It's A Giveaway!

BIG giveaway over on the Facebook Page!  June 18th until June 21st!  Visit my Facebook page and find the post to enter and win!

https://www.facebook.com/ALifeDeliberateSoap

Product Spotlight: Sea Buckthorn Blemish Bar

I know it's shameful to show my face here after such blatant neglect of this blog.  Oy.  I really do have good intentions about keeping up with it, yet always fail miserably.  For what it's worth - I can't fold fitted sheets worth a damn either.

That said, I thought I'd motivate myself by telling you a little bit more about some of the products I offer in my shop, what goes into the idea conception, the nitty gritty on ingredients, creative process, and what I hope it can bring to the consumer.  I'll "spotlight" a new one every week.  (And let's just go ahead and assume "every week" means "whenever I remember".)

For this initial Spotlight entry, I want to talk about my Sea Buckthorn Blemish Bar.  

My point of reference for creating new product has always been my own crap skin.  (Thanks, genetics - so much for that lucrative contract with Cover Girl).  I don't have a team of dewy-skinned guinea pigs at every beck and call, so I basically create for myself, knowing there are many of you out there looking for the very same product answers to skin dilemmas, that I am.

A little history:  I am currently 45.  Ouch.  That stung a little and made my face scrunch up to type.  As a teenager, I had raging breakouts (my professional self-diagnosis is stress, hormones and a steady diet of Burger King and Cool Ranch Doritos.)  My skin is also oily.  Even at the age I am now, I still battle oil and the occasional zit.  People used to tell me "You'll be so glad when you're older, because people with dry skin will be all cracked and wrinkled and yours will look sooo good".  Vicious lies.  My skin looks like every other average 45 year old.  Nice try though.  I have also learned that I have very sensitive skin.  If I rest my face in a hand....or get accidentally sprayed on the skin with an over zealous spritz of hairspray - you can be sure I'll break out in those spots the next day.  True story:  I once wore my daughter's silk scarf for an afternoon, and my neck broke all out the very next day, in every place it touched.  Yeah....I'm a total freakshow.  It's not lost on me.

So finding some kind of relief from this nonsense has been ongoing in my life, yet I am not a person that will head to Sephora and drop a hundo on a one ounce jar of "miracle cream".  It's just not gonna happen.  It's gonna need to be more affordable for me, or I'm just gonna have to go ugly.  So what are the elements I needed to formulate a soap to help combat these issues?

1.) Natural ingredients.  PEOPLE!  Stop using commercial "soap".  It's garbage.  It's chemicals and detergents.  It's heinous and a waste of time and money.  If you can get a gross ton of it for .23 cents, that should be a red flag.

2.) Affordability.  Not .23 cents, but not rivaling your car payment.

3.)  Balance.  It would need to calm the skin, regulate pH, and not dry it out so much that oil production is over stimulated to combat what your skin thinks is a need to produce MORE oil, leaving you with scaly, rough, dry patches covered in even more oil.  It's not cute.

4.) A perfect storm of researched, specific, carefully chosen ingredients in the arsenal that will work together, not against each other, in application.

Sea Buckthorn Fruit is pretty new on the scene, relatively speaking, in terms of being used by vendors like me.  I give ample side eye to most new, the-next-big-thing fixes, because most turn out to not do much more than cost me money.  Sea Buckthorn Oil really turned out to be a great surprise for my skin, however.

Sea Buckthorn berries come from a shrub which grows in mountainous and coastal regions of Europe and Asia.  These funny little, sour, orange berries have been used to treat sunburn, radiation burns, eczema, psoriasis, is loaded with vitamins and anti-inflammatory agents, as well as several groups of micro nutrients (including omegas 3, 6, 7 and 9) that work together to balance and regulate the body's hormonal and immune systems.  Topical sea buckthorn applications soften, thin and strengthen the skin and reduce scarring, swelling and inflammation - allowing the skin to finally break the inflammatory cycle and heal itself.  Sounds great, right?  I KNOW!!!

