Heavenly Goddess Soap

This is my current favourite soap that keeps tempting my naughty self back into the bath tub at funny times of the day , you know when you find yourself fancying a bath mid morning when you really should be working? That kind of soap! I really wish I could just eat this soap and have done with it :) Anyway there are plenty so I will never run out-that is the beauty of making your own!
There is clay, shea and all kinds of goodies in this silky soap to make you feel amazing and I am here to say it works!

Cake boxes

We (my sister and I ) have spent the afternoon battling the light from a stormy sky to try and capture these cute boxes The results vary, but in real life the boxes are quite pretty, and they smell great as they contain tiny vanilla/honey cakes! Not real cakes, soap cakes :) We have these soaps in some sweet new colours as well-maybe more pics tomorrow weather permitting!
Some new 'flavours'

Spring soaps

We are busy making new soaps with a Spring theme in pastel florals, and some hearts and corsets in Valentine red . I fancy making up some gift baskets with Easter just around the corner, and I think we are all pretty desperate for some Spring and Sunshine in our lives after such a long Winter! I find myself craving the smell of Hyacinths and Freesias and Lemongrass this week :) there will be some new Plain Special bar designs, and also the bath truffles that Joy from Dragonfly Dawn is making to add to our boxes!

Having a sale!

I have always wanted to hold a sale, so now seems to be the appropriate time. I would rather hold a sale than try and go shopping in the Boxing Day sales today in town! I would hate that! So, although there are slightly bare shelves here at SoapyChica since the Christmas rush, I am holding a buy two-get a third soap free sale both on my main site and on Etsy. All the soaps will be freshly made and beautifully wrapped as always, its just that you get a bit extra :)

Phew!

I bet all those who sell handmade items in a small way online are all breathing a sigh of relief, that everything got out on time!
Well this year Christmas was totally hectic-even with my sister Liz's sterling help. I'm glad and happy for the sales and I know now that I must be over-prepared, not under prepared! Last year seemed busy, so I organised enough soap for the same level of sales, but sold four times as much in December so Im going to bear it in mind for next year. Somehow I thought the recession would have had more effect on the sales for all of us. Of course I didn't help myself by deciding Mid November to start presenting the soaps in luxury fabric, instead of cello bags. I remember that I was low on cello bags, and needed to make an order of soaps look pretty, and so I parceled them up in the chiffon that I normally use to line the boxes. 'Ah, I thought-they look rather nice, I think that is how I would like to receive a luxury soap, if I bought one' and that was it. I have been tying bows in my sleep this week I swear!
It will be nice to catch up with life again now, and tomorrow is set aside for making our house look like someone owns it once again!

Pamper evening!

I was invited to have a table at a pamper evening organised at my local primary school last week and I thought why not? It ran from 7-9pm so was not too long to attend on my own. I took all sorts of soaps because I really could not decide what to take! I was quite nervous also :) I sold quite a few simple spa soap slices-they were really the best seller and I had them piled in baskets at the front. One white chocolate and one coconut truffle bath butter jars were sold, and I think it helped when I actually opened a few up for people to have a 'go' at, and placed them in the centre of the table. The fancier, pricier soaps I did only sell a couple of but on the whole I was pleased with the evening and had great fun attending! There were some lovely candles and things there but I held myself in check admirably on the spending front for a change! I was able to use the stands I had got from off Ebay that are meant to be for cards, following EJ's tip off about them, they were easy to put together and I used them for my gift boxes and jars. I suddenly remembered half way through to take a picture of the table set up for future reference and also to show my sister liz , who has been such a help!

Gloomy lighting-enough already!

It seems the days are all overcast by the time I am ready to take pictures- I prefer to use natural light but such grey days really are not helping. Funnily enough when I took my pictures in my little room at home they all seemed to be light enough no matter what. It must be a magic window sill and I am going to resort to taking things home and snapping them there. Its annoying but not insurmountable-just a bit weird. I have been messing about with my website again today trying to get it to look right and be a little more user friendly, and I could do with some good pictures of my new boxes but its not going great so far!
Here are my latest tries- I promise the soaps do look better in real life :)

In the paper again?

