Susan’s Soaps & More will be closed from Thursday, December 24, Christmas Eve until Monday, December 28th. We will also be closed for New Year’s from Thursday, December 31, New Year’s Eve until Monday, January 4th.
Creating A New Soap Scent – Day 7
My bookclub had it’s annual Christmas meeting last night with lots of fun, food and laughter. I asked them if they would mind giving a critique of two new soap scents that we have been working on. They graciously agreed.
It’s testing time for our new soap scents. Monday – Tracy melted oils for the test batch. Tuesday – I figured amounts and measured the essential oils for our test batch. I made up the base soap and Tracy scented
Today everyone was back at work after the Thanksgiving holiday so I had them all smell the scent blends I had created last week. I have pretty much zeroed in on wanting to create two new scent blends – Lemon Zest and Lavender Mint. Last week I had created a number of blends that I and my staff smelled and rated. Today I had them smell the blends again and see how they had “aged” in a week.
Day 2 was spent trying a number of the blends I was interested in, tweaking them some during the initial trial and getting feedback from my employees.
My initial scent goals were a nice fresh, clean lemon scent that would be strong enough to hold up in soap and a lavender mint blend.
We have market coming up soon and of course the beginning of a new year. We received lots of feedback from our customers and potential customers via our “What’s Your Favorite Scent” survey. Ergo: it’s time to work on creating a couple of new scents.
I just put up some new Christmas items on our website. You can find them all on the new Holiday Category which is under the general Gift Category.
Thursday night we were vendors at the Dallas Farmer’s Market Hoedown which is the Friends of the Farmer’s Market largest fundraiser. It is put on in partnership with the Texas Department of Agriculture Go Texan program of which we are a member. If you have never attended you should make plans to be there next year as it’s a really fun party and I think in support of a good cause.
Whew! It’s been busy, which is of course is a good thing, but I am having trouble keeping all of my plates spinning.
I have had some people wonder what my week is like. Although this was a little busier than typical in that I did two sessions of soapmaking and we had an extremely large number of orders to work on – it was still pretty reflective of how things go. When we are not as active on actually making soap or filling orders there is still the tying of soap and labeling of product. I always have more bookkeeping to do and more emails to answer. I have ups and downs, successes and problems like everyone. I enjoy what I do even though at times it can be very frustrating. Welcome to “Life as a soapmaker (lately)”.
Last night I attended the Texas Monthly State Fair Kick Off Party at the Food & Fiber Pavilion. I took some photos giving you another look at some of the behind the scene events at the fair as well as some videos including a very short interview with Daryl Dean of TDA. I hope you enjoy them.