Secondly, I always remembered how my skin would clear up and heal in ocean water.  Many times, even in fresh river or lake waters.  Even now, if I swim in a natural river (and by "swim" I mean "fall out of my canoe"), my skin is softer, more clear and I notice my pores will shrink, as well.  So what does all of this mean?  It means that natural minerals, antioxidants (found in salt water, especially) really do make a difference in conditioning and healing inflamed skin.  Now salt from the Dead Sea has unique qualities that are helpful, as well.  It is full of essential minerals which aide in overall skincare, including:

Magnesium - Necessary for cell metabolism.  It contains several potent, natural anti-inflammatory minerals and also promotes the healing of skin tissue and gives skin surface anti-allergic elements.

Bromide - Soothes irritated skin.

Potassium - Moisturizes the skin.

Sulfur - Naturally disinfects while also working as a detoxifier.

Calcium - Cleanses pores.

Zinc - helps protect the skin against elements such as sun and wind, and is also an important factor for the enzymatic regulation of cell proliferation.  (Say *that* five times fast).

Am I losing you yet? Ok, you get the basic gist.  I was still worried that I need an ingredient that would add an extra element of moisture in case all that salt left my dry skin customers feeling like a herring at a fish market.

Enter - oatmeal.

Oatmeal is my go-to ingredient in many of the products that I make.  Whether in natural, colloidal, hydrolyzed or other form, it's great stuff.  We've all had oatmeal baths as kids, when we've gotten into some poison ivy or contracted chicken pox. Remember how your skin calmed down, felt soft, and the itchiness subsided?  The same principle applies in the soap.  It's not rocket science.  Just smart ingredients all working together to accomplish a goal.

There are no synthetic fragrances or colorants in this soap either.  The rich orange color is from the sea buckthorn berries themselves.  The slight nutty scent is also the natural fragrance of the berry pulp.

Now there is one caveat - dead sea salt is a natural lather inhibitor.  In much the same way a carbonated drink will fizzle out if you pour salt into it, these soap bars do not have big fluffy lather like the rest of the soap in my line.  I think the trade off is worth it.  I myself, like to agitate the bar onto a face cloth to boost the bubble factor, and then apply and scrub my face.  It is my favorite face soap and has made a tangible change in my skin.  I invite you to give it a try too.  Salt bars last a long time as well, so at $6.50 a bar, it's affordable.

As much fun as crazy colors, strong fragrance and less-than-natural ingredients in B&B products can be, if you have sensitive or acne prone skin - less is assuredly more.  At least when it comes to delicate face skin.

Read labels, choose vendors and soapmakers who do the research and just don't slap a product together from a bad internet recipe.

Sea Buckthorn Fruit!  Who knew?!

Until my next post - thanks for reading and give my little shop a try sometime.  I love hearing how products are working for you.

~ Lori

It All Started With That First Hit.....

"They're gonna say what they're gonna say, you're gonna say what you're gonna say, and then we're done..."   - Jeff Van Vonderen.  Intervention.

 

I think I have a burgeoning, borderline problem.  I've been doing a lot of reading and learning about wax products.  Mostly, because I've been contemplating adding a regular element of it to my product line if I can find a free second to add it in there somewhere.  In doing so, I've made a bunch of pretty lacklaster tarts (or melts - I'm not arguing about it) that look pretty cute but didn't really have the fry-your-nosehairs-out throw I'm looking for.  Waxes make all the difference, and there are only about 45,988,575,566,354,85,7450,000 differen't ones to buy, and 655,373,645,5474,784,800,000 combinations and tweaks to work out.  Paraffin....soy....vybar....no vybar....old formulas....new formulas.  Geez louise.

 

So, in my thirst to work it all out, I've starting getting some tarts from a few of the more popular vendors and watching review videos obsessively.  I get on my treadmill in the morning - coffee cup full of high octane in the cupholder, and scroll through YouTube addict uploads on my phone plugged into my treadmill speakers. Totally weird right? 

 

That's not even the weird part. 

 

 Being a soapmaker and vendor, I have lots of  awesome customers who have "collections" of soap.  I'm talking thousands of dollars worth.  They send me photos of the piles of them they've accumulated.  Closets crammed full, shelves overflowing, and some even keep inventory on spreadsheets so they can keep track of what they have, and need to repurchase....hahaha.  I love them so much and they are so good to me.  :)  Before now, I never really understood the point of stockpiling so much.  I mean, how freaking dirty can you be?! 

 

May I present to you, Exhibit A:

 

It's totally not normal.

