Make Mine a Hobby!

I have gotten very discouraged while making my business plan. You see, I am unemployed and there just isn't enough money to really start a business right now. So for now my soap making obsession will just be a hobby. You know the old saying, "It takes money to make money." By the time I am ready to transition from a hobby to a business, then I will be more experienced and have an idea of what people want.

I will continue to post what is happening in my crafty world here. I have so many ideas rolling around in my head! Gel candles, aquarium soaps, natural buckwheat heating/cooling pads, gift sets, lotions, body sprays, sugar and salt scrubs. I just need some cash to get me started. Time to work on the household budget and see where I can shave a few dollars.

Who wants to test some soap for me?

I have two soaps ready to test. The first one is called Simple Castile. It is a fragrance free Vegan-friendly with no additives.

The other is called Cafe au Lait. It is a goat's milk soap made with coffee for color and coffee grounds for exfoliation. There are no added fragrances.

If you are interested in becoming a product tester, please register here: http://ping.fm/RHopy I will send a free sample size soap (about 1 ounce). All I ask is that you try the soap as a facial soap, hand soap and as a body soap and then fill out an online survey to let me know how you liked it. Those who fill out the survey will continue to be eligible to test new products as they become available. Future product ideas include more soap (of course), lotion, bath fizzes, and liquid soap.

P.S. Feel free to forward the link to any friends you think might be interested.

Next Steps: A Business Plan

I haven't been making any new soap this week. I have been researching what it will take to get a business started and how much it will cost. First I need to decide how the business will be organized. Will I be a sole proprietorship, or a corporation? A sole proprietorship will require me to register a fictitious name unless I use my name as my business name. If I choose a corporation I don't need to worry about a fictitious name; however, there are multiple types of corporation to choose from, each with its own benefits and drawback. For a small business like what I'm trying to be the most common corporation type is a Limited Liability Corporation (LLC). If I choose to become a corporation, this is the one that I will most likely choose. Next is registering the LLC with both the state and the city, getting a resale certificate and a Federal Tax ID number. All this can be done fairly quickly and easily, but it does take some time and of course money.
This brings me to the rest of what I have been doing for the last few days. I need to put together a business plan. Even if I never need to take it to a bank or an investor, I need to have one for myself so that I can have a written plan of what I want to accomplish and how to get there. It can be revised as needed along the way, but it will give me a place to keep track of short term and long term goals, what costs I foresee coming up and how I am meeting my goals as time goes on.
There are many questions that need to be answered. What is my mission statement? What are my company values? How much money will it take to get started? When do I need the money? Where will the money come from? What products will I be selling? How much will each one cost me to make? How will I price them? Where will I sell them? Do I want to have wholesale accounts or just sell them retail myself? What about economy or premium product lines? Do I need product liability insurance? Is there a plan for expansion? I still haven't answered all of these questions and I'm sure that I am leaving out many other topics that I will need to consider. But I am starting to get an idea of how much money I'll need for the first year. It's a much larger number than I would have thought, but then again part of writing the business plan is looking your business square in the face to see what needs to be done.

The Saga of the Second Soap

On Saturday I attempted my second soap recipe. Full of confidence from my first batch, I set everything up and got started. The new recipe called for triple strength coffee instead of water and condensed goat's milk added once the oil and lye reached trace. I weighed all the ingredients, set the oils on the stove (no heat yet), and poured the lye into the coffee. As the lye and coffee started to react and heat up the glass container and thermometer were steamed up and then... CRACK! The glass pitcher I was using for the lye solution split and the lye solution leaked all over the countertop.

Fortunately part of my preparation was a sink full of vinegar water to neutralize the lye and a jug of full strength vinegar standing by. I poured vinegar over the spill and placed the broken pitcher in the sink. Then, sopped it all up with towels and tossed them in the washer with more vinegar.

I have now replaced the broken pitcher with an 8-cup pyrex measurer. I later found out that a plastic pitcher with the number 5 and the letters "PP" next to the recycle symbol on the bottom will be able to take the heat of the lye reaction.

All in all, everything turned out OK, because I was wearing the proper protective clothing and had prepared to handle a chemical spill before it happened. If you have never made soap from scratch (using lye) before, please take the time to educate yourself on the proper safety precautions.

