Shea Butter Refined vs Unrefined

Shea butter is a great ingredient to add to your handcrafted soap. But I am occassionally asked what kind of shea butter should I use in my soap -- shea butter refined vs. unrefined. Shea butter comes from the tropics of Africa and is extracted from the nuts of the Shea-Karite tree.

Pure Shea Butter can be found in three types of extractions.
Raw or unrefined- extracted using water. The color ranges from like cream (similar to whipped butter) to grayish yellow. This is the original form of Shea Butter.
Refined is more processed and has many of its natural components still intact.
Highly refined - the color is pure white.
You can use any of these types of shea butter in your soap making. My personal philoposhy is that that the less processed something is, the more it retains its beneficial qualities.
I haven't used the raw shea butter primarily because it wasn't offered from the sources I purchase my ingredients from. More and more companies are offering this product though and I think it would be great to use in soap making.
As a result, I have used refined shea butter. I find that my products have more of a white color to them (or if I am coloring them, the color is more true) and I have been very happy with the results. I have used this refined shea butter in lip balms and whipped body butters as well. I think it is just iimportant to avoid using the highly refined shea butter where nasty chemicals are used to get it pure white. The chemicals can change the quality of the butter and destroy many of the beneficial properties that make shea butter so unique.
So if you are wondering which shea butter: refined vs. unrefined, I would tend to go with the least refined you can get for soap making.
Please visit my website at How to Make Soap

Goat Milk Products "How To"

Spring is coming. That generally means that animals will be having their off-spring and the mamas will have milk. So if you raise goats, that means that soon you will have an abundance of goat milk. If you are like most people who raise goats, you will not be able to use all your goat milk each day as you milk your goats -- there is only so much time in a day. So what to do? Of course we will freeze that creamy goat milk until you have the time to process it into one of many goat milk products.

How to freeze the milk for soap making is easy. Start saving small yogurt or sour cream containers (have others help in this endeavor). Each day you can measure your milk by weight into these cartons. I like to freeze uniform weights so there is no guess work or need to re-weigh your milk at soap making time. Then when you are making soap, you take out how many frozen milk cubes you need for your batch of soap and you are ready to go.

If you do not raise goats, it would be a good idea to find someone in your area who does! I know that many goat milkers are happy to sell some of their surplus. How nice it would be to tell your friends and customers who buy or use your soap that their goat milk soap has milk from the neighborhood goat farm in it. Besides soap, there are other goat milk products. How to keep goat milk surplus for those projects is no different than that of soap making. Go ahead-- FREEZE THAT MILK!

Check out my website at How to Make Soap.

Spa Gift Basket Supplies

In another post, I talked about how to encourage others to purchase more for you, thus resulting in higher sales/person. Another idea is to create custom one-of-a-kind spa gift baskets. What can you put into your spa gift baskets?

soap
bath salts
body butter
lip balm
massage oils
loofah sponges
netted poof scrubs
washcloths
small hand towels
coffee
flowers (I'd use artificial)
tea
biscuits
any type of organic edibles
and so on...........
I'm sure you can think of many good ideas. You can theme the baskets and add the specialty products for that theme.

One resource that I will recommend for spa gift basket supplies is Quinessence. They offer products that can help you expand your product line to create beautiful one-of-a-kind gift baskets. I do a lot of soap with Fragrance Oils because so many of my customers love them. But they also love good quality Essential Oils (especially lavender). Aromatherapy is very beneficial and many customers want those benefits. So you can list your features and ingredients in your products, but be especially sure to list the benefits -- THE BENEFITS SELL THE PRODUCTS!!!!!!!

If you know of a good business to add to my blog directory that is in the spa gift basket supplies area, please leave me a comment and I'd be happy to get their link on my website!

Remember, you can use aromatherapy benefits to sell your soap! And if you need any help learning to make soap check out my website at How to Make Soap.

Why Do Customers Buy More at a Lower Price?

Have you ever noticed that customers will buy more when you give them a deal? Why do customers buy more at a lower price?

I have noticed that grocery stores offer "deals" all the time. For instance they don't say everything is a dollar. Rather they will say 10 for $10. Even though they usually give you each item for $1 whether you buy 10 or not, the suggestion of 10 for $10 usually gets people to buy 10 and not just one or two. Why do you think this is?

I will give you my reason for this. In today's economic condition, I will always buy more at a lower price if it is something consumable, so that I don't have to buy it again next week at a higher price. (For more information on our economic condition you can visit my husband's financial website at Economy Carberator). But if I get to thinking I need to buy ten to get that price, then I will buy ten to get that price.

