Happy New Year!

Just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year! I hope all of your holidays have been filled with fun and family. I am looking forward to getting back in the blog mode and updating you all on Ladybug Soapworks news.

Have fun tonight!
Sarah

Offers at Ladybug Soapworks

I am currently offering 2 specials at Ladybug Soapworks. The first is free shipping on all orders over $50 until December 19, 2008 (just wait to pay until you get a revised invoice from me). The second offer is FREE gift wrapping on all orders. I will put your items into a holiday gift bag with tissue paper and a gift tag. Please just let me know when you check out in the comments section if you would like the gift wrapping.

Enjoy!
Sarah

Garage Sale

I have a bunch of fragrance oils that I have decided not to use in my product lines, so i am offering them up to you at a discount off the retailers price. Check them out and let me know if you would like any of them.

Every effort will be made to ship the package out within 24 hours after payment is received. All orders that come in during this time will be handled in the order they were received and product will be filled accordingly.

Shipping is from 06457 and I require Paypal payment.

For Sale
The Soap Goat Soap Shop
Amaretto on the rocks 7-8 oz amber glass $10

Wholesale Supplies Plus
Mango 2 oz amber glass $4
Caribbean Coconut 2 oz amber glass $4
Berries & Cream-16 oz amber glass $16
Sexy Little Thing 2 oz amber glass $5

Brambleberry
Island Coconut 4 oz amber glass $7
Ocean Rain 4 oz amber glass $9
Ginger Pear 8 oz amber glass $11
Smokey Patchouli 16 oz amber glass $26
Dark Rich Chocolate 4 oz amber glass $9
Sugared Walnut 4 oz amber glass $8
Plumeria 2oz amber glass $4
Pecan Praline 8oz amber glass $11

Lebermuth
Coconut 1 oz amber glass $1.50
Coconut Beach 1 oz amber glass $1.50

Candlemaker’s store
Coconut cream 1 oz plastic container $1.50

Tony’s Fragrance
Coconut 1 oz amber glass $1.50
Buttercream 16 oz amber glass $8.00

From Nature with Love
Enchanted Forest 4oz amber glass $9

Simple Soothings
Cherry Almond 8oz amber glass $7

Unknown Supplier
Sugar Cookie 4oz PETE container $4

Thanks for looking!

Holiday Gift Guide

The CTEtsy Team has put together a Gift Guide for all your holiday shopping needs. Check it out!

Chocolate Variety Pack

I made up a yummy chocolate themed gift basket. I am going to list it in my store in a bit. I have included a chocolate covered nuts salt bar, a dark chocolate and coconut soap, a chocolate espresso shea soap, and a cocoalicious vegan lip balm.

Oops!

I thought I was going to save time and make a double batch of soap the other day and then split it to make two different types. Well for some reason I decided one type should be my Jasmine salt bars. The problem here is that I was making a regular soap recipe and not the recipe needed for salt bars! I couldn't figure out why the soap was so sweaty and soft. Usually salt bars are very hard...finally it occurred to me that I used the wrong recipe. So while these look really nice they are still soft enough that I can push my finger into it and make a dent and I made them about 2 weeks ago. Arrgh...what to do with all this soap now? I am going to give it a try in the shower this week, I am hoping that maybe it will be nice but who knows.

Lucky Winner!

The winner for last weeks contest is Elizabeth from Gassner Custom Soaps! Congratulations! Please send me an email (contact@ladybugsoapworks.net) with your mailing address and I will get them out to you this week.

Little Munchkins

I made some pumpkin soap and oatmeal, milk, and honey soap a couple weekends ago. When I was finished filling up my wooden loaf mold, I still had a bunch of soap left. SO I decided to try out some new molds. I think they are adorable. I have not decided if I should sell these or include then in orders as a free gift.

Oooh I have a good idea! How about a give away for one pumpkin and one OMH soap. Make a comment on this post and I will randomly select a name on Friday.

The top two photos are of the pumpkin soap and the bottom one is of the OMH soap.

