This week's Etsy Features!

I have been lucky to have been featured in a few Etsy Treasuries this week, all very beautiful and inspiring!

Purple Passion by vbarton24



A Bit of Spring Color by littlecoastergnome



CHOCOLATE and... by voscoleccion




ROCKIN' BNR BNR BNR BNR by ErinJade

An update on Goals!

I wrote this post on Friday about my goal of reaching 100 sales by the time I put my shop on vacation for our big move...and I am so proud (and AMAZED!) to day that it's happened already! I can't believe it. I must give credit to a fellow EtsyVeg team member who read my blog post and really got the ball rolling for me! She said the had been planning to try some of my soaps and now seemed the perfect time! It's funny how that works, I have been planning to buy an item from her as well..my perfect time is yet to come, though as we need to pinch every penny right now!

I am a lucky gal and so grateful to my first 100 customers!! May their skin be soft and smelling fabulous!!

Sneak Peek - Sweet Birch!

I am SO excited to tell you about this bar as it is my absolute favorite! I am usually tolerant and like almost all scents to some degree which is great because we use each and every one...but this one really speaks to me.


I call this the soap of many colors, I created swirls in the soap with rosemary powder, the result was quite shocking to me, actually, as I anticipated dark green swirls but when the batch had gone through gel it came out with a lovely dark brown swirl on top! When I cut into the bar the inside swirl was green! It reminded me so much of a birch tree when you peel the bark back and the sweet woodsy scent of the bar make it my perfect birch bar - created as an ode to my home!


The bar has cured with a dark brown swirl which I think is so lovely! And, of course, it's a bar that I can't help but sniff when I walk by the curing rack...talk about addicting! It keeps me on my toes as well! I was cutting one of the bars into sample sizes the other day and the color inside was still green. It was so beautiful that I had to take a photo :) With time and proper ventilation the swirl will be a dark brown throughout, but until then I'll always know this bar has a green soul!


Sweet birch will be available in my Etsy shop starting the second week of May :)

A personal goal

I gave myself a challenge last night. A few months back I was thinking about my goals and decided arbitrarily that I would like to make 100 sales by the time we leave for Phoenix. It seemed impossible at the time - I was making a sale a week if that and I believe I was close to 50 sales, but I have been doing my best!

Last night I was at 91 sales with two weeks to go until I put my shop on vacation for graduation/the move. 9 sales in 2 weeks didn't sound impossible but I knew it was going to be a stretch!! I started to think that it may not happen...but then thought, no, I still have to try! This morning I'm up to 92 sales! 8 more to go, with 13 days to do it...

On the EtsyVeg forum we have been discussing methods of advertising and hiring an ad vs. renewing as a strategy. We are blessed with having one of the top sellers in the knit category, Celeste of CricketsCreations, as a very active member of the team and she is a proponent for more active renewing, she said it has about a 90% return for her! I decided that for the next week I will renew more actively as a test to see the expense vs. return (which will be made easier, of course, because I just paid my Etsy Bill for last month!).

So I will combine more frequent renewing with time on the Etsy forums to reach my goal. I certainly think posting my 5 new bars the last week of my challenge will help if I am close by that point - they are terribly delicious! I will NOT put my soaps on sale as a whole...that would be an easy fix but I'm trying to see what promoting alone will do for me! I'll keep you posted :)

Sneak Peek - Sonoran Sunshine

I've been a busy soaper this week - I made 5 new batches and another batch of my most popular creation, Spa Clean!! I'll have more sneak peeks coming this week, but for now here is the first new batch I created!



I used a lovely bergamot and grapefruit blend of essential oils that is perfect for summer! I also added calendula and orange peel powder into the soap for a bit of yellow-orange color! I was just going to call this one "Bergamot and Grapefruit" but when I poured it in the mold I thought it looked a bit like desert sands! So, I created more of a sand facade to the top of the bars and it earned the name Sonoran Sunshine as a tribute to where we're going :)


Look for this bar in my Etsy Shop the 2nd week of May!

Just Listed: Oatmeal, Milk, and 'Honey'

I just listed my Oatmeal, Milk, and 'Honey' bar at my Etsy Shop, stop on over and check it out!

What's with the 'Honey'?
Traditional Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap is made with cow's milk and honey (and oatmeal, of course!) but I make completely vegan soaps and want to keep it that way! I've long wanted to make an Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap but thought, "What's the point," without the soothing milk and honey it would just be another scented oatmeal bar. Collier actually gave me the idea for this soap after I mentioned how I'd like to make an Horchata soap one evening over Mexican dinner - and he said, "Oh, yeah, that would be nice. You could put Rice Milk in it." He understands more about soap than he realizes I think! I asked around the soaping community and a few people had soaped with rice milk and/or soy milk and said it turned out fine, so I decided to go for it! I figured if I'm substituting the milk with a vegan alternative I may as well do the same for the honey so I used agave nectar instead!


This was a fun batch to make. I didn't get any great photos but after adding the rice milk and the agave nectar the batch turned blood red. I panicked thinking Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap should NOT be red! It faded, shortly, to an orange color, then to a pleasant orange cream look. I figured I could deal with that and hoped it would cure to a tan, which, of course, it did!