 

I've swapped soap for a lot of it because in addition to being psychotic, I am also a cheapass when it comes to spending lots of money on things like this.  I watch some of these videos and I just think "Do you people not have BILLS?!".  The people that collect makeup stuff are especially mind boggling to me.  A MAC mascara is like $2500 on sale, and chicks have ROOMS full of high end makeup.  The kids must be eating cat food.  Jus' saying.  Sorry about that tuition thing, Billy...

 

Anyway - to make myself feel less in need of Lithium, I'm calling this "research".  I know now what a "good" tart is and have all kinds of good ideas about formulations, and presentations, and am currently testing new waxes...........again.  As it turns out, I love them!  Each morning, I throw some in all of my warmers and it completely lifts my mood out of the winter blues funk.  There's totally something to this aromatherapy stuff.  When I get something new, I grab hubby's hand, lead him to the drawer, and make him sniff things like a crazy person and he's like "Yeah....that's....really....nice... *side eye*".   

 

Pssh. He has no vision.

 

Until my next post!

Waxing Poetic

Candlemaking can sometimes be the natural progression of a soapmaker.  After a while, the big challenges of B&B are mostly behind us, and I feel pretty confident that I have a decent grasp on what I do now.  So...instead of basking in my lower stress levels and riding the wave of ease - it only makes sense that I would start the madness all over again begin a fun new adventure.

Uh...right? 

I'll begin by telling all of you that are thinking the same thing, that it's not as easy as it looks.  Melt some wax, slap a wick in there.....how hard could it be?!   Yeah, not so much.  There are as many variables in candlemaking as there are in soapmaking.  Don't even get me started on wicks.

However, with most new bank drainers obsessions of mine, I find myself working and working at it to the point of lunacy, 'til I figure it out.  The time I spend behind an apron in my kitchen/laboratory is disturbing.  But hey...it keeps me off the pole ya know?!  :p

So...after months and months of testing and retesting.....learning and reading, ad nauseum, I think I've finally become pretty comfortable with the knowledge I've gathered along the way.  Like soapmaking, it never ends, but you reach a place where you feel good about it.  I totally stopped burning down houses now and the vet says the cat's fur and left whiskers will grow back soon. 

Here are some of my latest creations:

They're fun, but sure take a long time.  I have all sorts of ideas about other "flavors" to make too.  See?  The gears never stop grinding....

Until next time....

Murphy's Law...

Packaging design may be the single most annoying factor in running your own goods based business.  It's tedious and deceivingly difficult.  Just when you think you have it all worked out, a monkey wrench comes flying in out of nowhere....usually after you've spent money on labels, boxes, tags, bells and whistles - rendering your business bank account smoking, with no progress or final end result.  Inevitably, something doesn't work out.  The labels are too big, the boxes are too small, it's not cost effective...on and on.  It's really enough to drive me to alcoholism.  MINIMUM, a righteous bender.

I've had the same packaging for years.  I didn't even like it to begin with, but went with it because it did what it needed to do at the time, and I just got lazy and simultaneously too busy to deal with it.  I'm not a Kraft/country aesthetic kinda person, yet that's what I had going on. Makes perfect sense. 

This past week I have suspended making product and focused my energy on creating a sleeker, more upscale look to my product line.  How freaking hard can that be?  I'm computer savvy.  I can work a label program decently, most times.  I designed a new logo & new labels with a new black and silver color scheme.  Not just for my soap, but all my B&B goods and even tucked away ideas for a future candle line, as well.  That means ordering new labels.  Many shapes and sizes. Many made of differen't material depending on application.  I ordered new boxes.  I figured out it was just as effective to order business cards online as it was for me to burn through ink to print them myself, so I bought those too.  Of course, new labels created more issues.  Now I needed to change containers on a couple of things too, in keeping with my new look.  There's another whole new ball of wax....
Then there's embellishments.  Ribbons, baubles, assorted accessorizing ideas...all of which end up scaled back because my soap would need to be sold for about $45 a bar to offset the cost.   *creativity squelched*.

Now the boxes don't work.  They look good and all, but are just large enough to make what I can fit in a flat rate envelope, far less than what my customers are used to getting for that price.  CURSES!  Also Microsoft Word is for chumps.  I hate that program.  Ever try to center an image in a template?  Maddening.  Screw you, Bill Gates.

