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How to make soap - part 1
"You MADE that?????"
This is always the reaction I get from my friends and family when they are the lucky recipients of a bar of handmade soap. And that's not surprising. No one else I know in real life (ArtFire and Etsy friends aside) makes soap, or even thought about making soap, or heck, even knew that some people still make soap by hand in this day and age, and that yes anyone can buy handmade soap and enjoy its many benefits. In fact, just a few years back I did not know about handmade soap either. I'd buy a bar or two at places like Pier 1 or TJ Maxx, all made in exotic foreign countries and love the soap, but I never actually thought of making it myself until a few years back.
Why would you want to use handmade soap, whether you make it yourself or have your favorite soaper make it for you? Well there are many reasons. Commercial soap has a whole bunch of chemicals, whose job is not to do anything wonderful for your skin, but to make the soap cheaper to manufacture, or longer lasting when it languishes on the warehouse shelves etc. It was all about what was good for the soap makers not for the customers. Handmade soap gets around this problem by simply using oils and butters to saponify (a technical term meaning "turn to soap") and form soap.
Eliminating icky stuff is one part of the equation, and the second part of it is adding the good stuff! Small businesses making soap can add in a whole range of skin friendly ingredients which would be too expensive or too difficult for commercial manufacturers to use. You will find a lot of soaps with botanicals such as rose buds, mint leaves, apricot seeds, calendula flowers, walnut shells etc. Or soaps will use various types of sugars or salts or french clays, or exotic butters like mango butter, apricot butter, or other soothing ingredients like aloe vera, oatmeal etc. The possibilities are endless!!
And then there is a whole world of scents, colors, shapes and designs. After "you made that????" the next thing people say to me when they get soap from me, is "oh this smells so good!!". Soap can be molded, shaped, cut, carved, colored or painted, and many handmade soaps are little works of art.
So coming back to the subject at hand, how to make soap, let's talk about the 4 basic kinds of handmade soap. There are glycerin soaps, cold process soaps, hot process soaps and french milled soaps. I make and use all 4 kinds, and love each of them for different reasons. I will write in detail about each of these, but here's the basic info on each:
1) Glycerin soap: This soap is made using bases sold by bath and body suppliers and is also called melt and pour soap. This soap is wonderful for artistic soapers, because it lends itself to intricate designs, shapes, sizes, colors and special effects, and makes for very beautiful soaps.
2) Cold process soap: This type of soap making starts with oils and butters of your choice, which are mixed in specific proportions and combined with sodium hydroxide at specific temperature to saponify. This soap has to set for 4 to 6 weeks, give or take a few based on the recipe, to form usable soap. This soap is an excellent choice to make smooth and silky soaps from scratch, and to make soaps for specific purposes, such as acne soap, or winter skin soap.
3) Hot process soap: This soap is somewhat similar to cold process soap, in terms of the initial part of the process with combining oils and butters and sodium hydroxide. Instead of curing for weeks, this soap is cooked to hasten the process. This method produces rustic looking soap, and is the closest method to the days of old when soap was made in a large vat over the fire.
4) French milled soap: This soap is made by taking cold or hot process soap, and further working it by grating and cooking. This method allows you to add delicate additives to the soap which will not withstand any other soap making method, and produces an exceptionally mild bar of soap.
I will write more about each type of soap in the future! Let me know if you have any questions.
Etsy or ArtFire - the sequel
Etsy or ArtFire? About a year back I wrote about my experiences with both and the pros and cons of each site as I see them. Today, as another busy holiday season draws to a close ..... here's where I am.
First, regarding Etsy. Etsy has gone through a lot of changes in the past few months. For someone who loves the social interaction, their changes with the team structure is probably one important change. From a purely business perspective here are some of the changes I noticed.
Benefits I see on Etsy:
1) Relevancy search: At last the relisting game is not the only way to be seen. Thank goodness.
2) Better organization within the seller portal: The listing process has been simplified, and so have many of the more mundane aspects of keeping your shop updated. (Maybe a result of hiring the greasemonkey dude? Although I believe he was hired on the QA side and not the SW Dev. Maybe the CEO change? Maybe Jupiter transits conjunct Sun while square Neptune?)
The site still places more importance on the seller profile, real names, circles, hearts etc. than on the actual ecommerce aspects, so nothing much has changed there. The message seems to be more about connecting with like minded people, oohing and aahing over the same things, sharing experiences, and maybe, just maybe, buying or selling too. Which, like all things, works very well for some people, and not all that well for others.
Now for ArtFire. ArtFire has been continuing its focus on search engine optimization. This, coupled with the fact that anyone can buy on ArtFire without having to join the site, make it much more of a mainstream shopping channel. Two important changes ArtFire made recently, were to eliminate the free accounts and to separate out all commercial items into their own section. Both seem to have helped with greater visibility for the site.
Benefits I see on ArtFire:
1) Tools, tools, tools: The tools are terrific. I tend to be rather prolific, so I always have lots of items in my shop. With just a few strokes I can make changes to the entire shop, or a few sections, or a handful of items across many sections... if you can dream it up, you can do it with just a few keystrokes. I can add tags, promotions, change prices or shipping, add or remove sales, apply coupons etc. etc. with abandon. Taking about coupons, I know E allows coupons too, but nothing like what ArtFire has. You can take percentages or dollars off, specify the minimums, the caps, add a free gift with purchase, free shipping and a myriad of other things, again with just a couple of keystrokes.
