friends. Camaraderie was easy going and the atmosphere was light.
Each partygoer got to make 2 different batches of Cold Process Soap. The recipes were the same except for the superfatting level. One used a 2% superfat and the other used a 10% superfat. All of the newbie soapers were able to personalize their individual CP bars with their choice of color, scent and exfoliants. It was quite a lot of fun!
Parties at Otion start at $14 per person. We can do parties customized to anyone’s interests – all natural, toiletries classes, lip balm, lotionmaking, massage melts, balms, soap, melt and pour – Otion can instruct in almost anything!
Filed Under: Personal Ramblings
Alicia Grosso, noted author, teacher and expert soapmaker will be at Otion for a book signing in August. If you hurry, you can even sign up for her class and learn from one of the best in the industry.
Alicia’s book, The Everything Soap Book, is considered by some to be the most comprehensive cold process soap on the market today.
Here is a customer quote about her book:
I found Alicia’s book whilst perusing a Borders! It was by far the BEST book on the shelf. Loaded with really great info what would take you months of tearing through the [soapdish forum] archives to benefit from. It wasn’t expensive either. I bought it to share with my SIL who wants to learn soapmaking. There were other books that were WAY more expensive and didn’t come close to covering the ground she did.
Having seen Alicia in action at the Arizona Soap Conference, it was clear that she really knew her soapmaking stuff.
Come and spend the afternoon learning from Alicia, visit Otion (and smell all of the Bramble Berry fragrances), buy your supplies and then take in a wonderful easy evening in beautiful Bellingham.
Filed Under: Business Musings
Interview with David from The Bubble Roome
A-M: David, your flair for packaging is fascinating! Tell us about your background and how you got into soaps and toiletries.
David: I’ve been a graphic designer for 10 years, starting with print projects and then moving into web work. Around 2001, I was freelancing and was constantly looking for the next job. After 9/11 everything in the city kind of stopped for awhile and the job market for freelance seemed very inactive. So I began to think of ways to make money on my own terms, without sending out resumes and waiting for work. I had always been interested in Melt and Pour Glycerin soap, but as I began researching in bookstores I became very curious about Cold Process. I started test batches, then came up with recipes for 16 (too many!!) soaps, and began designing the labels not really concerned how or where they would be sold. It was a fun hobby that I had felt had retail appeal.
A-M: Are you working out of your home right now? Or, are you in a warehouse type space? We’d love details about how it’s set up.
David: I am working out of my apartment, and making my products in my tiny Brooklyn kitchen. I am so jealous of other crafters with the luxury of a garage or basement, but these limitations have caused me to be inventive and extremely organized. The kitchen is filled with Container Store shelving attached to the walls, with lots of labeled plastic containers for herbs and ingredients. One table with a blender and Cuisinart, and under the table 5-gallon buckets of oils. In a storage closet I have a 14-tray bakers rack that I bought for the soaps to dry on. Shipping boxes fill every nook and cranny and, the bane of my existence – styrofoam peanuts – litter the floor all over the apartment.
A-M: You’ve gotten some very heavy hitting press lately. Was Lucky a total surprise or did you do a guerilla marketing campaign to get all of your press?
David: I’ve been very lucky with the press I’ve received, but it is one of the benefits to being in NYC that you can have stores exhibit your work with magazine editors as their customers. One of the best blogs on the internet (designsponge.blogspot.com) spotted my soaps in her neighborhood store and when she wrote about them I got a lot of interest from other retailers as well as web orders. From that, the beauty editor of Teen Vogue asked for products for her magazine. Her friend is Christina Mueller, the beauty editor of Lucky, and that spread to People Magazine, and Bust, and so on. The Lucky piece was a surprise because it had been killed each month since November, so I just gave up hoping. Then I closed my site for reformulations and Lucky came out, and everything kind of exploded.
A-M: Do you notice any spike in sales when you get national press?
David: Definitely. Because I don’t really advertise, the press I receive is what generates the spikes. Lots of web orders, but even better, is the attention from other retailers who hadn’t heard of TBR.
A-M: What are your goals for your company?
David: I want to outsource my recipes to a reputable manufacturer because working in the kitchen is getting old (fast!). I also need a fulfillment center to handle shipping. I have a great rep company lined up to represent my work to retailers, but they were worried when I said I made the products in my kitchen. They felt that they wouldn’t be confident taking orders if I couldn’t fill the orders quickly. So if I want my business to grow (and I feel a rep company is the only way for that to happen) I have to produce larger volume with outsourcing.
A-M: Who are your favorite authors or mentors?
David: A key business book for me was “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. It describes the common pitfalls of entrepreneurs and how to overcome them.
Susan Cavitch’s book “Soap Maker’s Companion” was a great start, though I feel it’s a bit too technical. A business model I have is Lisa Price of Carol’s Daughter, who also used to make products out of her Brooklyn kitchen, and due to being on Oprah is now a huge success.
A-M: Favorite fragrance?
David: In terms of designer fragrances, it’s Stella McCartney.
A really subtle rose that’s hip and elegant. And Lush’s Karma always makes me happy. My fave EO combination is Ginger, with Peppermint and Sweet Orange. My favorite Bramble Berry FO to the list. It’s Arabian Spice, and was used in one of my Brooklyn Slice Soaps to represent the middle-Eastern “Atlantic Avenue” neighborhood. Intoxicating and very popular.
A-M: Product from your line that you’re absolutely diggin’?
David: I’m working on a new Butter recipe with lots of botanical extracts, proteins and three kinds of butters.
A-M: Any last words of wisdom to cottage industry mavens out there?
David: Mainly it’s not too give up or get overwhelmed. When I walked by a Bath and Body Works I can get discouraged and think “why I am bothering. There are already 1000’s of bath lines out there”. But there is enough of the pie for everyone to have a slice.
Contact information:
david e johnston
Filed Under: Bramble Berry News
As a thank-you for bearing with us during the 3-day blog freeze, we are (drum roll!) doing more than just the initial number of prizes we promised! Three readers from last week are all winning a copy of our DVD on melt and pour soapmaking or cold process soapmaking (their choice) and Five 3-D molds (their choice again!).
So, Jennifer (the Jennifer from post #2 from last Monday), Mary Helen, and Renee, please drop me an email at info (at) brambleberry.com with your addresses and your choices of soap molds and DVD.
The page to view the soap mold choices is here.
The page to view more information about the DVDs is here.
Thanks for participating. Check back in the next few weeks with another contest (sneak preview: it will include one of the Moon Valley Lotion Bars as a prize).