Teddy Bear Soaps Tutorial

Here it is, my very first tutorial ever!!! Please when you are finished reading leave a comment letting me know what you liked and didn't like so I'll know for next time.


These cute little soaps are perfect for baby shower favors or to put into gift baskets, and best of all they are really fun to make!

1. The first step is to gather all your supplies. Here is what you will need:
-Raw glycerin soap
-Soap Dye
-Fragrance Drops
-Plastic Mold
-Small Plastic Teddy Bears
-Wooden Spoon
-Sauce Pan or Microwavable Safe Dish to melt soap
-Rubbing Alcohol

I found all these items at my local craft store pretty easy, except the spoon and pan.


2. Now it is time to melt your raw soap. You can do this in the microwave or on the stove top, either way you want to melt it slowly. I prefer the stove top mainly because my microwave is in the garage and barely used. I melt my soap on low heat.


3. Once soap is completely melted it is time to add the color and the fragrance. I like to put one drop of color at a time so I'm sure to get a color I like. They say to use 1-5 drops per ounce of soap. For this tutorial I'm using a pink dye and sweet pea fragrance.



4. Make sure soap is not too hot and start to pour in the mold cavities. Only fill them half way full and let harden for 5 minutes or so. They need to be just hard enough so the toy can sit up straight.


5. Spritz the hardened soap with rubbing alcohol and place they toy in the middle of each cavity. The rubbing alcohol helps adhere the soap together.



6. The last step is to fill up the rest of the mold cavities with melted soap and let harden. I like to wait an hour or so, and for faster drying times let it harden in the fridge. After you pop your soaps out of the mold they should look like this!




These cute little soaps are fun and easy to make, but if you don't have the time they are available for sale at my shop Soaps and Such by Holly at www.soapsandsuch1.etsy.com. Thank you so much for checking out my tutorial, and I hope you had fun!

Holly

Day 21

What a busy morning I've had already. I dropped the kids off at school, then yesterday I sold my car (YEAH!!!) and had to pick up the notarized title from my husband today, went to the grocery store, went to the craft store, went to the bank to pay rent, to the post office, and finally back home, whew! Oh yeah, in between somewhere in there I stopped and got an egg mcmuffin with OJ, yummy.
So I've got some good news and some bad news about the craft store. Yesterday when I went my usual craft store was closed because it was Sunday, so I went to another down the street and I had amazing self control. I spent a little over five bucks on lavender fragrance, which I needed to finish my order, and some cute little bags for future packaging. Today however was a different story, I saw the cutest teddy bear molds, then these little pink and blue plastic bears I can put in the soaps, and then of course I needed more soap. I spent $11.54 today, which isn't bad because I printed off another 40% off coupon from the internet, but if you put that with yesterday's 5 bucks it adds up. Then my shipping cost were more than expected at a whopping $6.30, and I paid my etsy bill early because I don't want it sneaking up on me and it was $5.15. So the bad news is my bottom number which is now only $18.10. I am in absolutely in no way allowed to buy anything else for sure until we get that number up at least over 30 dollars. It makes me nervous being so low. I am still confident however, I have quite a bit of raw soap to make more and more inventory. I can't wait to do something with these little bears. Unfortunately my busy day is not over, I still have some English homework, housework, and finish the car transaction so I better get going

Bye,
Holly

CLEARANCE

Back on day 4's blog I mentioned how I should probably get a clearance section going on my online shop, www.soapsandsuch1.etsy.com. It's now day 20 and I set the clearance section up this morning. I made some really cute soap squares that turned out so great, the only problem is I accidentally mixed the scents together so some are sweet pea/vanilla/honey almond, and the rest are sweet pea/vanilla. They still smell good and look so great that I just couldn't throw them out.