2) Complete customization: You get to choose colors, fonts, layouts and all sorts of cool stuff, in addition to your banner, which you can choose to either display on the product pages or not. If you are more ambitious, you can add widgets to do pretty much whatever you want on the pages.
3) Much better listing experience: This is one of my favorites. You can have up to 10 pics for each listing. You can specify any promos in a variety of ways. If you choose to submit to google shopping, you know whether something did go thro or not, and if not, why not. You can even include any google forbidden words like "free" in a special section of the listing which is not submitted to google shopping. I love how easy it is to write copy that brings in buyers from search engines.
The bottomline for me is this:
If your products are cheaper, or more unusual, or edgy or hip etc. etc. and are targeted towards younger people, or for people with specific interests, and you want to only list a handful of items once in a while, don't want too much commitment, or just do this for fun, go for Etsy. You can just list for 20 cents a pop, never renew, and leave them up for 4 months. If they sell, you pay Etsy 3.5% of the price as their commission.
If your products are a bit more high end, or if your products are more mainstream, or if you have lots of products, targeted towards people with money ;-), go for ArtFire. You can list as many items as you want for one low monthly fee, and that is it, you don't pay ArtFire any other commission. This is also a great option for people who want to know exactly how much they will spend, so that they can budget for it, because you pay the same fee to ArtFire month over month. If your time is valuable you should consider ArtFire, because of all the great tools which really cut down on your shop maintenance time and give you time for what you *really* want to do - CREATE!!
The most important thing to keep in mind is that ArtFire and Etsy are totally different. What will work on one does NOT work on the other. Once you treat each of them as totally unique venues, and you will do fine :-).
First, regarding Etsy. Etsy has gone through a lot of changes in the past few months. For someone who loves the social interaction, their changes with the team structure is probably one important change. From a purely business perspective here are some of the changes I noticed. Benefits I see on Etsy:
1) Relevancy search: At last the relisting game is not the only way to be seen. Thank goodness.
2) Better organization within the seller portal: The listing process has been simplified, and so have many of the more mundane aspects of keeping your shop updated. (Maybe a result of hiring the greasemonkey dude? Although I believe he was hired on the QA side and not the SW Dev. Maybe the CEO change? Maybe Jupiter transits conjunct Sun while square Neptune?)
The site still places more importance on the seller profile, real names, circles, hearts etc. than on the actual ecommerce aspects, so nothing much has changed there. The message seems to be more about connecting with like minded people, oohing and aahing over the same things, sharing experiences, and maybe, just maybe, buying or selling too. Which, like all things, works very well for some people, and not all that well for others.
Now for ArtFire. ArtFire has been continuing its focus on search engine optimization. This, coupled with the fact that anyone can buy on ArtFire without having to join the site, make it much more of a mainstream shopping channel. Two important changes ArtFire made recently, were to eliminate the free accounts and to separate out all commercial items into their own section. Both seem to have helped with greater visibility for the site.
Benefits I see on ArtFire:
1) Tools, tools, tools: The tools are terrific. I tend to be rather prolific, so I always have lots of items in my shop. With just a few strokes I can make changes to the entire shop, or a few sections, or a handful of items across many sections... if you can dream it up, you can do it with just a few keystrokes. I can add tags, promotions, change prices or shipping, add or remove sales, apply coupons etc. etc. with abandon. Taking about coupons, I know E allows coupons too, but nothing like what ArtFire has. You can take percentages or dollars off, specify the minimums, the caps, add a free gift with purchase, free shipping and a myriad of other things, again with just a couple of keystrokes.
2) Complete customization: You get to choose colors, fonts, layouts and all sorts of cool stuff, in addition to your banner, which you can choose to either display on the product pages or not. If you are more ambitious, you can add widgets to do pretty much whatever you want on the pages.
3) Much better listing experience: This is one of my favorites. You can have up to 10 pics for each listing. You can specify any promos in a variety of ways. If you choose to submit to google shopping, you know whether something did go thro or not, and if not, why not. You can even include any google forbidden words like "free" in a special section of the listing which is not submitted to google shopping. I love how easy it is to write copy that brings in buyers from search engines.
The bottomline for me is this:
If your products are cheaper, or more unusual, or edgy or hip etc. etc. and are targeted towards younger people, or for people with specific interests, and you want to only list a handful of items once in a while, don't want too much commitment, or just do this for fun, go for Etsy. You can just list for 20 cents a pop, never renew, and leave them up for 4 months. If they sell, you pay Etsy 3.5% of the price as their commission.
If your products are a bit more high end, or if your products are more mainstream, or if you have lots of products, targeted towards people with money ;-), go for ArtFire. You can list as many items as you want for one low monthly fee, and that is it, you don't pay ArtFire any other commission. This is also a great option for people who want to know exactly how much they will spend, so that they can budget for it, because you pay the same fee to ArtFire month over month. If your time is valuable you should consider ArtFire, because of all the great tools which really cut down on your shop maintenance time and give you time for what you *really* want to do - CREATE!!
The most important thing to keep in mind is that ArtFire and Etsy are totally different. What will work on one does NOT work on the other. Once you treat each of them as totally unique venues, and you will do fine :-).
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