Hmmm lovely Fiona from NotMassProduced.com has been in touch and tells me that there is a link to the site together with a picture of a SoapyChica Royal Crown Soap in the Daily Mail Weekend magazine today. Well that is a surprise and I am going to try and get a copy if I am quick enough today so that I can have a sneaky look- I am working in the salon so I might just miss out but I hope not! I have had to work today even though I was supposed to be doing 'Pooch in the Park for St Giles Hospice. Its a long story and involves a horrid emergency tooth extraction yesterday *shudder*, anyway I am here and I might as well enjoy it!

Some good, some bad, take the rough with the smooth etc!

Well it has been a bit like that the past few weeks, suddenly a rush of sales- delightful at any time of course and most welcome. Then an oven that caught alight and a small scale 'situation' and no oven ( it persists in bursting into flames- not a great quality really, so has been retired) . Now I have a ceramic hob with which to heat my blends and I am far happier-problem solved! And I have finally caught up with my orders so all is well. Happily Lizzy my sister has offered to help out with SoapyChica which will be fabulous as I need an extra pair of hands, particularly going forward into the Christmas season. Of course there was the Express feature, and now a possibility of a feature in another magazine also- which I will explain if and when anything comes of it so that I dont jinx it! The thing I am most excited about really are my new gift boxes- I like to offer the luxury soaps in a presentation box and I have found the perfect ones, so have been having a lovely play haha!
And yes- that iS the same soap as shown below-it wanted to be in 2 posts, it likes it- so who am I to argue?

Slowly getting there.......

I have had a lovely thursday and friday off from grooming to move into the new soap place- I am glad because although I love the hot weather, its very itchy when the dogs' clipped hairs stick to your glowing hot face, and when you try and itch you just transfer more over! Of course having two days off in a row fills me with guilt, as people are suddenly desperate to have their dogs clipped because of the heat, and the phone has just not stopped ringing. The last extra time I had off was Christmas week though so I must take this time before I explode!

I have collected a couple of tables kindly donated to me through freecycle, so I have surfaces to work on, and I am collecting another today-my little van has never seen so much action! As I am waiting in for my supplies and labels though this morning I have found time to update my website with a few more soaps-guest ones this time. My site looks full-although several products overlap categories really so they show up more than once! Now I am going to start making a few other product types I will not know where to put them! here is my link to my new page if anyone fancies paying me a visit! SoapyChica

200 Sales on Etsy

I am delighted this morning - my store has been at 199 sales for days and days ( and it was so tempting to make a target of 200 all those months ago) , so when I woke up to a sale this morning I am full of joy! Also the items are a thank you gift for someone-how lovely, I am excited to get them in the post asap. They are going to Belgium. One of them is a vanilla cake in a small gift box wrapped with ribbon, and this is the first I have sold of those, so I am pleased. I am making some more in Chocolate 'flavour' but probably not till next week now.

Very creamy soap!

I have made this week a new soap, in a Choc Fudge Cappucino 'flavour' . I am calling it Choccacina which incidentally is a pet name I also use for my horse :) . The thing is, this soap is the most creamy, lotiony soap that I have ever made and I am really not sure why! I look at the recipe and I think "why this one"? I nearly wrote off this soap as a disaster too when I first unmoulded it I didnt really take to it. The chocolate chips seemed to look funny. Anyway I tried a small bar in the bath-just to see how bad it was, and instead it was beautiful!! I love it, and am keeping most of this batch, but will list some in my etsy shop sometime this week, together with a few more new soaps as yet untested. I will take pics of the Choccacina once the sun is up to post on this blog. It really doesn't look much though..., you have been warned! :)

'doing' a sale!