Take 2: This time I chilled the coffee (room temperature here is nearly 80°) and poured the lye into the coffee slowly never letting the solution get over 150°. In the meantime, the oils were on the stove at low heat just to melt the solids. When both the lye solution and the oils were at about 110° I mixed them together with a stick blender. When they reached trace, I poured half of the soap into the mold and sprinkled some coffee grounds over the top. I mixed 3 tablespoons of coffee grounds into the remaining soap and poured it into the mold then topped it all with whole coffee beans. I am pleased with the outcome, but I need to rework the recipe so it will be a vegetarian friendly soap in the future.

My first soap is done!

Last night I made my first batch of soap from scratch. Well technically my second, but the one I made before was over 20 years ago. The new soap is a version of Castile Soap with 75% olive oil and 25% Coconut oil.

I used a cold process, oven process (CPOP) method. This just means that after I made the soap I put it in a low-temp oven for an hour then turned off the heat and let it cool naturally overnight. It helps to speed up the saponification process and reduce cure time. In layman's terms the soap can be used right away and will be fully ready 2-3 weeks earlier than conventional cold process soap.

Here are some of the notes I took while making my soap last night...
1) The canning pot I purchase just for making soap is too big. The stick blender was barely submerged and there was some splattering.
2) I used filtered tap water chilled in the refrigerator. The ambient room temperature was about 75° so the coconut oil was slushy.
3) Using the stick blender, it took about 5 minutes to get to light trace (the point where the sodium hydroxide and the oils have emulsified and will no longer separate). The soap was poured into the molds at light trace.
4) Soap was unmolded and cut at about 16 hours. The soap was firm, but still very easy to cut. I could definitely use a mitre box to make more uniform cuts.

There are more photos at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seashore-Crafts/127584157282519.

Palm Oil: Yes or No?

In doing research on ingredients for soap making, I discovered that Palm Oil, a commonly used vegetable oil, has quite a bit of controversy surrounding it. Palm Oil is extraced from the fruit of the Oil Palm which is grown primarily in southeast Asia. The problem is that when a new Oil Palm plantation is needed in countries like Indonesia and Borneo that natural forests are cut down and the peat bogs underneath are drained releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These rainforests are also home to many endangered species like the urangutan.

On the other hand in Malaysia, 50% of the land is already protected rainforests. Instead of deforestation of the rainforest, new and expanding Palm Oil plantations are converting existing plantations from their previous crops to Oil Palms.

The easy way out is to stay away from Palm Oil altogether. But I also would like to support the Malaysian farmers efforts in their use of sustainable farming techniques. I believe that punishing them by a complete boycott of all Palm Oil is unfair.

What are your thoughts on the Palm Oil controversy?

Soap Making Spark

I have dabbled in soapmaking before. As a teenager, I  once made a batch of soap from scratch in my Mom's kitchen, much to her dismay. Years ago I made some melt & pour soaps for Christmas presents.

So the other night, I was thinking back on where my recent soap making obsession began (and it has been an obsession). It is thanks to my daughter and a you tube video she showed me of Emilie Autumn on a craft show making fairy wings and melt & pour soap. Emilie Autumn is a great alternative/punk singer with a huge voice and a very burlesque type style.

Soap Making Business?

I'm toying with the idea of starting a business making all natural cold process soaps. The plan is to sell them online and at a local open air craft market at the beach. Some of the soaps will be in shell/beach shapes and themes. Does anyone have any advice on starting a business? What kinds of qualities, scents, etc would you want in a handcrafted natural soap?

Cold process soap is made by the saponification of oils and/or fats with Sodium Hydroxide (more commonly known as Lye). Often fragrance or essential oils and botanicals are added to enhance various features of the soap. This is the way soap was made for centuries prior to the commercial "soap" we are familiar with from the local supermarket. Many of these commercially available "soaps" are actually detergents because they are created by a different method using chemicals. Just read the ingredient declaration on your bar of soap!

The first batch I am making to try out will be called Cafe au Lait. It is a goat's milk soap made with olive oil, coconut oil, lard (I will be replacing the lard in future batches with a vegetable oil - likely soybean oil), sodium hydroxide, coffee and coffee grounds. Olive oil makes a nice mild soap while coconut oil creates loads of rich lather. The goat's milk is for moisturizing and creaminess. Finally the coffee is great for deodorizing your hands in the kitchen after chopping onions or garlic. I can't wait to make the soap!