Been making handmade soaps for some time now and from the beginning used Brambleberry.com as one of my “go to” suppliers for top notch fragrance oils for use in soaps and body care products.  What makes this supplier so great you ask?  CUSTOMER SERVICE!  Yep, you got that right!  Their customer service is top notch.   Every time, I’ve got a question, I get an answer.  No repeat emails or having to pick up the phone.   When using a new fragrance oil when making a batch of handmade soap bars, I know exactly how it is going to react.  No guessing and no surprises.  Why, because Brambleberry tests their fragrances and posts any reaction they had in the soap pot on their website.    So when I buy them, on the invoice, I have a reminder of whether the fragrance oil is going to move fast, discolor or is just plain not suitable for making handmade soap.   This is especially important to me and avoids situations like the seized soap I had a couple of weeks ago.  I love this about them!

Popularity: 7%

Well, I feel like I’m playing the stock market.  Pricing for raw materials for making handmade soaps are skyrocketing.  Not only have we been dealing with the huge jumps in essential oils such as Lavender and Patchouli, both of which I consider necessary in my arsenal of fragrances for several of our handmade soap bars but now coconut oil, palm kernel and palm oil are skyrocketing.   Not the normal annual increases but HUGE GIGANTIC jumps!    These are necessary oils.   I can’t make soap without them.  Well…I could make a traditional castile but gosh darn it, I don’t want to!    From what I can gather from my suppliers, coconut has taken a hit due to all the natural disasters and because coconut oil is now very expensive it has driven up the price of substitute oils such as palm because the demand has suddenly shot up.   This is not good folks.   When I picked up coconut oil yesterday I was told not to expect any drop for the remainder of the year and there was no indication of any stabilization of price any time soon.  Yeah, this is scary.

Oh and then there is the bad crop of jojoba.   Apparently, there isn’t enough of it to go around right now so if you find a supplier with it, you need to buy it.    I will be hording mine! 

I’m also hearing about jumps in cocoa butter.  Luckily, I’ve got a good supply of that butter right now.  Now if shea jumps then I think I’ll have a fit!

Popularity: 8%

Been thinking a lot about this next year and what changes and new products I need to focus on.   My primary focus of this business is offering handmade soap but I also like to round this out with other natural bath and body care products that customers ask me specifically for.  Feedback is very important and I do listen.  It may take a bit but I store all the bits and pieces of information that I receive from my wonderful customers in the back of my mind until I’m ready to draw on it.  So..with that said, I want to add several goat milk soaps to the goat milk product line.  All based upon natural fragrances.   Got two specifically in mind that I tested last season.  A mojito blend using a killer key lime essential oil and a complex citrus scent using a blend of lemongrass, litsea cubea, key lime, folded orange and a touch of bay and patchouli.   I’m also really partial to spearmint and patchouli.  Simple but delicious!   Two spa type handmade soaps will debut in the Spring.  A dead sea mud and massage soap with tapioca pearls.  I think these will do well for our wholesale soap customers.  I’m finally moving closer too to adding liquid soap to the product line.   The soap formula is done.  What’s been holding me back are the labels.  I had the disk sent here with the graphic art work but it cracked and is not useable so I have to order another disk.  Bummer!  It’s been a bit of a headache but it will get done!   I’ve also decided to bring back the massage oil I used to make due to the many requests I’ve had.    The plan is for a muscle/pain blend, a sleep blend and another that is fragrance free.   And..if I can at all make it happen, I’d really like a goat milk and shea butter body cream to pair with the lotion.  Whew!  I’ll be busy.

Popularity: 11%

Lately, I have been really busy making many batches of handmade soap in the shop.  Those of you who buy handmade soap from me know that I like to use color quite a bit.  Otherwise, I’d be bored with making lots and lots of plain handmade soap bars!  I just like color!  It’s a fun part of the whole process for me.  You would think as a handmade soap company I would have come up with a simple solution to mixing pigments up some time ago but I have to confess that the light bulb just went off about a month ago while I was busy mixing up some soap batches.    A few years back, I purchased a mini mixer to mix up small test batches of lotions and it has been sitting staring out at me on the shelf every time I go into the shop to mix up some more batches of handmade soaps.   This little mixer is the perfect solution to avoiding clumps in your color solution.  I just add a bit of oil to the colorant and mix away.  No more clumps of pigments!   Perfect, clean color in the final handmade soap bars.   Don’t know why I didn’t think of this before.