You smell what I'm cookin' now, don'tcha?  *sigh*  It all seemed so simple in my head.

At any rate, I have moved on to Plan J now, purchased even more stuff to rework things, and still have no end product.  Nor have I made anything new for the actual shop, while fielding countless emails and Facebook posts about where the hell their favorite soap is. 

This time would have been much more well spent swirling a paper umbrella in a fruity chick drink in the tropical sun somewhere. 

 

Look for new packaging.....in the 2067 line!

It's The Hap Happiest Time Of The Year....

I am a terrible blogger.  The worst.  For someone who loves to write, I find myself neglecting this blog more often than visiting it these days.  Like all soapmakers, I am ass-deep in the holiday season production right now.  As bananas as it always is, I am enjoying cranking out all the scents we look forward to all year.  All the piney, sugar plummy, cranberry laden fare we'll all be sick to death of by the end of october. :p  My kitchen has seen more glitter lately than Adam Lambert's Mac pallet in Ru Paul's Interior Illusions Lounge.

Shante, you stay.

 

So, what have I made so far?....

 

 

I think that about covers it, to date.  I wish I were as organized and efficient as many others are, and concocting a scheduled release, but I'll just keep cranking them out til mid-december, willy-nilly.  The creative juices tend to dilute in too much pre-planning, for me.

 

So anyway...if nothing else, it's a welcome distraction from the political hellscape that is permeating all of America right now.  Looking forward to seeing what everyone else makes this year!

 

Until my next post... Feliz Navidad.

 

 

 

 

Give it away, Give it away, give it away now....

 

I've had some thoughtful discussion with friends today about a trend in the soaping community, and it sparked an interest in the thoughts of other shop owners, or hobbyists who do what we love to do.

I'm a little disenchanted with You Tube, lately. I remember when I first started this soap adventure, and the only information you could find online was some bullshit 25/25/25 recipe of olive, coconut and palm and maybe one (with all due respect) crusty video from Nancy Today.  (Love ya, Nance.)  Now everybody and their flippin' mother is making videos and giving away all the techniques and information and I feel like the market is getting so saturated with it. Half of the craft was in the process....the journey.  Every day, more and more shops are lining the pages of Etsy, Artfire and BuyMyCrap.Com and it begs the question sometimes: Why are people working so hard on their product, and then going on YouTube and giving it all away to every shmoe with a spatula?  Now, there are those that guard every tiny shred of knowledge like they have the keys to unlocking cancer hidden in their tub of cocoa butter.  I'm not talking about THOSE clowns.  We all know them.  I will freely help newbies out with hints and techniques, I'll tell soaper friends how I do certain things without giving it a second thought, and they will for me, as well.  I can sit here and think of several nuggets of discovery though, that took insane amounts of time and work (did I mention work?) to arrive at, and now you can, through the magic of the internet, go online to a soaper's channel, and within one video, or a light sifting through their comments section, gather someone else's hard work and dedication, and put your product up for sale in a fraction of the time it took it's messenger.  So what do I care?  It's capitalism!  It's opportunism!  "Too bad you didn't have these resources, Lori, but we do, so suck up your sour grapes and step off my good fortune", ya old bat". 

Hmm. 

I discussed this with a few friends of mine, insanely talented soapmakers and artists in their own right.  One says, it's a pointless tail chase.  Another opinion is that You Tube is about the community and not sales and secrecy.  Admirable, and I do see the validity of the point, but I'm not doing this for my health, either. I assume most people that count their small businesses as income can agree.  The reality is that if you can get your exact Triple Swirl Sooper Dooper Double Butter Yak Milk soap in ten other shops this week, you've sorta leveled your own playing field.

Look, I love sharing videos as much as the next slob, and I count myself among the fortunate that have learned loads from the experience of others. Little hints, generalized technique are all invaluable to our community. What I'm puzzled about, at times, is watching someone I know work their butt off developing a product, some cool technique or some special "niche" they've created for themselves, and then slap it on You Tube complete with step-by-step instructions, FO blends and/or ingredient lists.   A week from now, your blood, sweat and tears will be a fish in a sea of blinding sameness, and I wonder if enough value is being placed on your work and artisanship.  Or worse, are we doing a disservice and dilution to the art itself?

Discuss.