New creations

Well, these are actually a month or so old and I just never got around to posting the pictures. So here we go with some soap porn for you all. The first one is gingerbread soap...it smells delicious! It turned a nice creamy brown color from the fragrance oil. This next soap is a new batch of one of my regulars, Oatmeal, Milk, and Honey soap. I decided to leave out the titanium dioxide so that the soap would be a bit more "natural". It turned out well, it is darker than previously as expected, but I am still debating if I should put the titanium dioxide back into the recipe.
This pretty little soap is scented with geranium rose and colored with pink clay. I think this will make a great soap for Valentine's Day gifts.
This last soap is scented with bayberry and colored with ultramarine blue. This is a nice holiday/winter scent.

New soap pictures!

This first soap is scented with coconut lime verbena. It smells amazing, this is probably my new favorite scent. The green swirl was made with a green oxide.

This next soap is scented mulberry. This is part of my winter seasonal soap selection. Again this one smells really great as well, I have always had a thing for mulberry. The color is from a mix of oxide, ultramarine, and clay.I re-designed my succulent pear soap from the half-circle shape to the regular bar shape.
The long awated pumpkin soap. I mixed in 3 oz of pumpkin. I love the color this turned out and the fragrance oil is to die for!
This last soap is my apple pie soap. I colored it with a mix of red and pink clay and sprinkled a little cinnamon and glitter on top of the soap.

New products in the works

I tested out another batch of hair conditioner today. I made some scented with tango mango and the other scented with ginger. Both smell really great! I added panthenol, silk protein, honeyquat, and dimethicone to boost the benefits for your hair.

I also made a small batch of oil-free body butter. I am still trying to figure out the benefit of this type of body butter: oil-free verses made from oils. Any one know why people would want one or the other? I have to say I am really impressed with the body butter. It is very light and absorbs very quickly.

Updates on website

My website has gotten a makeover! It still needs some work, but at least it now looks like a Ladybug Soapworks store. It is up and running for those who would like to purchase some of my soap. Check it out here: LadybugSoapworks.net

Please feel free to give me any suggestions on the site.

I have also added a few new soaps to my etsy store. :)

Soap and scrub

Just whipped up a batch of pumpkin soap, using real pumpkin, and a batch of jasmine salt bars. I changed up the salts in the salt bars to a fine grain from the medium grain and I think they look better. I am also working on a double batch of oatmeal, milk, and honey soap to replenish my stock and for a custom order that wants an entire loaf.

I have also been playing around with my pumpkin cream soap that I made a while ago. I finally got it to the thickness that I like. I want to make some of the cream soap into a scrub, so I have been testing out different ingredients. I tried raw sugar, sea salt, luffa, and jojoba beads. The sugar turned out fantastic. I scented it with brown sugar FO and it is really to die for. The salt seemed to "melt" into the soap and turned it very thick--too difficult to use. The luffa and jojoba beads would probably be good for a facial scrub, but they just didn't do too much for me. I may try out some exfoliating waxes, apricot kernal, aluminum oxide, or synscrub spheres. I think I will stick with the sugar for the body and test out some of the other options for the facial scrub.

I will try to get some photos of the new soap up tomorrow.
Hope you all were able to enjoy the beautiful day!

Working on my holiday inventory

I have been developing my holiday inventory. Since this is my first year in business, I am still planning out my product lines and seasonal items. I have been considering putting together more gift baskets for sale, but I don't know if that is what people prefer when buying soap as a gift. Give me some opinions here...what do you prefer-purchasing a ready-made gift basket or buying individual items and giving them that way or making your own gift basket?

Coming soon to Ladybug Soapworks!

Lots and lots of soap pictures for you all lately! I hope you love looking at them as much as I do! I can never get enough of nice soap pictures. This soap is my lemon poppy seed. It has some shea butter in it (as do almost all the soaps shown in the last few days). I put some calendula in the lye solution to try and tease out some yellow color. I strained out most of the calendula petals, but I left a few which look like pieces of lemon peel. This soap is scented with pink sugar. I really like the way the top turned out. It is colored with titanium dioxide and i let it get very thick before I spread it on top of the pink/brown part of the soap. I sprinkles a bit of sugar and glitter on the top of the soap. The other part of the soap again gave me issues with color. I keep having trouble getting the pink/red colors I want. I now have some pink clay, so I think I will use that in the future for the colorant.
This soap is scented with sandalwood. I colored the top with titanium dioxide and then did a swirl with heavy gold mica. If you look you can see the mica turned from gold to green. No clue why that happened. The mica was from Brambleberry...anyone else experience this before? Dylan used this soap this week and he told me that he actually felt moved to let me know how much he enjoyed the look, feel, and scent of this soap. That is a pretty rare thing...I think the salt soaps was the last time he felt the need to praise me. haha
This last soap is vanilla scented. I let the soap discolor naturally because I like the brown. The top has sugar and glittler sprinkles. All of these soaps will soon be liste on my Etsy site and my main website (which is still a work in progress).

