Goodness! We are only into the second month of the year and it seems as though I have already falling off the band wagon with this blogging thing. Heck I have even been slow to Twitter and post to our Fanpage. Even though I have been really laid back with my updates, I do have a good excuse, several if I might add.

First, my son who is my middle child has not been applying the time, energy, motivation, etc to the most important aspect of his life at this stage – SCHOOL WORK! Therefore, I have taken some much-needed time to make sure he gets back on track and remains on track

Second, orders have come in DAILY since the start of the New Year. We are so grateful for the orders and have been working overtime to fill orders and restock products.

Third, sometimes you just need to take a break from the things you love to do in order to brainstorm and come up with new and better ways of doing things – in my case MORE products.

With all this said, I have finally settled on the packaging for the Soap Sampler, but I have not taken a picture yet…SORRY, maybe next time.

Be blessed
Rochell

More ways to save

We are sure many business owners are looking for ways to cut cost without sacrificing the quality of their products. We are one of those businesses. As the last quarter of 2011 came to an end, we started thinking of ways to cut cost and still maintain the quality products our customers have become use to. Let us just say we will NEVER sacrifice the quality of our products to save a buck or two, our quality and attention to detail is what keeps our customers coming back for more. We’ve worked too hard to develop the customer base we have and we don’t intend to do anything foolish to lose our loyal customers and the many more to come.

With the rising cost of shipping we had to come up with ways to keep the quality, affordability and integrity of our products in tact. Due to the hike in shipping our suppliers now charge more, which cuts into our costs. So we decided to do the following

1. We buy more items local, such as our olive and rice bran oils
2. We’ve developed a relationship with a restaurant supplier whom we have been able to get equipment and raw materials through at an affordable price. Just imagine the shipping cost of 50# each of coconut and palm oils… exactly, my thought OUTRAGEOUS
3. We stop having labels for our packages printed. We use to put a label with our logo and website address on the outside box of every order that left our facility. One less thing to buy, more money saved.
4. Most of all our items are purchased from suppliers that are either on the East coast or closer, not as far out is the west coast. This has helped with the shipping cost (less distance to travel, less money for shipping). I am seeing a big difference in the overall price of products that our shipped in, such as our jars.
5. We take part in more CO-OP buying with other bath and body makers. Some of our products do not need a bulk purchase; therefore the less we buy of those items the more it cost us. Since we use raw materials such as Honeyquat in only one of our products, Honey-Hemp Conditioner, we don’t need a 25# bucket of it. So we work with others to get a larger quantity that is then divided among the participants. This saves us a TON.
6. We no longer buy from suppliers who have a “blatant” handling fee in their checkout section. We realize that some companies have a hidden fee, which is fine with us; we just don’t like to see it as “Handling” fee. We feel we should not have to pay you to handle your inventory…just saying
7. Finally, we have begun using the small Ziploc bags for our samples. We were using small ¼ oz jars but again the cost of shipping is causing those little critters to cost just as much as regular jars. We also use the foil packets from time-to-time, but have found the Ziploc bags to be much more cost effective. We will only use the foil packets for companies who request samples for giveaways (and we limit this to just 5 companies a year). Check out the picture below of the Ziploc bag and foil packet samples.

We hope our ways of saving can help someone and until we come up with more ways,

Be Blessed
Ric and Ro

I am still making big batches of soap in Karess Krafters’ work room. I love the idea of producing more soap with one batch. It makes more time to do other things, and that is always a plus for me.

Yesterday, while in the work room, I had to cut a couple of slabs into logs. Me, being a cheapo, decided to use the long cutting blade that came with one of my molds as my slab cutter. It worked well with the first few batches, but things were off yesterday. For some reason I could not hold the cutter to the point that it cut the slab perfectly. I had bars that were either too wide or too short and that pissed me off…BIG TIME. Hubby was hanging out in the work room with me and when he saw how upset I had became he immediately got some wood, his saw and drill and modified an old cutter by turning it into a log cutter. It looks much like this one. I am so blessed to have a loving and supporting husband. I just love me some Richard.

Also, one of my batches failed like crazy and I was not about to let all those precious oils just go down the drain, so I had to re-batch Blue Sky yesterday. Since it was a large batch, the crock pot method was not the best option because my crock pot is not large enough to hold all the soap. So I used two 12 quart stainless steel pots in the oven. Here is what I did
1.I cut the soap up and tried my best to cut it so that the blue portion was separate from the white. It didn’t work so well some of the blue was with the white
2.I put the blue in one pot and the white in another
3.Added water to the bottom of the pot
4.Placed both in the oven at 350
5.Let them cook down and hit each one with the blender
6.Added more fragrance to the batch
7.Poured into the mold and hopefully when I cut today or tomorrow they will look decent

Finally, I wanted to share that I have done away with the paint attachment that I was using with the drill because it took forever for it to come to trace and it did not mix my additives in very well. I am still using the drill however I am using a cement mixer attachment. It works much, much better.

Until next time, be blessed
Rochell

I finally took the leap and made a much larger batch of soap than what I had become accustom to. I had decided during the fourth quarter of 2011 that I was going to up production for several reasons. The obvious was to be able to produce more soaps in one batch and the others were to reduce cost and time.

Prior to taking the leap I had been watching videos on YouTube of people who made big batches of cold process soap (BTW, there not many videos available for large batch soap making). Watching the videos helped me get over my fear. I wasn’t fearful of making soap; I have that down to a science. My fear was a batch going haywire, which would result in a lot of money down the drain.

I am happy to report that my two 15# batches were a SUCCESS. I got creative with tools I already had at home and only needed to purchase a larger stainless steel pot and a paint mixer. I spent about $15 for the items. Of course the rest of the money went on getting enough supplies to make multiple 15# batches of soap.

