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.

Saving money is a Wonderful thing.

Karess Krafters was founded by me, Rochell Selvey, out of the need to find suitable skincare products for my husband’s, Richard, sensitive skin. At the time we had no clue that people would respond to our products in a positive way. I mean we wanted to make products that would bring him comfort, but a chance encounter of introducing our soap to a few of Richard’s business affiliates opened the door for us to make Karess Krafters official. What did this mean? It meant we needed business cards and the like. So what better place to order them from?!…Vista Print.

Vista Print was the first printing company we dealt with. They served the purpose of quality cards, reasonable price and quick delivery. But as we started to grow and meet more business owners, I, not we (Richard doesn’t get into the fancy stuff), noticed that others had cards that were glossy with rounded corners and much sturdier paper. It sent the message of expensive. So I, again not we, did some research and located a company that printed our cards exactly like the others, but with our design of course. They were nice and I do mean nice, so Vista Print got kicked to the curb for a while, until….

I started paying attention to the promotional emails I had received and reading the excellent reviews on the different forums that I frequent. So of course I gave them another try and I must say they are AWESOME. They have expanded their product line and are basically a one stop print shop. You can get ALL things promotional from Vista Print. The service is fast, the prices are GREAT and the quality is SUPERB. I have received countless items from them in 2011 and did not think to take pictures until I started blogging. So here is a picture of our foot soak labels we received yesterday. They look much better in person than they do here.

Also check out our sampler set that we are not offering at the time. The scrub labels were printed by Vista Print too. We also had the same size printed for the soaps, but we never took a new picture with the new soap sample labels.

Of course I cannot disclose my price for these items, but if you sign up to receive Vista Print’s newsletter and do a little Googling for discounts, you can save a lot of money using their services.

Happy saving
Rochell

Hello World,

It is me again. Yeah the boring blogger who only shares about things that interests her….LOL. My wheels have been turning as they always are. I can have 5,000 things going on in my mind at one time. I am always thinking of new products to put out, new marketing strategies and new storefronts for Karess Krafters products, which brings me to this post today.

Be on the lookout for a new Karess Krafters location in Raleigh. We are currently working out the details and hopefully products will be on the shelves by the end of the month. We are also in talks with a storefront about carrying some of our products (the all natural ones). We will see how that goes, but we wanted to share with you the makings of our press kit/product submission presentation for said company.
We have some really eco-friendly CD holders made up with our logo and website address printed on them. They are the BOMB because I said they are and because they are different than what you see floating around on the Net. We will submit our products along with literature about our business in a Kraft type box (we changed our mind about the green/brown box because it didn’t have the natural look we are aiming for). If you can see in the picture, the CD holder has 3 pockets, one for the CD and two others for literature which we will put our brochure, business card and postcards in. We will also submit full size products of the items we would like considered. These items will be placed neatly in the box and the first item the person will see when the box is opened is our letter which will be on our custom made letterhead.

We are so proud of how this thing is coming together. My husband use and I do mean use to say to me all the time we have to be ahead of the competitors and get to the finish line before them. I, on the other hand, think totally different. I feel there is a time and place for everything. In most cases, you get only one chance to impress and the first impression is a lasting one, therefore, to me, things have to be right and in order the first time. And if what we consider our best is not up to others standard, then so be it. We keep it moving and on to the next. There is room for all of us in this large, yet small world. So with that said, as we make our way through this journey the outcome is starting to look better and better (had we rushed things like my hubby wanted, we would have been looking cheesy). Our presentation will represent what we are submitting; “natural” products with a “natural” feel.

FYI, before any of you start sending responses on how fragrance oil is not natural – I know THAT. We are submitting SOME of our products (either essential oil or unscented) for consideration. We cannot disclose the company yet, BUT when things are final we will SHOUT it LOUD!

Also, I wanted to mention that we are slowly converting over to essential oils only. Well I guess I should say we are making more products with essential oils. It is hard for me to depart from my fragrance oils; I know I am a FRAGRANCE HO!

Here is the picture of our press kit in the making.

Peace and Blessings
Rochell