More Soap Porn

Another teaser of soaps that will soon be listed on at my store. This first one is a chamomile soap. It is made with some chamomile infused oils, chamomile EO, and a bit of ground chamomile for texture. This soap is called chocolate espresso. I colored the bottom with cocoa powder and the top with titanium dioxide. I love this photo...part of my payment to Dylan for his photo skills was that delicious espresso I made for the picture. We got a nice espresso machine about a year ago and have since turned into coffee snobs.
On the theme of taste hot drinks...this soap is scented with green tea and cucumber. (Okay okay...I would probably never drink a cucumber tea, but it smells amazing with green tea!) The green swirls are made with my favorite colorant, french green clay. I also sprinkled the top with some clay, spirulina powder, and sparkles for a little pizazz.
This beautify soap looks a lot like the chocolate espresso, but it is lavender vanilla. The color is not quite what I was going for, but I think it looks nice anyways. I had been hoping for more of a lavender color instead of the brownish purple I got. Ah well...it smells great.

Candle Seconds

Back in high school I made a lot of candles using paraffin wax. I recently started playing with candles again, but wanted to change to soy wax. Soy wax is more earth friendly and I love its rich creamy color. I bought some wax that is 100% soy and is a one pour type since soy wax shrinks very little as it hardens. However, I have been experiencing issues with blooming or frosting. The candles that I pour start getting white or discolored in regions a few days after I pour them. See the mocha candle pictures below. I can't figure out what I am doing wrong...any suggestions? I may just need to get some Ecosoy advance wax which does not appear to be 100% soy, but it also does not bloom as far as I can tell. I have had a hard time finding information about making soy candles. All the books I have bought or got from the library on candle making either do not talk about soy wax or they only have a page about it. Any suggestions would be appreciated! :)

A Bad Apple

I made a batch of caramel apple soap that Dylan likes to call the "clown" soap due to the colors. After seeing the final product I am really not sure what I was thinking when I colored the batch. The scent is delicious, but the colors are just horrible. I used a green oxide, red clay, and turmeric for the colors. I think I added too much clay because there are obvious streaks of red from cutting the soap. If I remake this batch I need to get rid of one of the colors. These soaps may be sold on my site as seconds. I just can't imagine selling these ugly babies for full price. Those of you that sell your soap, do you have a seconds/dent & ding section? Do you find that they actually sell?

Lots of new soap...

I have been super busy lately, so I have not had a chance to upload photos of my new soap. All these lovely pictures were take my my partner, Dylan Maxwell Reilly. I will be posting a bunch more over the next few days. This first soap is a shampoo bar that is loaded with luxurious ingredients. It was made partially from olive oil that was infused with a bunch of Indian Ayurvedic herbs that have been touted to prevent and stop balding, gray hair, and it is supposed make your hair thick and very healthy. I am not sure if it really can stop balding or gray hair since neither of them are a problem for me, but it certainly makes my hair thick and shiney. I have some guy friends that are testing it out for the gray/balding issue. These herbs have been used for over a thousand years, so I would not be surprised if they do work. Too bad I can't actually market the product as a gray/balding prevention without breaking the law.


This is the same shampoo as above, but in a more manly shape for my friend, Will, that will not rub a ladybug in his hair. haha
This is part of a Bayrum shaving soap that I had to rebatch because only some of it poured nicely into my pvc pipe mild. You can see the soap that poured nicely and did not have to be rebatched here.
This soap is scented with black raspberry vanilla, which is now my favorite scent! The purple swirl was made with alkanet root powder.

FDA Globalization act of 2008 survey

I just received this email from Debbie May of Wholesale supplies plus. I would encourage you all to follow the links and complete the survey so that she can better represent us to those in DC.

