Christmas in July Coming Up!

Sneak Advance Notice! Be sure to check my Artfire shop next month!

http://WildSense.artfire.com

Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there!

May you all enjoy your special Day to the fullest!

Ladies Night Event Angus Steakhouse Litchfield!!!

This will be a great shopping opportunity as well as a fantastic meal! For a mere $10 your fee will include Buffet, Drink, Games, Raffle and Giveaways.
Of course Wild Sense aromatics will be giving away a huge gift basket full of goodies, as well as scratch off tickets to win products including lip balms and free handmade soaps.
Vendors featured will be Wild Sense, The Chandellier Boutique (purses, sunglasses, jewelry, etc), Gourmet Chocolates, Scentsy Candles and more!
Great menu items featured here: http://anguschophouse.net/Menu.aspx

Considering some Changes

Good afternoon from a very nippy southern Illinois. It's a chilly 10ºF here today!
I've been thinking on and off about reviewing some other handmade soapmakers here on my blog. If you would like to see something like this happen, please let me know by giving me some feedback! I think it would be a fun way to promote some of my friends and of course, people are still looking at my items, so I don't feel that it would negatively impact my own business. Rather, I think of it as a way to let my customers know about other awesome soaps and cosmetics that I may not make myself. 
Please email me at the email address shown on the right-hand toolbar if you'd like to be included. I'll need your best photos to show them off, of course,  and if I have never used your soaps, I'd have to have a small sample to try to give feedback on quality, looks, packaging, scent etc. 
One of the first I hope to review here tomorrow is Oklahoma Handmade Soap Company. I've tried many of these products already firsthand- bar soaps, liquid soap, whipped butters as well as her candles.

Cindy Gooding's Oklahoma Handmade Soap Company

ICE STORM!

Managed to get these up from the 1st and 2nd of Feb, despite having a horrendous toothache/abscess.

Enjoy- especially if you're warm and toasty at home :)

Cut Bars of Frangipani (Plumeria) fragrance from Elements Bath & Body

Frangipani

 Good morning and voila, as promised here are the cut bars from the Frangipani batch. I'm very pleased with how these turned out. My inspiration was this photo of the actual flowers.

Frangipani (Plumeria) for Spring

I fell in love with a new FO I tested today - it's Frangipani from www.elementsbathandbody.com.

This will be available very soon! I must get my hands on more as this is just the thing for Spring. Definitely a keeper - this is the first plumeria type floral I've tried that didn't accelerate to the point that I couldn't swirl.  I soaped at cool temps and added the FO to my lye water. I added Titanium Dioxide and White Diamond mica to the base part, and the swirls were pretty bright sparkly yellow mica and then a blend of Blush mica with Pink Champagne, which resulted in a golden pink shimmery color.  No problem with time to swirl, although it did harden right up soon after I finished. I like my swirls imprecise and a little mixed up for interest.

I haven't unmolded this yet, but will tomorrow morning and post the cut bars.  I just adore this mold!!  Next up I'll do a log mold configuration with this same mold, so I can make the Chocolate Covered Cherry soap.

Valentine's and Easter Soaps

I'm still playing with my new Soap Hutch mold, and will try to get those first pics uploaded asap. In the meantime here's a pic of some cute M&P soap that I made for the local shop  here in Gillespie - The Chandellier (Upscale Resale). They have some gorgeous new items in store - handbags, glassware and some new furniture pieces too.
And of course, now have a nice selection of my Valentine's soaps in store as well, with more coming soon! There are beautiful Rose Heart soaps, as well as handpainted Soap Roses, and more Whipped Butters in stock. I'm also working on some cute little Easter sets with egg-shaped bath bombs, a soap and a purse spray fragrance, so check back for more pics. Today I'll be swirling in my new mold and trying out some sniff-a-licious new floral fragrances from www.elementsbathandbody.com; Blossom, an upscale gorgeous floral blend, as well as Frangipani, Kumquat and a few more. Happy Soaping!

New Soap Hutch Soap Mold

The FedEx truck pulled up late this morning and I almost attacked the poor man bringing me in my box. You see, I knew it contained my new Soap Hutch mold. I simply could not contain my excitement! If you've never heard of these or seen one, they are the Bentley (better than a Rolls Royce) of soap molds. I used to think Uplands were the best. Well, no offense to them intended, but this mold makes wood, silicone and rubber bands seem really old fashioned. And let me tell you, as I unwrapped it and put it together I realized it's even better than I thought it would be. I actually cried as I put it together. I mean really and truly wept tears of joy over this mold.  To which my husband commented "Gee honey, you didn't cry over the new sectional sofa I just bought you for Christmas".  Poor, dear man. I do love my new couch; it's super comfy. But it lacks one thing. It can't make soap.

