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Happiness

Happy ten months, my nice hubby.

New yoga pose

The Cat.

Working for the weekend

Last weekend was such fun I'm eager for this weekend to come! I've got some new products (yes, more) to premiere.

I've finally found a liquid soap recipe I'm happy with, is gentle and gets the same results with each batch. It's mostly olive oil, with castor oil for extra suds since full castille cleans well but tends to have low lather.

Especially for pirates!

The only problem is I miscalculated and only had enough fragrance to make 3.5 Bay Rum. Arrrrrrrrrgh. *snort*

Sweet Orange, Lavender and Coconut Vanilla (super yummy)

Labels are made, soap is cut and this weekend I'll have the Goat Milk, Honey and Oatmeal as I've promised several people.

Goaty goodness.

I really like this one. It's very mild and I get tons of lather even with our very very hard water. And yes, that is a model cruise ship peeking out from behind it. It even has a horn!

Orange and more orange and did I mention orange?

I've named this one "Bright Sunshiny Day," since that's the song that goes through my head every time I see and smell it.

And so the to-do list shrank a little today, but I still have a lot to do before this weekend's markets. Look for an update to the site this week to include the lip balms and where to find us locally. This weekend I'll be in the New Braunfels farm to market on Saturday from 9-1 and the Legacy Outdoor Market on Sunday from 10-3. I hope to see you there!

Week in review: cutting soaps, making lip balms and market days! With lots of linky goodness.

It has been a long week out here in sweatland. We were accepted into two local weekly markets! I'll now have a regular Saturday home at the New Braunfels farm to market from 9-1 and we'll be trying out the Legacy outdoor market every Sunday from 10-3. I'm still planning to go on the first Saturday of the month up to Wimberly. It's huge and I love the vibe up there, it's full of people having a good time and excited about what they're finding. And the best part is that I'll be meeting up with my friend and fellow vendor Judy of An Art Peace by Judy at these markets! We'll have a ball sweating and chatting with the crowds and selling our hearts out. I can't wait for the cooler weather to hit us though. Days spent out in the 100+ degree weather are tough on this A/C lovin' gal.

Now on to the goodies. I only made two batches of soap this week, since I wanted to spend time learning some new techniques. First I made goat milk, honey and oatmeal. So delicious! I always think about my soaps in terms of cooking and I'm not sure that's a good thing, as they always make me want to eat them.

Oatmealy goodness. Yes, it's a new mold and I didn't line it quite tightly enough!

Cut bars of oatmealy goodness.

I also made some orange soap. Very orange. I used 5x sweet orange essential oil and added way more than I do for most scents, as orange tends to fade. There's a bit of patchouli in there to help anchor the scent, and so far, all you can smell is sweet orangey orangeness. It smells exactly as I wanted it to turn out, though the swirling got more muddled than I intended. It's still purty and yummy-smelling!

Swirly orange soap. It reminds me of the Brady Bunchers singing "Bright Sunshiny Day."

 

 

Swirly orange goodness.

 Other than soap, this week I received some bottles.

Oooooh, bottles.

 Lots of bottles.

Ooooooh, more bottles!

And I finalized my lip balm recipe. So yes Virginia, there are lip balms! Of course I was so involved and having so much fun making them I forgot to take pictures of the process. But I'm very pleased with how these came out. I was aiming for a fairly firm (for TX in the summertime) but still glidy matte balm made with protecting and delicious ingredients. So I'll be premiering eight different balms this weekend (as long as the labels make it here this week, lol) I have coffee (my favorite) made with real coffee butter and shea butter, peppermint (my other favorite) made with peppermint essential oil, vanilla coconut (mmmmmm!), cinnamon (real EO again here), honey (yes, made with honey, tee hee), lavender vanilla (sounds strange but is so yummy, and yes, real EO), rosemary and chocolate. Phew. They are all made with beeswax, olive oil, castor oil and coconut oil. I've used edible essential oils when possible. Now to create pretty labels and a pretty display. I don't think they're too attractive the way I've stored them here.

So many delicious lip balms, I can't choose!

 I'm also making more liquid soap. Last time I was playing around with whatever oils I had on hand and learning the process. This time I'm going for a wonderful liquid soap/shower gel made with 85% olive oil and 15% castor oil (to add body and lather to the mild gentle olive oil soap). Rather than going for an absolutely translucent body wash (which can be achieved by adding too much lye and then neutralizing the excess) I'm going for one with a slight superfat (extra oil) in order to avoid it being too drying to the skin. So far though it's diluting translucently, which is an added perk. And it smells so good I'm thinking of offering some for sale unscented, though I plan to scent the bulk of it. I've got several different fragrances to try, including bay rum, cranberry, coconut vanilla and rose. They'll all react differently in the liquid soap and I want to do some experimentation with them before I decide exactly which ones to use in the final product.