So I ask you, how are you doing in your sales this week? Do you need to get things going? It's a perfect time to get rid of some extra soap that may be laying around and offer a deal. What kind of "deal" can you offer? Some suggestions would be
buy 5 bars of soap and get an extra bar for FREE
put a soap package together where YOU get to choose the soaps (include one or two that didn't sell super well) and sell the soap package for special price. This is especially a nice idea for Mother's Day ( we are already past Valentine's Day)
Offer ALL customers a punch card where if they buy X number bars of soap they get one or two free. This can help build new repeat customers. If you are at a craft show and someone buys a few bars of soap from you and you give them a punch card and punch the card for them, they will very likely call you again (be sure your co. info is on that card!) Give your customers EXTRA punches when they buy five bars or more or a soap package from you at one time.
Give your customers an incentive if they sell a soap package for you. You know how those direct selling companies have "outside orders only types of classes"? You can offer a "hostess" a free bar of soap for every soap package she sells for you. You give the hostess a form that each buyer fills out so you can follow up with them and add them to your customer base. Make sure your form asks for name, address, phone number, and email. Also, helpful, if they are purchasing for a gift or for themselves.

I am sure you can think of even more incentives to get customers to buy more from you than just one bar of soap. I would love it if you would post your ideas in a comment. We can all help each other grow our soap making businesses.

Check out my website at How to Make Soap.

Lavender Lotion or Bath Salt

Lavender is one of my favorite essential oils. It is known for many qualities, but perhps it is best known to have a relaxing and calming effect. I love goatmilk lavender and oatmeal soap and also lavender lotion and bath salt. You can create your own lavender lotion or bath soap with many recipes that are on-line for free. But I would recommend that you purchase your lavender essential oil from Camden Grey.

This company has a very good reputation among soap makers and I have been using their Lavender Essential Oil for many years -- it's wonderful!!! It is also excellent for using in lavender lotion or bath salt. If you need a good recipe for a lotion or bath salt, post a comment and I'll get a few listed here. If you already know how to make lotions and bath salts but would like to try making soap, visit my website at How to Make Soap.

All Natural Unscented Lotion for Mixing

Many of you know that I stay away from making lotion to sell. It is because of the rules involved with the FDA. Lotion is considered a cosmetic and there are a TON of regulations when it comes to cosmetics (and I would hate to have my business shut down).

I have however, made lotions for myself and my family. Lotions are easy to make. There are recipes with lots of exotic ingredients and there are simple recipes. I tend to favor simple ones. I found a recipe for an all natural unscented lotion for mixing. You can click on this link here to read it.

It is not specific about the type of oil you use. I guess I would tend to use sweet almond oil (it's my favorite in lotions and lip balms). I plan to make some up, but if you beat me to it, post a comment and let me know what you used and how it turned out!

Check out my soap making tutorial at How to Make Soap.

How to Remove Soap Scum

The key to managing soap skum is to realize how it forms. Soap skum is caused by the presence of hard water. Hence, soap skum is greatly dimished when you have soft water. This is due to the fact that hard water does not lather soap well. So when you try to lather up in the shower, you are actually using way more soap than you need. The excess soap creates the skum. Additionally, the minerals in the hard water also are deposited with the soap resulting in a skum that may be difficult to remove.
There are many different cleaners on the market, but many contain chemicals that I do not want to breathe, and I definitely do not want to expose my family to. If you prefer to make your own, try the following recipe:
Mix

½ cup vinegar

1 cup ammonia

¼ cup baking soda

1 gallon hot water

Wear rubber gloves and work in a well-ventilated area when using this powerful solution. Apply it to your shower walls with a sponge. If necessary, scrub with a brush to remove all the skum and rinse well.

The secret is....... to let any solution work before you start scrubbing. For heavy buildup, it can take 15 minutes or more for a solution to penetrate and soften the skum, so wet it down and leave it to soak. You may have to re-wet it from time to time to keep it moist. Once it has softened, scrub it off with a stiff brush or white nylon-backed scrub pad, and rinse.

Never mix laundry bleach with ammonia. A chemical reaction will produce toxic gases.

With soap skum, prevention is the best solution. Fiberglass enclosures can be waxed with automobile wax after cleaning to leave a slick surface that helps repel soap skum and hard water scale. However, do not wax the bottom of your shower or tub. It will make it too slippery. Ceramic tile can be wiped down with lemon oil for the same effect. It is also a good idea to use a window squeegee to whisk the water off the walls before soap skum has a chance to stick.

I hope these ideas and recipe help you in your quest: how to remove soap skum.

For a great soap that never makes your skin feel dry and itchy after showering, check out my website at How to Make Soap. You can learn how to make fabulous soap with your very first batch!

Thanks to http://www.solutions.psu.edu/ for information on the content of this article.

What Soap Ingredients Can I Grow?