The United States Energy & Commerce Congressional Committee is discussing a draft bill they have entitled "The FDA Globalization Act of 2008".

While this discussion bill is not yet a formal bill, which can be voted into law, it addresses problems of food chain supply and consumer safety as it applies to drugs and cosmetics. It is expected to become a formal bill soon.

I am most concerned with this draft bill as it pertains to small businesses producing cosmetics such as lotions, lip balm, bath salts, shower gel, moisturizing soaps, etc.

If this bill becomes a law, as it is currently drafted, and you are producing cosmetics you will be required to:

· Annually register your company with the FDA.
· Pay a fee of $2,000 per year.
· Register all ingredients in each of your individual formulas.
· Document good manufacturing practices.
· Report all adverse reactions.

I know the hardship this potential legislation will have on small businesses in our industry. Now is the time to act. This discussion bill is not a full bill. There is still time to have the language modified so that it does not interfere with your business, product innovation and the entrepreneurial spirit of the American Dream.

On September 24th, I will be making my first trip to Washington DC. I will be meeting with several people including Senator George Voinovich, Senator Sherrod Brown and Congresswoman Betty Sutton.

I need your help for this important visit. Please take the time to answer 10 important questions. I will be binding your answers into a book for presentation with additional support materials.

Now is the time to "Be Informed & Get Involved". Please pass this link to every appropriate blog, website and social network. It is time for us to stand together so that our voice can be heard as one!

Complete your survey now and have your voice heard! I will personally deliver your message to Washington on the 24th!

Sincerely Yours,

Debbie May
President & CEO
Wholesale Supplies Plus.com, Inc.

New Website!

I am in the process of building a new webstore. It still needs a bunch of work, but I am pretty proud that I have been able to do this much alone. I still need to make the site look pretty, but I have many of my products set listed and shipping and billing all set up. Let me know if you have any suggests. Again this is still a big work in progress, but any feed back is appreciated! See the store here http://ladybugsoapworks.net

Costa rica part 2

This is a continuation of my Costa rican adventures. I will hopefully get back to my soap soon. With school starting this week I am really busy with my other (less exciting) job. But here are some pictures that I really liked from our trip. This on is of a large lizard that jumped onto a tree very close to the dining area in our rainforest lodge.
This is a white-faced capuchin monkey. He kept trying to steal bananas from the lodge kitchen.

This is a picture of Arenal volcano in La Fortuna. It is an active volcano as evident by the big smoke plume. In the evening you can see the lava flow if it is a clear night.

Cool bug we saw in the rainforest. Dylan has some amazing photography skills.

Dylan spent a morning taking pictures of all the butterflies that he could find. I really liked this picture.

Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend. I went to Vermont to see my parents and we went to Montreal and then I went for a hike on the Long trail up Jay Peak. It was a nice and relaxing weekend...though the hike was tough and my body is still recovering from it.

Costa rica part 1

I am back! I thought you all would like to see some pictures so I will be posting some cool ones over the next few entries. On our trip to Costa rica we initially flew into the main international airport outside of San Jose. We rented a car and drove as far down to the Osa peninsula as we could and then had to take a boat the rest of the way. There are very few roads on the Osa peninsula. We spent a lot of our time hiking in the Corcovado national park and snorkeling around Cano island.

This photo below is of a Tapir. It is in the horse family and is huge for an animal in central/south american rainforests. They are nocturnal animals and we happened to see one during the day in Corcovado.

This is a Coati we spotted on the Corcovado beach.

A beach picture in Corcovado.

I think this is a gecko. Geckos and lizards were everywhere and are basically as common as squirrels or chipmunks here in the states.


After the Osa peninsula, we took the boat back to our car and drove to the other end of the country where we stopped at La Fortuna, the town near Arenal vocano. This picture below is from the eco thermales hot spring that we went it. It was really amazing...how I wish I had a hot spring to go to everyday. So relaxing.

Okay that is all for now, but I will post more soon.

New Soap

Well no luck getting Dylan to take pictures, so instead you will have to check out my bad photography skills. I have a few more new soaps that the pictures are just way too bad so I will have to hold off on them. All of these soaps are made with a newer recipe I have been using that has olive oil, palm oil, coconut oil, castor oil, and shea butter. I really love the silk lather that the shea butter provides.