Pasty olive soap paste.

Diluting soap paste. Almost liquid!

The other bottles will allow me to play around this week and concentrate on finalizing my lotion recipe. Yes, I'm rolling out lots of new products. I must like to work! I just enjoy making useful and beautiful body products and am fascinated by how the ingredients combine to create them. It's chemistry in action!

I've also been cutting damaged or dented soaps to make up sampler packs. Originally I was intending to package these in shrink wrap bands with a card but they're all different sizes and shapes. So they're going to be grab bags.

Sampley samples of samp.

If that isn't enough, I also finished a cat bed for the bean. Of course, I'm used to fulling my knitting rather than my crocheting and this crocheted one didn't shrink nearly as much as I thought it would. I was afraid to make it too small, as he's a loooooong cat (Maine coon heritage).

Goodnight, cruel world, I'm going to bed.

Hiding from the birds mocking him outside. Ah, the hard life of an indoor kitty.

As you can see, I've been busy! For updates more often, you can always stop by to see me on Facebook. I'm constantly running around and trying to fit seventeen hours of research and work into every day, and often pop a picture up there when I don't have time to write one of my epic posts. And even now, as many nights, DH is calling me from bed and telling me it's midnight!

Fluffeh kitteh!

Transitioning from a hobby to a business--details, details, details!!

Many people get into making bath and body products because they enjoy making things. As hobbyists, we tend to be very generous. We make soap or lotion, knit socks or bake cookies because we enjoy doing it. And naturally we then have an abundance of that wonderful thing we made. We enjoy giving our friends and family that good thing we made, in many cases because it is superior to what they can purchase elsewhere. It's made by us, we watch the quality, we tailor the item for that person's tastes.

But then, we get to the point where we have experimented so much and still like making our wee soapies. We've probably spent quite a bit to get to this point and may think hey, why not try selling some? It seems like an easy way to recoup some of that money.

Here we commonly hit a stumbling point. Being used to giving away our labor and materials for free as gifts for people we know, it can be hard (in our own minds) to justify the true retail cost of our soaps. There are some magical figure-out-how-much-each-one-costs-and-multiply-by-x, but x seems a lot to us. So we make up a number that seems reasonable and stick to it because we feel guilty for charging what our product is actually worth. This guilt is something I'm still getting over myself, and feel bad sometimes for charging the sales tax (it doesn't mean I don't do it; I still owe the state that money and am legally obligated to charge it!!). I have to look at my products and see that yes, if I were on the other side of the deal I'd pay that much for them...and in many cases at retail stores am getting much less value for my money than my customers are. Not that I'm saying retail items are bad; just that a larger store has larger buying power and so can get their materials for less than I do. So one of their $6 soaps in comparison to one of mine has more profit built into it. Yes, they have larger overheads, but they also have waaaaaaay larger sales volume than me!

Keeping careful track of your expenses is a MUST if you're turning yourself from a hobbyist into a business. Detail is key. I know how much each ounce of each item costs from each supplier. I know how much I use in each recipe and what the yield of that recipe is, so I then know how much the bars cost. Don't forget to factor in your time for the labor.There's a myriad of little details you need to know. Say the materials for one bar of your super special banana bar cost $0.48. That's not much, right? So you could sell it for $2.00 and make a profit...right?

Nope. Don't forget about packaging. Oh yeah, that's another $0.12 per bar. And it takes time to design the label, don't forget that. Then there's the wrapping the bar, more of your labor. Researching where to sell it can take a while. Don't forget about the supplies you need to sell at a market, your own canopy is a great thing to have, and tables, and tablecloths, and then little baskets for displays, or trays, or do you want to invest in wood display boxes? Well, that's another $100. Then of course there's your booth or table fee for being a vendor, anywhere from $10 to $200. So that little bar of soap needs to make you enough profit to pay for itself, pay for the labor you put into making it, pay for materials to make the next bar, pay to send your cat to college...my best-selling bar costs $1.18 to make. It's a huge swirly double bar. Going by the retail formula I use, I should charge about $7 for it. But it's also about what the market will bear. So my asking price is $9. That gives me some wiggle room if I want to build discounts in for customers. It also takes more labor to make than a usual bar. I have to make sure to trim any ash off the face (made in a tray mold and I don't gel), and like to polish them up a bit. That takes time. They also get their labels folded in half, hole-punched and tied on with ribbon rather than a standard cigar band. That means more time and extra labor, but it also means the customers can see each individual bar and pick the one they think is the prettiest. So my profit margin on this one isn't as large as it seems.

