We’re zipping back to the corner drugstore and soda fountain with this brand new lip balm collection. Pucker up and enjoy these delicious flavors in scrumptious artisan-made lip balms. Imagine creamy Root Beer, Sparkling Cola and Effervescent Lemon Lime. You can smell the fizz in these balms – the flavors are that amazing!
As many of my customers know, I have two daughters, both of whom like helping me with my business. My older daughter, Mary, is COO of the Girly Arts line, and my younger daughter, Hannah, is learning the craft and beginning to help mix colorants and make soap. Hannah has one objective: Earn money for her pink fishing boat. Early versions of this boat look something like this:
Eventually she’ll earn enough money fishing both to finance her college education and to upgrade to a bigger boat, something along the size of the Disney Dream. No dreams are too big for her.
Hannah is determined to pay for her boat outright – all cash, no credit – and is already working hard to earn the money to buy her boat. Not too long ago, she told me she likes helping me make soap. I asked her what she likes about it, and she said, “I get to make money for my boat. I’m in it for the money.” Nevermind that she’s eleven years away from even being able to get her pilot’s license; she’s ready for it now.
As part of her endeavors to earn the money for her boat, Hannah has created and crafted these charming Steampunk butterflies. Silver, bronze, and pearlescent white come together in a gorgeous, funky-cool soap unlike anything we’ve offered before.
Lovely, isn’t it? Quantities are very limited on these beautiful special edition soaps, so get yours quickly. Just click the picture above to get your hands on one of these sweet little gems.
Everyone has a dream. What’s your dream? What are you doing to achieve it?
This is the coolest, most prettiest soap I have in this house. It has a flaming swirl that could probably take your breath away. My Mom, my sister and I made this. My Mom makes the soap. My sister stirs the colors into the oil, and I stir the colors into the soap and I hold the funnel. This was so cool to make and plenty cool to design. Mom wanted to leave the blue and gold. I wanted a swirl, so I suggested to do a tiny swirl in the center but just to the edge of the blue and gold. The funnel holding is not so fun because it gets boring. Here is a picture of the soap.
I am also including a picture of what the funnel looks like, too. Isn’t it beautiful? That is what it looked like when we got done pouring all of the soap into the mould.
I love seeing the final product.
Let me introduce you to Sun on the Go sets. We are trying small sets in a convenient vinyl spa bag so they are more travel sized. They can be taken on a plane, yet are able to take just a little bit of space. We aren’t doing shampoo; instead, we’re doing detangling spray, so after a day in the sun, you can brush your hair with ease. The lotion helps after sunburns or tender areas, while, at the same time, you can use it for simply moisturizing your skin. 
The soap will be good for cleaning sweat, germs and even shells off your skin. You can use it on your face, though we can’t predict how your skin will react, since people are sensitive to different things. The lip balm will not work as a sun screen lip balm, so don’t use it that way. However it will work if your lips are dried out. You can pick these up at the Blueberry Festival this Saturday, 21 June 2014 or order them from our online store if you’re not going to be in the area this weekend.
It is three yummy flavors in one sweet little tube! It’s Balms Away! lip balm, a fabulous triple layered treat for your lips. I was looking at the product picture on the listing for these balms, and I was remembering when I had made all these tubes of balm. Two years ago, fellow alumni and I from my high school graduating class got together to put together care packages for troops serving in Afghanistan, and I’d made these for those boxes.
These were a lot of work, but so much fun to make! It’s thrilling watching layer harden upon layer, then seeing the finished product emerge.
You should grab one of these treats for yourself. First, enjoy a blast of sweet cherry flavor, followed by toasted coconut (delish!), then finish the tube with blueberry, pumped up with blueberry butter. The tubes of these lip balms just look happy with their patriotic flair.
What’s your favorite lip balm flavor, maybe a flavor that takes you back?