I am having a little promotion in my website this week, which is to celebrate the new soaps, and also so that I can try the code system! The discount code for 10% off is Tamworth , and this applies to any size order of any soaps on the site. I will be adding the new guest soaps and others this week too . These ones pictured are the chocolate ones which I will be re introducing over the next couple of weeks.

Pear Soap

This is one of those soaps that I makes me wish people had 'smelly-vision' over the internet! One has to experience it to believe how realistic the pear fragrance is-not like pear-drop sweets, but more like a fresh and ripe pear, which is one of my favourite fruits. The colour is a greeny gold achieved with the use of mica, and the natural colouring of the clays and butters in the soap also shows through. Each soap is unique as they are all individually hand poured with a slight swirl. I have a box of these soaps all wrapped and packed and it is making my spare room smell amazing ;)

Almond Coffee

When I was pouring this soap, the whole house smelt like a coffee shop. The fragrance is almond milk but I coloured the soap with coffee which means there is a goodish coffee smell about the soap. I made three colours of soap and then poured them all together to make the soap a little bit swirly. There is Rhassoul clay in there, which is one of my favourite soap ingredients, shea butter and avocado butter and a little copper mica. The finished soap reminds me of an appaloosa pony!
I am planning to make another couple of soaps next week with this plain mould, and then hopefully by the second week in June my new moulds will have arrived from America and I can get busy with those!

Some usable soaps (hopefully)

I decided to make some nice plain bars for my SoapyChica shop, since so many people tell me they could never actually wash with my soaps and I thought that was a shame! I have made soaps with the half round moulds and they make a nice large bar. I cant really use my SoapyChica stamp on them-that is the only drawback, but I love them anyway as they are so smooth . I have used shea and avocado butters and two types of clay, including my favourite Rhassoul, and some of my favourite fragrances as well so I have really enjoyed making them, and I want to make some more next week. The silly thing is I want to try one and I am too scared to use one and spoil it :)
Here is a pic of the Honey Pudding one I took today.

Little celebration cakes in boxes

These are little fancy cake with piping and tiny little roses, they smell of vanilla cream and each one comes in its own little box tied with ribbon with a matching tag. I love these, they are so cute and I am going to make them in a few different 'flavours'. I am going to do chocolate, fairy cake, vanilla, and sweet cream for starters. Still on the topic of yummy (and calorie free) cakes my sister is making delicious cake slices and cupcakes using her own original recipes and they are so nice that I will be posting pics on here as soon as I get them!

Im waiting for the postman :)

I have itchy soap making fingers this morning! I can't wait to get started, and I am waiting for some lovely supplies. Maybe tomorrow I may get started as I have a nice day off, all to myself - what bliss! I have some new soap ideas planned, as well as enhancement of some of last years favourite designs. Hopefully I will also be having my labels made at a printers this year, as label making is very unpredictable using my own printer to say the least. I am also looking forward to helping my sister with her new designs and formulations-very exciting! I will keep my dog grooming head on for the day today though as I have some really great puppies to pamper!

A streamlined range of soaps

My poor blog has been sorely neglected these few weeks, as I have been concentrating on deciding which soaps to include in my range this year. Soon I will have all my new pictures ready to show and I will of course post them here!
I am honing the range in order that I can continue to give a quick turnaround time on my orders and I am switching to all allergen-free fragrances this year also, so that each soap is ideal for sensitive skins. I am updating some of the packaging, introducing some lovely new gift sets and updating my website. Of course this all takes a fair bit of time, and I miss my blog!

Christmas Soaps

I was taken a little by surprise this year about the amount of orders that have come in, and am determined to be a lot better prepared next year, but for now I am afraid that my blog has been somewhat neglected! I am also so glad to see that so many of my soap making and crafting friends are doing so well with Christmas sales.
I am pouring soaps freshly to order for the time being, and am managing to dispatch soap parcels within a few days of purchase. I have a few new designs, but I think I will save those for the New Year. I just cannot wait till Christmas week, when I will get chance to catch up on all the great blogs that I read!