Deductions are also key. Here, more careful record keeping is in order. Do you plan to have a home office? You'll need to have the space qualify. What about storage of your bulk materials--you do plan to buy in bulk, right? You can sometimes count that space as part of your home office deduction. And mileage, don't forget mileage. It's now July 8, and so far this year I've driven over 500 miles for markets, to buy supplies, etc. That's another deduction, and with the way gas prices are going it could be more for 2011 than it was for 2010, which was around $0.50 per mile. For me so far, that's a pretty hefty deduction. Add mortgage insurance, mortgage interest, and utilities multiplied by the percent of my house that qualifies as a home office and the deductions just keep adding up when tax time rolls around.

Don't forget your equipment! All those molds and spoons and cool containers can be claimed differently than your raw materials in some areas. Of course, you use them over a period of time, so in some countries you can claim depreciation on them and even spread the aggregate you spent on them into deductions over more than one year in some cases. No, I'm not an accountant but that's another expense you need to look into.

And please please do not forget to look into whatever business licenses you will need in your area to stay legit. You reallllllllly do NOT want to pay any fines for selling items without charging applicable sales tax, or even inadvertently selling illegally because you needed a license and didn't have one but were selling away merrily without a care. Don't even get me started on insurance! In some areas it may be part of your homeowner's (or renter's?) insurance but don't assume it is. You don't want to lose your house because of a lawsuit which you didn't have the insurance to cover.

A business bank account is not a must just yet when you're very small, but will become one as you grow. Some states may require you to have one. And what happens when you receive a check made out to the name of your business and not you directly? I guess you could just not collect on that money, but being a former banker, I like cashing checks and getting the money from them! Banks are going to require a DBA (Doing Business As) name from you in many cases, though in some states (a small number) you won't need a DBA name to open a bank account in the name of your business if you include your last name in your business name, or in some cases your full name in your business name, i.e. Mary Smith's House of Waxy Buildup or Smith's Floor Removal Service. I don't really want to call my business Nina Consuela de Nada Santa Cruz's house of Soapy things (names have been changed to protect the innocent) and for now am being naughty and using my personal sole bank account as my main business account. Yes, I am advocating using a business account...but for now, I don't take checks :)

And just a word of warning about picking your bank: if you are a sole prop and have a business account with a bank, if you are overdrawn and owe the bank money on the personal side, they can and will take money from your sole prop account to cover the owed funds. They have the right to do this any time...read your banking disclosures. It's called the right to offset. If you're a different type of business, like an LLC or a Corporation, they can't since the funds are owned by the business and not you as a person.

Also, some banks will charge for processing cash in or out of your account. Usually it's any amount above x in cash per statement cycle (look for the date your statement was cut; it won't necessarily be the same date the next month but should be the same business day--confirm with your bank if you're not sure exactly when it cuts). Yes, they can charge you for depositing cash into your own account. Many banks do this to discourage people from bringing in large amounts of cash that will tie up their employees in processing it. Again, check the account disclosures and make sure you understand them. It all comes down to what they give you in writing.

This is all overwhelming. After all, you just wanted to sign up for the local market day or craft fair and bring in a little income, right? Not if you're going to be a business.

There are a lot of things I haven't even touched on here, like using social media for promotion (helllllllo blog readers, if you made it all the way down here you deserve a prize...I've got a promotion going on my FB page for 9% off, tee hee). And there's the hours and hours spent designing the website, and researching new recipes. Researching new suppliers, testing new recipes, testing new ideas...you've got to love it or it'll drive you mad in the end.

Plotting and scheming

I've finally accumulated enough stock of bar soaps and have a couple weeks between festivals, so I've got some time to work on adding new products, yay! I'm whipping and stirring and smelling and making Mark smell things he thinks are weird. (Mark thinks lots of the things I do are weird anyway. He's thought I was weird ever since we first met.)

I want to add a line of body products to my wee soapies and I'm having a lot of fun plotting which ones to make and testing recipes. Yesterday I made whipped Shea butter. It looks like whipped cream and feels incredible on the skin. This one will definitely make it into our product line, but later on in the year when it won't melt when it's shipped or at market! Right now I'm contemplating scents for it. Perhaps vanilla, lavender, rose or chocolate and unscented.

Incredible whipped Shea butter. Too bad it's not edible.

I'm developing a liquid soap recipe as well. It's interesting. First it's a liquid, then a paste, then a liquid again.

Pastey almost liquid soap.

Liquidy liquid soap.

Mark testing liquidy liquid soap. It works!

I added some sweet orange EO to the liquid soap and showered with it. Note to self, liquid soap does NOT work well on hair. But it works really well on skin! When I got out of the shower Mark couldn't stop smelling me and ended up finishing off all the orange juice in the house.

Besides these, I am learning to make lotions and lip balms. It's fun and useful stuff! The problem is holding myself back and adding things slowly enough to keep up with the production.