Here is how I used the items I already had

1. I reused one of my gallon buckets that I received coconut oil in to mix the lye. To the lye I added ice cubes to help cool it down faster. I learned this tip from Amy with Great Cakes Soap.
2. I used a $12 stainless steel pot from Family Dollar to weigh all my oils.
3. I used my electric griddle pan (that was just taking up space in the pantry) instead of buying a heating plate to heat the oils (I make my soaps in my garage).
4. Instead of shelling out $150 for another high powered stick blender I used my hubby’s drill and paid a little less than $4 for a paint mixer. Attached it to the drill and off it went. My hubby has several drills and the one I selected is not as powerful as I would like. However, he has a really heavy duty one that I will use from now on. It took the soap a while to come to trace, but hopefully this will be resolved with the high powered drill. Also, some of my additives were at the bottom of the pot due to the slow speed/mixing with the drill. After the pour of soap into the molds Hubby made for me for less than $8, I took the drill with paint attachment and mixed it while in the mold. This worked well for the two batches I made. However, I will not make this a common practice to my soap making procedure. I was lucky that the soap was at a thin trace instead of thick trace.

I am really excited about my success with the two batches I have made thus far. I will be making more batches today and throughout the week. This will free up a lot of time for me to spend with my family and do other crafty things that I enjoy. It will also allow more bars to cure at the same time.

Here are a few pictures from the soap making

Sorry for the side view, but that is the paint tool I attached to Hubby’s drill.

This is the Tea Tree & Neem poured. I was told it looked like throw up, which I agree. However, it smell devine

This is the slab out of the mold

These are the loaves from the slab. I cut them with a Misty Creek cutter.

Hello Blog World!

It seems like it has been a long time since I last blogged. When I started this, I said that I would make every effort to blog about something at least once a week. I believe thus far I have lived up to that even though some weeks I blogged daily and others not so much. In case you were wondering about my absence, I took a break to enjoy/celebrate/honor my 10 year wedding anniversary with the most loving, caring, compassionate, supportive, protective, true provider, confidant, spiritual partner and lover in the world, my husband– Richard. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary on Jan. 18th.

We had plans to take a cruise back to the Bahamas, but opted to stay closer to home so that we didn’t put too much of a strain on my parents. Although we took the entire week off from work, we didn’t leave for our destination until Thursday. We planned it this way because of needing to have someone take our daughter to/from daycare and make sure our middle schooler was home safe and did his homework, etc. Even though I know my parents would not have minded (they spoil rotten especially our daughter), we still didn’t want to put too much on them.

So we headed for Myrtle Beach. We have been here countless times. It is our preferred place to go and relax, take in a nice show, dinner, a stroll down the coast, etc. It is just a great place to vacation. We didn’t stay at our favorite resort, Dayton House. I wanted to try a different hotel/resort. I declare we have been to the Dayton House so many times that we are on a first name basis. We opted for a Marriott brand this time and had a room with a king size bed and Jacuzzi in it. The room was nice as was the hotel. I was not too thrilled about the Jacuzzi probably because we have one of our own. However, we did take advantage of it and spent a little time in it relaxing, talking and drinking wine. Now one thing we did do this time that we generally don’t do is we really got to see Myrtle Beach. Not just the beach area but the city itself.

It is beautiful. I did a lot of shopping as most women do and we ate until our eyes bursts. I am a seafood fanatic. I love snow crab legs and trust I had my share. We were going to the Brazilian steakhouse but they had a long wait so we opted for a brewing spot that was really nice. All in all we enjoyed each other’s company, ate until we could not eat anymore and shopped.

Ric and Ro

Ok, this is a little vent post. Recently, I put an ad out on a popular forum about updating my zencart shopping cart. I am running 1.39 and a new update is available that has more security measures. Now I know a little about coding, meaning I can go in and change colors, font sizes, move a few things around, add texts, etc. I can do a lot more if I dedicated the time, but I don’t have the time, hence the reason for the ad post. Bottom line I didn’t want to deal with the hassle so I wanted someone with more experience to do the update, for whatever his/her fee was of course.

So I got a message from someone who “said” they could do the job. I was a little leery because I am the type when I ask your price, I expect you to name the price and not say “if that is too much then we can negogiate”. That sends a message to me that you’re not too sure of yourself. After a few more messages to one another, I bite the bullet and paid the invoice via PayPal. She communicated with me from the backup to she has NEVER done a zencart update before and is NOT comfortable. WHAT THE HE** DID SHE JUST SAY? Okay,now my ad stated the type of cart, plus I gave a link to my site. Where was the problem? She KNEW the deal before accepting the job. This pissed me off.

I told her that I would compensate her for her time and asked what she felt was a fair amount. She stated she can give me half back. Oh HE** TO THE NO! You will keep only 15% of what I sent you and you will send the rest back to me since you did nothing and I am still in the same status-NO UPDATE. Now mind you we were messaging each other moments apart but when it came time to refund my money the messaging was not as instant. I said, oh you have the RIGHT ONE SISTER GIRL. I sent her an invoice via PayPal for my part as well as messaged her about it. Mind you she never replied to any of the messages about my money, however, she did refund my 85%. Thankfully, she did because the next step was complaint with PayPal and the forum the ad was posted on. What lesson did I learn? Always go with my gut feeling. What lesson should she learn? Don’t try to “earn while you learn” and when you can’t do a job, make things right by refunding the FULL AMOUNT.

Okay, off my soap box
Rochell

Scratch & Dent Soap Scratch and Dent Soap [] – $6.50 : Karess Krafters, bath & body inspired by nature.