It is not at all unusual for me to get special orders for products or for people to tell me about their skin conditions and ask me to pair them up with products that will meet their needs. Usually, for complaints of psoriasis, eczema or sensitivities to fragrances, I recommend Soap of Milk & Honey (and Oatmeal!). I received a call, though, from a long-time customer who was looking for products similar to what she had been getting from another company. That’s not something I usually like to do, but she gave me the name of the company and the products, so I started investigating. Imagine my surprise when I discovered these products which were earth-inspired and “natural” were made of premade bases with a few things added! They even made claims about the healing properties about an ingredient that was in a product’s name, and the only hint of that ingredient was the scent!
No, I could not duplicate these products for my friend; I could make them from scratch even better. I relayed to her my findings and warned her that I couldn’t make these products cheaper than she was getting them. In fact, they would be more expensive. She said, “I don’t care. Yours will be better, and I’d rather buy from you, anyway.” Here are her skin treats…
For bathing, I’m hooking her up with gloriously luscious body wash. This mild soap made of a blend of premium, skin-loving oils builds lots of fluffy lather and leaves skin scrumptiously silky and richly supple. The fragrance is an intriguing blend of herbaceous lavender and juicy pink grapefruit. To hit those troubled dry spots, the lotion is a creamy blend features coconut milk and contains avocado oil, a great addition for her slightly more mature skin. This also has that same incredible scent as the soap, so she’ll get to enjoy the light scent without inflicting it on everyone around her.
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We’re sh-sh-sh-shivering our way through the week here in Coastal North Carolina with our area looking like a beautiful Winter Wonderland as ice coats trees and lawns with icicles dangling from our mailbox, flag stand and grill.
With all this cold weather and ice, I’m trying to warm up with some warm thoughts. I’m thinking about Summer beach trips or snuggling with my sweetie beside a roaring fire. I’m pondering hot soaks and even hotter massages. Maybe there’s a reason that the most romantic day of the year falls in the dead of winter.
We have all sorts of goodies to warm up your Valentine’s Day, whether you’re of a mind to warm that special someone’s heart or warm that special someone’s body. Check out all the totally scrumptious offerings!
If the weather is yucky and you can’t get what you need by the big day (Friday!), don’t hurt yourself trying to buy something. I promise, if that special person is truly that special, he or she will understand, and you can stretch the celebration out for the whole weekend.*
What special way will you treat your Valentine this year?
* Due to inclement weather here, orders won’t go out before Thursday, so I’m afraid I can’t guarantee Valentine’s delivery. Gift certificates, however, can be there within hours.
I love to travel. I love home, too – my bed, my cats, my own kitchen. But with being home so much, I really welcome the opportunity to get away, to see new sites, new parts of the state, or even to have that moment of seeing a familiar site in a new way. Whether it’s a day trip, a weekender or a major vacation, I like exploring.
Our last family trip was a weekender in December to Beaufort, NC. It’s an absolutely lovely little coastal town, and the people in that area are just so friendly, too. In fact, I was driving through the town leading to Beaufort when one of the police officers pulled me over and issued a personal invitation for me to return to Beaufort next week, actually. Well, he issued me a speeding ticket, but he was really nice about it. Since getting that ticket, I learned that one of the pilots on the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger was from Beaufort, and as many times as I’ve been in that town, I’ve never paid attention to the memorial to him. I’m going to go check that out next week after I’m done at the courthouse. I have a friend with a shop in Beaufort, so I’ll stop in and see her, too.
Of course, with all this traveling, I absolutely MUST have good soap with which to bathe, so I always take a small bar of my own soap just in case my only other option is the dreaded “deodorant bar.” Thanks to my mother-in-law, I decided it’s time to make these small travel-sized soaps available to my customers, too. My soaps want to travel! They want to see the sights! They want to travel the world! Will you give them this opportunity?
