Mom and I have been busy creating these adorable little soap gift stacks over the past few weeks.  We are slowly cranking them out on Etsy, and hope they will be good sellers this holiday season.  Here is one of our latest creations: one of our yummy lime soaps, coupled with one of our handmade knit washcloths and a maple draining soap dish.  Love it!

Holiday Gift Boutique at Spector Furniture

Good morning - Nutmeg Naturals will be at the Holiday Gift Boutique on 11/27/11 at Spector Furniture in Ansonia, CT. The event runs 11/26 and 11/27. If you are in town, stop by for some great local crafts!

https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=214379131936144

First craft show

Wow, it has been a while since I've blogged.  Things got busy! The new school semester started in September and my courses have been keeping me pretty well chained to a textbook, calculator and computer.  Throw a craft show and a freak October snowstorm into the mix and that pretty much brings us to today.


We did our first craft show mid-October. Could I have chosen a larger show to do? It was a 2 day, outdoor event with 30,000 people coming.  Sales were so-so but we broke even, not bad considering that most of the vendors around us said they did terrible.  Other items of interest: the mud and deep fried pickles!

Several days before the show, it just rained continuously, resulting in a huge mud pit at the show.  Cars were getting stuck during set up, and the highlight came when the truck carrying hay (to help soak up the mud) got stuck in the mud! I had pictures of this, but unfortunately the computer containing the photos has crashed.

Our location at the show was a good one - facing all the food.  We were directly facing the deep fried pickle stand all day...we eventually caved. While our vendor-neighbors refused the try them, they actually weren't that bad.  Let's just say we all did a lot of eating that weekend!

More to come soon...

What I've been up to this week

It has been a busy week. First, hurricane Irene hit the state Sunday. We were without power for only a day, and we were able to clean up our flooded basement fairly easily.  All in all, we were lucky.  I know people who still do not have power! Fortunately, everyone is safe and no one was hurt.

Next, I started the fall semester this week. I am taking two difficult courses which I expect will be eating up a great deal of time until December. It will be interesting to juggle school, work, and soapmaking!

Last night, I made a rose water and French pink clay soap. It is still in the mold, and quite hot at the moment, but I have high hopes for the soap.  Not sure how much of the rose water scent will remain after interacting with the lye, but I have been wanting to make more natural soaps lately and this will fit the bill nicely.

Finally, I have ventured into making bath salts. Talk about instant gratification! Not like knitting, where completing a project could take months, or even like soap making, where you must wait for saponification and curing to occur.  Nope, bath salts are pretty much done in 5 minutes! :) I purchased some absolutely gorgeous pink Himalayan salt and mixed it with a blend of lavender and peppermint essential oils. Packaged them up in these adorable quilted 4 ounces jelly jars.  Love these!  And so easy!

Cut soaps from yesterday's soapmaking

New stuff, continued

Well, so much for waiting until tomorrow to post pictures! I apologize for the messy looking soap molds, but what's inside them looks great, I think!

Some new stuff

Took yesterday (Friday) off from soap making, but back at it today. Today I made an all natural activated charcoal soap, swirling it with my favorite soap recipe which is a rather pale  creamy white. No titanium dioxide used, so we'll see how it turned out. Also left it unscented.  Apparently, that wasn't enough for me! I have had this mold my father-in-law made for me that I had yet to use. It is solid wood, but kind of an unusual shape, so I wasn't sure what to do with it. I have been jealously looking at the great stuff everyone has been making using molds like these http://www.brambleberry.com/Baltic-Birch-36-Bar-Wooden-Mold-P4708.aspx from Brambleberry, so I decided to use the mold from my father-in-law to make a pretty design on top, which will be the front side of my soap...if that makes sense :) I made one of my old standby recipes - just 2 pounds - mixed the lye and fat mixture together with no scent, and poured that mixture into cups with some pretty fall colors. The colors I used were black (activated charcoal), rust (I hand blended colors to create this), red bourdeaux, and gold sparkle mica. To the main soap mixture, I added pumpkin spice fragrance which smelled out of this world! Poured in the scented mixture into the mold and made some pretty designs on the top with the aforementioned colors.  I am sooo excited to see the result, but don't want to let myself get too excited yet! Pictures will be posted tomorrow :)

Happy Saturday!
Jen