 Super smooth plastic sides and dividers...absolutely superb craftsmanship and the best thing about it, is that I can configure it a zillion different ways!  Okay, well not technically a zillion, but I can use it as a slab mold with or without dividers, as one two or three log molds, smaller slabs, pour individual bars or a really small test batch etc.  It all fits together tightly in puzzle pieces -I think they're really called slats and sides, but I liken it to a puzzle as it was admittedly a tad tricky to figure out the more interesting configurations, lol. Rich Bartko, the creator of these molds says to call him with any questions so I know he's there if I ever have a problem, but I did want to figure it out on my own, as it's my favorite new toy er... I mean professional tool.

Mine was custom made to be able to pour up to three bars deep as a slab, so basically I can make as little as one bar,  pour one to three 3 lb logs, or as much as 21 lbs as (divided) slabs of soap in this mold, as well as other smaller combinations of logs or slabs as needed.
A thousand thanks to Tammy Tivis of Elements Bath And Body!

Also like to say thanks to soapmakers Sindy Anderson of Sinfully Sweet Soap and Lori Curry of Magellan's Gift for referring me to Rich in the first place.
I'm definitely going to be buying a couple more of these and I'd recommend them to anyone and everyone who makes soap. My only regret is that these weren't around when I first started making soap or I doubt I'd have ever used anything else. I'll be shouting about these from the rooftops to anyone who'll listen.
WHOO  HOOOOO!

I've just finished master batching for my next week or so, so as soon as I am able to unmold the first slabs I certainly will be back here with photos for you to ogle.
For now, you'll have to content yourselves with eyeballing the photos of just the mold alone.

Happy New Year 2011! The holidays are finally over (Whew!) and I can finish my Valentine soaps and move on to the Mother's Day projects so I don't get behind again.  I sold more gift basket sets than I ever anticipated I would, so going forward I'll definitely be making up more set each holiday to make sure I don't get caught with too few and have to scramble to make them up. It felt like every day was spent making up those baskets and little else for a few weeks!! I'm definitely not complaining though, but I do want to make sure that going forward, the local store I'm in locally (The Chandellier) stays fully stocked up with a nice assortment of products. 
Next week I plan on doing large numbers of dipped silk rose petal soaps all prettied up in fancy acetate boxes for Valentines, as well as the Soap Bon Bons that I did last year which were a big hit.

Cream filled Soap Bon Bons from 2010

Then it's on to the Liquid Soap Class we'll be holding for Soap_Makers Classes group, as well as more fragrance testing and more Valentines and Mother's Day brainstorming ideas for fresh new soapy ideas!!

News on the home front - the year is starting off great for us and it was nice to have John home for so many days in a row (for those who don't know, he's an over-the-road flatbed driver).  I'm also very excited and eagerly anticipating the arrival of our new sectional sofa which will be coming from the factory soon! Is new sofa smell as good as "new car smell"? I think probably a resounding YES!

Local Holiday Gift Treasures

All you local folks should get over to The Chandellier, next to the Miner Family Restaurant in Gillespie. The owner, Valerie and her husband have done wonderful things with their space and it's just full of all kinds of upscale resale treasures.

And of course, there are a few brand new things as well, namely my line of Wild Sense soaps and body products.
I still have a lot of holiday items to add to what's there...Whipped Body Butters, Sugar Scrubs, Sugar Bumps (individual sugar scrubby cubes), Melting Bath Truffles, Body Creams, Herbal Teas and both Fragranced and All-Botanical Soaps.
Coming soon will be an assortment of Gift Basket Sets too!

Custom rubber stamp

I'm getting a custom rubber stamp made to stamp all of my bag with. I found a great online site with lots of in stock stamps as well. Lots of nature oriented ones and foliage too!
<--Here's what mine will look like. so much to do last minute to get ready for the holiday events and packaging! I got it online here:
Hope all of you other soapmakers out there have a great holiday season - I know I won't be hearing from many of you since you'll all be working events and markets on the weekends cutting and wrapping and decorating! Not too many more days until christmas... I refuse to do the countdown or I could send myself into a tailspin of stress!

WildSense Artfire Studio is Live!

Go take a peek at my Artfire Studio.
Wild Sense Artfire Studio

The design and photos aren't the concept I originally wanted but I procrastinated so much getting this up it was high time I just DID it. I will mess around more with a "concept theme" for more cohesive photos and graphics on my actual website when I launch that as a companion to the Artfire Studio. In the meantime, get ready to shop! Still lots of soaps to load up on the site but I'm getting there.

NEW WildSense YouTube Channel active!