Popularity: 20%

Yes, River County Soapworks is a handmade soap company which should have been on Facebook a long time ago.  Unfortunately, the soap maker who makes all the handmade soap around here is not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to all this social networking stuff.   Yes, I’m really, really good at making handmade soaps but really lacking when it comes to computer stuff.  I mean, REALLY lacking.   You wanna see a blank face.  Just say blog, facebook and twitter.  Not to mention, upload, download and photoshop!   Please join me in my new adventure.

Popularity: 21%

I like to use dried Calendula and Bachelor Buttons as toppings for some handmade soap bars or soap logs.  They are pretty dried up and tossed either in the handmade soap or on top of the logs.   There is something very eye catching when displaying a row of handmade soap logs with sprinkles of blue and yellow petals on top of them.  I just think they look gorgeous all in a row.  Each year we grow both Calendula and the blue Bachelor Buttons in the garden.  I pick the flower heads, dry them in the soap curing room and save them for the next years handmade soaps.   This year it is a bit tough as the weather has been really cold and wet so the plants haven’t done that great.  I’ll harvest what I am able to and plan for a better flower busting garden next year.

Popularity: 20%

We have two of the new handmade soap displays finished.  Yippee!  Only two more to go.  Now the really hard work begins in figuring out what colors to use in the sales booth to make our handmade soaps visually appealing.  I do think that the new displays make the handmade soap bars pop and couldn’t be more pleased with them.   A version using less expensive wood than black walnut might even work for wholesale soap displays too.   What’s really sweet here is that some of the slats made from black walnut were reused from pallets that my husband found at work.  He scooped those up quick! 

Popularity: 21%

The weather has been just awful here in the Portland/Vancouver area.  Rain, drizzle and more rain.   Selling handmade soap in wet weather isn’t a whole lot of fun.  Measures can be taken but really it’s the pits!  Anyhow, I’m set up at the Portland Saturday Market in downtown Portland.  This is a large artisan market where people tend to come to buy handmade soap.  After helping some customers choose which handmade soap bars they wanted and sharing some talk about the “lovely” weather, I noticed that most of the  handmade soaps were sitting in a puddle of water in the displays.   I must be really dense because I have no clue how long it had been raining or when the rain had started.   So in my haste, I go to pull the display back out of the rain and get the soaps off of it and the whole thing fell down.   Handmade soaps and display in a big crash on the concrete!  Never in almost 10 years has this happened at any event I’ve ever attended.    Talk about being a bit embarrassed.  Yeah, I was.  Probably a bit red in the face too.   As I’m standing there looking in disbelief at the mess I just made with the rain coming down, three lovely young women stop and bless their hearts help me put everything back together again.   Thank you ladies for all your help and kind words of support!

Popularity: 24%

Every year, when market starts back up I have customers asking what new handmade soap bars have I added.   There are several this season, but I just recently activated two on the website.  The first is Tanzanian Clove which I first tested out during the holiday season to see what kind of response I would get.   It was a success and people loved it!  It’s a traditional warm, spicy  clove fragrance.  The next one is Sugar Kisses which has blue bentonite clay beads sprinkled throughout.   Very pretty!  Now this handmade soap is not easy to describe.  It’s cotton candy and toasted caramelized sugar.    All I got to say is YUM!    Both of these new handmade soaps are available on the website.

(Tanzanian Clove)

(Sugar Kisses)

Popularity: 22%

On the weekends I can usually be found selling my handmade soaps and body care products at the Portland Saturday Market.   This has been a hard market to transition to as the booth space is only 8 x 8.  Usually, fairs and markets allow a 10 x 10 space.   Now, you wouldn’t think that it would make much difference but it does.  Quite a bit.   A lot of people travel to this market to buy handmade soap so this is a great market for me to be in but it has also left me scratching my head trying to figure out how to place tables, what table sizes to use and where to place all the handmade soaps I bring with me so that they are easy to see and reach.   Seems like every week I’m trying a new setup.   Haven’t quite found what I like yet but I am determined to work it all out.   Right now I’m using two (2 x 4) tables but am thinking of switching to a six footer and one of the 2 x4’s.   This would allow more product but might make things too tight.  Anyhow, I will just have to set the tent up in the yard again and play around.  The good news is we are in the process of designing a new display system that would hold all 24 different handmade soap bars that I usually bring to market.  This display system would be stocked in the shop, would fold up and I could carry it to market already full.   This would save so much time and effort.  Don’t ask me how it would all work.  I have no clue!  That’s up to my other half who worked on the design last week end.   A mock up will be done next weekend and maybe then I can wrap my brain around how this will all work.  I’m visual ya know!   

Popularity: 20%