In the last post I talked about a lot of ingredients I like to use in my soap. Many of them are costly, so I asked myself "What Soap Ingredients Can I Grow?" A few that I have grown in my garden are:

lavender - In Wisconsin, many varieties are not perennial, so I tend to re buy this plant a lot.
calendula - This plant is part of the marigold family and it is prolific. It self seeds!!!!
poppies - You need to grow a special variety to harvest seeds. I had trouble getting this one started.
loofah - Gourd family plant that has a long, long growing season. Loofah is the dried inside membrane of the gourd.

You can also grow herbs that you can infuse into your olive oil. I have infused St. John's Wort, Lavender, and there are many others that you can use. Herbs are easy to grow and can be grown in a window sill or in a small container on a patio.

It takes some advanced planning and time to be able to use your own ingredients, but it is worth it! Even though you may not be certified organic, you can let people know you grew your ingredients in your soap without chemicals.

As you browse through all the seed catalogues that are arriving in the mail, ask yourself, "What Soap Ingredients Can I Grow?"

You can learn how to make soap at How to Make Soap.

Homemade Goat Milk Soap

You can take any basic cold process soap recipe and turn it into homemade goat milk soap. How do you do this? You do this by substituting goat milk soap for the water.


If you check the MMS Lye Calculator at you will see that they do not recommend any change in the recipe for liquids if it is water or milk.

I also checked the Columbus Food Lye Calculator and there is no change in liquid amounts for milk versus water there either.


More lye calculators can be found at:

Cranberry Lane

and

Brambleberry

I have successfully substituted milk for water in all of my recipes and never had any trouble. So making homemade goat milk soap will be easy if you take an existing recipe that you know will work and substitute the water for goat milk. If you have tried this already without much success, I would recommend that you view my video. I will lead you step by step through more than one way to create goat milk soap. You can view an introduction at my website How to Make Soap.

Can you make money selling hand made soap online

If you make soap, you may ask yourself, "Can you make money selling hand made soap online?" I will attempted to give you a few thoughts in regards to this endeavor.

First, do you know how to create a website and manage the website yourself? Website design is costly. If you do not have knowledge in this area, you could spend all of your profits creating, maintaining, and running the website (unless you have a huge volume of sales). I have heard many many individuals say they love their websites, but they do not make any money on it.

Do you know how to draw customers to your website. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of competing websites out there. How will people find you? Believe it or not.....you have to work daily on finding ways to draw people to your website. And you have to know how to capture these people to bring them back to your website. This takes consistant work.

Some ways to draw people to your website include:

Linking to other websites and having backward links with your keywords embedded in the link on their websites.

Listing your website in directories (again with backward links to your website with your key words embedded inthe link)

Writing articles for free newletter article directories that contain your website backward link

Paying for advertising (like pay-for-click)

Paying for directory listings

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you have the desire, time, and knowledge to promote your website, then selling online may be a good idea.

Can you afford to sell your soap at a price that will bring in customers and create repeat customers? Soap is very heavy, so it may not be easy to price your soap at a price people are wanting to pay and then add shipping on top of that. Are you willing to work for less profit if your soap doesn't sell at the price you normally sell it at?

One last thought. Many people have something they want to sell, so they decide they want to sell it on line.

But the real question is......"What do people want to buy?"

Selling something you want to sell is like putting the cart in front of the horse.

Rather, ask yourself....what do people want? And how do you find out what people want?

Can you make money selling hand made soap online? .....The answer is.......If there a demand for it.

If you can find a niche that is currently not being satisfied, you can do great. But...... you have to offer something people are looking for. Maybe it is a specialty organic baby soap, or a bug repellent soap, or an ordor reducing soap, or something else. It just needs to be something that people want, that no one else (or very few people) are selling. Otherwise you may be building a costly "lemonade stand" that is sitting at the same street corner as 1,000 other lemonade stands.

I hope these questions help you consider for yourself "Can you make money selling hand made soap online?"

You can check out my website at How to Make Goat Milk Soap

Best Soap Without Antibacterial Added

For a long time now, doctors have been warning against the overuse of antibiotics and antibacterial products. One reason for this is that the germs are becoming immune and resistant and are producing super-germs that are harder to fight. What is the best soap without antibacterial added and why would you want to use it?
By far, the best soap without antibacteral added is any kind of homemade soap. I especially love goat milk soap (you can check out my website at How to Make Soap for more soap making information), but any kind of handcrafted soap is going to leave your skin feeling nourished and soft - not dry and itchy. The purpose of soap is to break the surface tension of water, thus allowing the water to rinse away the dirt and germs on your skin. WIthout this break in surface tension, the water would just rinse over your skin.
Many people believe that using antibacterials in soap will help them stay healthier, but this is not true. Plain old soap and water is very effective at removing dirt and germs. I have found a very informative link that you can read HERE about the dangers of antibacterial soap. I hope you take the time to read it and encourage others to stop using them.