We've been using this bar for the past week at our house and I LOVE it! The bar is super skin-loving and the scent is to die for. The only thing I don't like about this bar is that I can't stop using it in the shower - I will wash the same part several times before I can get myself to stop!

Just Listed - Damask Rose

My Damask Rose soap bar is now for sale in my Etsy Shop!

Coming (really) Soon! Damask Rose

While I usually post about new creations within a week of creating them, this time my busy day job and procrastination got the best of me. I will actually be posting this bar for sale in my Etsy shop later this week but still wanted to share photos of the awesome new kid with you :)


I love floral scents but not the "grandma" floral that is overpowering and...just plain gross. This bar is scented with an essential oil blend but its primary note is that of rose essential oil. When I first thought to make a rose scented bar I was wary, but it smells absolutely wonderful!

This batch seized but luckily I am well aware that floral essential oils, especially rose, are known for this and was prepared - I added my rose hip powder (natural colorant) in prior to the essential oils for maximum chance of success. What is "seize" you ask? Well usually you pour soap into a mold at trace which is kind of runny pudding consistency (and if you dip a spoon in to the liquid and then drip the liquid over the surface it leaves a "trace" along the top) - you can push batches a little farther to do things like peaks to the tops. When soap seizes it goes from this runny pudding to a non-chunky oatmeal consistency in a matter of minutes. It gets hard quickly! That makes it difficult to get into a mold or do anything "fun" with it as you have to work extremely quickly!

I managed to get this bar in the mold, though, and all is well with the world :) I wanted to talk a bit about rose hip powder, one of my favorite natural colorants. The powder, itself, is a mustard yellow color. I was quite shocked the first time I saw it, actually, because I was planning to use it to color a soap pink! But with soaping colors can be deceiving!

After you pour cold process soap containing rose hip powder into a mold it looks white (see photo above). In a few hours it will go through a "gel phase". This is an exothermic (heat producing) chemical reaction that makes the soap look more like a gel (more translucent) and this reaction is required to make soap! When the soap hits gel phase, the rose hip powder turns this fun blue color (see photo below)!


When you remove the bar from the mold once it has cooled and hardened enough for cutting, it is a light peachish color (see photo below).


As the bar cures, it turns progressively more pink. It's the soap of many colors :)

Just Listed - Minty Fresh

You heard it here first, folks :) My Minty Fresh bar has just been listed for sale in my Etsy shop! Coll and I have been testing the bar for the past few days and its passed inspection with flying colors! This one even got a special, "Kell, I really LOVE this Minty Fresh bar!" comment from Collier. I knew he'd love it :)

Just Listed - Neroli Lemon

Neroli Lemon is back on my Etsy page!! I actually sold 10 bars of this batch prior to listing, so get them while they last :)

Just Listed - Rosemary and Oatmeal

I just listed the Rosemary and Oatmeal bar discussed here on my Etsy page!

Just Listed - Naked (Unscented)

I just listed my Naked (Unscented) bar on Etsy! After shopping a fellow Etsy Green and Clean Guild Member's shop for lotions and creams and realizing that I really just wanted them unscented I thought hey, maybe there's something to this :) I like my soaps with personality, but I'm sure there are people out there who want the properties of handmade soap without the scent. So here it is! This bar will be $1 less than my other bars to account for the fact that I don't have to pay for essential/fragrance oils and botanicals! We've been using this bar for the past few days and are loving it :)

You can also see from this photo that I have (once again!) modified my photos a touch. I definitely liked my most recent photos more than my 2nd try and way more than my 1st, but there was still something about them that didn't look finished enough. I wanted something different. It hit me like a ton of bricks one day - one thing I love is wrapping each soap in its own unique color of handmade paper. So...why not use those papers as a backdrop? That way each listing has its own color identifier as well! I took photos of my 4 most recent batches this way last week (Naked is the first to be listed), and absolutely love it so far. I think I will stick with this method...but we shall see. I might just come up with something even better someday :)

Sneak Peek - Minty Fresh!

I've got a brand new bar curing as we speak, I created this one this weekend (this was the batch that Coll picked for me to make the day we got engaged - I decided to delay it until Sunday night so that we could properly enjoy our engagement!). I also like to call it "Mean Green" as it is a gorgeous bright green! This bar is going to be part of my "All Natural" line of soaps, made with essential oils only. It's a combo of Spearmint and Eucalyptus essential oils, but the eucalyptus is rather indiscernable - it just smells like spearminty goodness! Coll adores this bar already, I love it too. It reminds me of my favorite gum. Just very fresh, clean, cheery. It gets it's awesome green color from natural parsley powder...no artificial stuff here :) I even added a bit of dried chamomile to add a touch of exfoliation.

This would have been a great bar to have available for St. Patty's day, ha ha. I always seem to be about a month behind with holidays. It's something I am working on and hope to have holiday appropriate soaps in the future. This bar is going to stay in my line, though...it's too good to give up!

Engagement/Birthday Sale - 27% off!!

I was planning on having a sale at my Etsy Shop for my birthday (which is March 24th in case anyone wants to send me any presents ;-)), but we are moving in early April so it didn't seem practical. With the new engagement I realized there is no time better than the present so am offering 27% off all items in my shop! The prices are already discounted...and honestly as low as I will be likely to go this year!

Why 27%? Well, I turn 27 this year! It just seemed logical :)

The sale will run until Sunday, 3/15/09!