Just wanted to let you all know that I now finally have a YouTube channel for my videos and I'll be adding many more tutorials on various soapmaking techniques as well as other bath & body product how-to's as I go along. I hope you enjoy them. The above photos are from my CP swirling tutorial, which I made with Cindy Gooding of Pittstown Soapworks, moderator of the Yahoo teaching group, Soap_makers. We had some fun when she came to visit and swirl with me!
There is a cricket hiding somewhere in my workshop who has provided a lovely soundtrack for many of the videos, LOL! And I should tell you that no animals are present; although you will hear my cats meowing upstairs from time to time, as they protest VERY loudly when Mommy "goes to work".
To go to the Tutorials, simply click on the title of this blog post :)
Have fun swirling!

Wild Sense in new local store!

Wild Sense soaps and body products will be available locally at the new store called The Chandellier located next to the Miner's Family Restaurant in downtown Gillespie! Grand Opening will be Saturday, Oct 23rd with refreshments and lots of great bargains.

I'll be running a special on my soaps for the first week as well. Customers buying 4 or more bars receive a scratch off card with a chance to win a free Soap, Lip Balm or an Aroma Bead sachet.

Aroma Bead tutorial

Woohoo! I finally figured out some of the glitches in uploading my videos so I will be posting several over the course of the next few days. The following video tutorial is a short video telling you how to use Aroma Beads from www.ElementsBathAndBody.com ((edited to change a couple of frames))

Tropical Fruit Soap Cut

Just realized I forgot to put up the pics of the Tropical Fruit soap once it was cut into bars.
Love this soap!

Artfire store almost ready

I've been getting a lot of emails asking where to get my soap creations..my Artfire store will be up soon. I have been taking pics all week and editing descriptions. It took awhile to get all the bio and policies done to my satisfaction, and i'm fussy with the photos too. But finally, it's almost ready to launch!
My other "regular' website has been taken down so I have redone it with the new business name and design and that's a project I've been working on as well. That will be completed after my Artfire Studio is done and loaded...so stay tuned. You'll hear it first here when I do launch, so follow this blog!

New Video - How to Easily Line a Slab Mold

Well this is my first demo to see how my FlipVideo works. So far it seems to be pretty cool!

Tropical Fruit Smoothie Soap

Just had to share this soap slab with you all...
It's CP soap with M&P embeds. It is making me crave one very large tropical drink, preferebly with one of those cute umbrellas. LOL
I took my time with the embed molds, coloring and scenting each type of fruit for realism. I'm not quite happy with the peach slices, but I will improve on those next time.

Hope you enjoyed today's soap porn!

Added splashes of Color to my Work Area

Just wanted to let you all now I have some new pics up on Flickr of my more colorful work area!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/greengoddessherbals/sets/72157624135686790/


(or click on the title of this post)

Failure, Reinvention and Hope

This story about Kayla Fioravanti's journey of transformation, many failures and eventually what I think is a great success has been so inspiring to me and hits so many notes with me personally that I wanted to share it here for those who may have missed it on her blog. It really goes to show that failures can be a wonderful learning experience and as long as you persevere, you can keep going and growing.
http://essentialu.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/05/failure-reinvention-hope.html

Please everybody Vote to get us back in the top 2!!

We really need to get as many people as possible to vote DAILY until the 30th to win the grant that will help rebuild our elementary school! Please help if you have a minute go here:

www.refresheverything.com/bengilelementary
Thanks for your help and pass this on to get us as many votes as possible in the couple days that remain!!

New Blogwear

Well at long last I've finally made a banner and background for my blog. It's been a long time coming but I just haven't had tome to work on it and the times that i did, I got frustrated by the coding when I'd follow all instruction on how-to sites and nothing would show up right. Finally I have it down pat.
Now on to other things like my Artfire shop. Giving up Etsy in favor of Artfire, as they don't nickel and dime you to death on each and every listing. Then I can concentrate on a new site with database and proper cart.
Guess the graphics classes are paying off. But I still have a long way to go.

No new soaps lately, but I've been making pressed makeup and lipsticks and having great fun with those.

Colorado "safe" personal care products Bill fails in committee! Yay

Excerpt from Winged Seed's blog: "I’m tipping my hat to colleagues who joined me in blogging, tweeting, emailing and shouting “Stop” to the potential affects of this bad bill. The bill failed in Committee today 7 to 4. Some Colorado legislators reported they had received up to 700 emails regarding the bill. I listened to streaming radio from the hearing and those on our side were far more aware of the facts than either the representative from Compact for Safe Cosmetics or some of their small business supporters and individuals who testified. Although learned in his field and knowledgeable regarding environmental toxins and endocrinology, Dr. David Norris, PhD, Deptartment of Physiology, University of Colorado, was not well versed in cosmetics themselves nor skin absorption and allowable dilutions and was a weak proponent of the bill as a result."

Well, we all worked hard to get the word spread and thanks to everyone who helped.
Things like this should be based on real science, not supposition and hasty conclusions.


Leann