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| Lovely little 1-ounce bars of travelin’ soapy goodness |
These lovely little gems will be ready to own by the very end of February, and they will be ready for you to tuck into your travel bag and take with you as you hit the road this Spring and Summer. As you travel, I invite you to take pics of your soap and you and email them to me (please, no naked pics) to be featured in an upcoming blog post. Let’s see where these soaps find themselves.
Where will your travels take you this year?
Saturday’s the day – my biggest show of the year. This Saturday is the North Carolina Blueberry Festival. Peter and I are busy putting the finishing touches on production, and tomorrow will be the mega-wrapping day. Much of our wares are already wrapped and labeled, but there’s a little bit left to go. What’s new and great this year? We’ll be selling a limited edition Blueberry Festival soap featuring the Blueberry Fest logo and a yummy blueberry fragrance.
Image by Sara’s Soaps via FlickrWe’ll have a variety of the much-loved flip-flop soaps, including a newish one that looks like last year’s Blueberry Flip Flop soap but with a great scent I’m calling Beach Bound. There will be many Blueberry and Blueberries & Cream homemade soaps there. These are wonderful soaps and are a delight for skin.
We’ll also have some new lip balm flavors from which to choose. And, last but not least, we’ll have a number of my daughter’s Sun On The Go sets.
The biggest deals will be FREE Blueberry Lip Balm with a $10.00 purchase, and the Bargain Box, a full box of great soaps that are less-than-gorgeous and on sale for $2.00 each. Get ’em while you can; after this show, leftover soaps will be donated to Clean The World. We’ll be there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., booth #72, near the intersection of Wilmington Street and S. Walker Road.
Last month, I discovered that my Great-Grandma used to make her own soap. Dad says that stuff would dry up poison ivy in twenty-four hours! Yeah, it was that strong. It shouldn’t surprise me that Grandma made her own soap. After all, in the early 20th century, pretty much every good farm wife made soap for the family, for bathing, laundry and washing dishes. I’m impressed, though, because not only did Grandma make her own soap, but she also made her own lye.
Still, while this was a common practice a hundred years ago and not terribly remarkable, it’s somehow thrilling to me to realize that I’ve got soapmaking in my family tree, especially a lady I loved and admired a great deal. When Dad was over at our house a few days after telling me this, I happened to be making a batch of laundry soap in the crockpot. This is soapmaking new school. He remembers watching his grandma standing over a black iron pot over an open flame in the yard, stirring the soap endlessly, waiting for it to saponify (become soap). This would take hours! Keep in mind, a batch had to bathe all the bodies, all the clothes and all the dishes, and the larger the batch, the longer it takes to “become.”
Now, my soaps won’t clear up poison ivy in twenty-four hours, and I have to specially formulate the batch to make it suitable for laundry. Yes, my laundry soap will get you clean, but it’s not nearly as moisturizing as my goat’s milk soaps. So what does “new school” look like?
Lye is bought, not made. You can make lye by pouring water through ashes, over and over, but this makes a combination of sodium hydroxide (lye) and potassium hydroxide (potash). I don’t have an easy source for ashes, so I just buy my lye over the Internet, or, if I’m out and desperate, at the local hardware store.
Stirring is done by a stick blender, not by hand-stirring with a wooden spoon. Hand stirring soap can take a few hours at best with some batches. Stirring with a stick blender takes about five minutes, max. This spares the arms a lot of agony, plus gets the soapmaker on with life faster.
Soap can cure for longer periods. Folks like my Great-Grandma didn’t have four-to-eight weeks to wait for soap to cure before they could use it. It needed to be ready right then.
The crock pot has replaced the iron pot (at least in my kitchen). Instead of adding heat by cooking the soap over an open flame, now we let the crockpot do all the work for us. It’s not quite a matter of turning it on and forgetting about it, but it’s close. My soap can cook in as little as 45 minutes or as long as three hours. Either way, I’m not stirring it constantly.
So… For what “old fashioned” thing are you grateful we have modern equivalents now?