The first soap below is scented with pink sugar. Unfortunately, the FO had and orange tint to it and it turned my soap a funky could instead of pink. So, I am trying to come up with another name for the soap...any suggestions?
This soap is scented with green tea and cucumber FO and the green comes from French green clay. I sprinkled some sparkles and spirulina powder on top.
This is my sandalwood soap. I colored a portion of the soap white with titanium dioxide and another portion with heavy gold mica. Too bad the mica turned green. I still like the look though.

Chamomile soap made with chamomile tea and chamomile infused oil. I also sprinkled a bit of ground chamomile in the soap and on top.
Lemon Poppy Seed Soap. I tinted the lye solution with calendula petals and at trace mixed in poppy seeds and a lemon FO.

Vacation!

I am leaving for Costa rica on Wednesday!!! I am so excited. I will attempt to blog while there, but we are going to some very remote places so I may not have access to a computer or internet.

Hopefully, I can get Dylan to take pictures of the many soaps I have curing on the rack before we leave. Last weekend I made a chamomile soap, green tea and cucumber soap, pink sugar soap, sandalwood soap, and some soy mocha cafe candles. So that is at least 10 picture that are due. I really like how all these soaps have come out. The scents are all great too. I think I will be keep them as permanent scents in my line. I will probably start making my Halloween/Thanksgiving soaps when I get back. I am planning right now to make the following scented soaps pumpkin pie, cranberry, caramel apple, apple pie, and brown sugar.

Tomorrow I am going to try to make nag champa soap, neroli soap, white tea and ginger soap, and coconut lime verbena soap.

I have been tagged!

I've been tagged by Trisha over at Sud's To Love

These are the rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you
2) Post the rules on your blog (this is what you are now reading)
3) Write 6 random things about yourself (see below)
4) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them (This is only a game)
5) Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog
6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up

Random items:
1) I dislike cooking.
2) I play with proteins at work that I purify from bacteria and then label them with fluorescent dyes so that I can measure distances within the protein.
3) I have two wonderful kitties (Maya and Toshi).
4) I have been learning wheel thrown pottery since February...I am still pretty bad though. ;)
5) I love to travel and wish I could take more than one trip a year.
6) People who do not use their directionals (turn indicator) really annoy me.

People I'm tagging:
1) Anhoki
2) Morgan Street
3) Great Cakes Soapworks

There are many other blogs that I love and read regularly, but I think they have all been tagged recently.

Productive Weekend!

After having spent all day Saturday at a renaissance fair that Dylan's kung-fu demo team performs in, I was feeling the need to make LOTS of soap. So, Sunday I made 5 batches of CP, rebatched some shampoo soap that was soft, and made a batch of cream soap. It was a lot of fun! For the cold process soap I made them all with a blend of shea butter, olive oil, castor oil, palm oil, and coconut oil. For scents I made a vanilla, lavender vanilla, black raspberry vanilla, lemon poppyseed, and chocolate espresso. They all smell marvelous. The cream soap contained coconut oil, cocoa butter, olive oil, jojoba oil, castor oil, stearic acid, palm oil, and glycerin. For additives I included hydrolyzed silk protein, hydrovance, panthenol, kaolin clay, and calendula petals. The calendula petals provide a light yellow color which should look very nice once the glistening sheen develops in the soap. I will post picture of all the new soap soon!

Recent creations

It seems that I have not posted pictures of all the new soaps I have made. So here are some soaps that I have made during the past month or so.

Frankincense and Myrrh Salt bars. The light green color comes from French green clay.
This one is my unscented Goat's milk soaps.

This soap was specifically designed for sensitive dry skin. It was made with neem oil, avocado oil, castor oil, evening primrose oil, sweet almond oil, flax seed oil, hemp oil, olive oil, palm oil, and mango butter. I also included Tea tree EO and Lavender EO. It smells a bit like neem oil, which I am hoping will go away with a bit more time, but it is still a very nice bar of soap.


A new shaving soap in a slightly larger size. The soap contains bentonite clay and a blend of Bay rum and patchouli.