Yesterday I wasn't too productive with Soaps and Such by Holly, but I kicked butt on my English homework and got all caught up, at least till Monday. I also went and saw 3D Avatar with my husband, while my father in law babysat. It was a really great movie, and it was the first movie I've ever seen in 3D and that was so cool. I think the best part, even though it was in the middle of the afternoon, is that Caradoc and I got out of the house together with out a single kid. I love my babies to death, but I think we have been out together probably about 4 times since Madelyn was born and that was like 17 months ago. What was really funny though is as soon as the movie was over I wanted to get back home as quick as possible. I just felt bad for Maddie, I knew she was in good hands, but we were gone for three hours and I didn't want her to think we weren't coming back or something. Who knows what goes on through a babies little minds. When we got home her grandpa said she didn't even noticed we left.

Yeah, we just received another order as I was writing this blog today, this time for 3 dozen mini heart soaps. Thank you so much embrace123! They actually wanted a custom scent of lavender, which I'm really excited about because I've been wanting to add it to my inventory. The only problem is that means I have to go to the craft store, and we all know how scary that is :).

Holly

Computer Savvy Day 19

First of all, woo hoo!!! We hit 200 views this morning on my blog. It took 16 days to reach 100, and only 3 days to reach 200, incredible! So yesterday I got a lot of technical stuff accomplished. I think if your gonna try something like this, you definitely need to know your computer well. I have an okay amount of knowledge as far as computers go, but I don't know a lot about programming or terminology. I would have to say I'm a trouble shooting type a girl, and can work the basic application. For example my husband tore apart and installed an "S-Video card" so we can watch whatever is on our computer on the t.v., and I set up the program so we actually could see it on the screen, talk about team work.

Thankfully a lot of the websites I've been working with lately are pretty easy. The three sites that have been must haves for this project have been fairly simple, blogger.com, etsy.com, and paypal.com. I was reading reviews on blogging websites, and it looks like blogger beat out the rest of the competition as far as user friendly goes. Etsy.com has so many helpful tips and advice and is not too complicated. I've had my paypal account for years from paypal.com so I'm not too sure how difficult it is these days.

Yesterday I started working with two new websites, technorati.com and Google Analytics. Technorati.com isn't hard, it's suppose to be the number one blog directory. You pretty much just sign up, and you can browse through blogs and get your own seen. What I really wanted to tell you about today is Google Analytics, it is so awesome. I have yet to discover all it can do, and I think you definitely need some comp knowledge. The best feature is the visitor trending, it pretty much can tell you everything except the identity of who visited you. You can see what times your site was visited, what part of the world your visitors live in, what website sent them to yours, and how many visitors you got and so on. I even noticed this morning it tells you what browser they use (Internet Explorer, Mozilla etc...), and what kind of connection (cable, DSL, Dial etc...). Don't worry though, it doesn't share any personnel info, such as name, address, or anything like that. I set up an Analytics account on both my blog and my store and it's been fascinating.

All the websites I wrote about this morning are free to use, and great online resources. Etsy.com charges a fee for listing and selling items, but it's not too much. It is just amazing all the FREE resources there are out there on the world wide web, I almost find a new one everyday. They come in very helpful it you want to start up a low cost business and get your name out there.

On a side note I would like to apologize for my misuse of grammar and punctuation and even spelling. It's almost like my mind thinks way faster than I type, and I barely have time to write these blogs much less go back and edit them. I promise from now on I will try to at least give them a once over. Just like the fact that I'm not a expert soap maker, I'm not a professional writer either. I was reading my blog to my husband this morning and he corrected me a lot, and I know that has to be frustrating to some of my readers. Well thanks for reading despite my skills :).

Okay, I'm off to post a new soap in my shop, here is a sneak peak picture of it up above.

Holly

Blog Makeover!

I just gave my blog a new look, let me know what you think?

Holly

We got our first sale, YEAH!!!

Today is day 18 and we received our very first sale at www.soapsandsuch1.etsy.com, YEAH!!! I just knew it was gonna happen soon. The order was for a dozen red mini heart soaps and a dozen purple mini heart soaps. A woman all the way in Indiana purchased them. Thank you so much kplucker for being my very first customer! Here is a picture of the soaps all packaged up and ready to go!


So now we can actually add money to our budget instead of taking it away. The total sale came up to $6.23 and that's including what she paid for shipping. That brings our budget up to $36.02. Now I haven't deducted any money for my cost of shipping yet, because I haven't received the funds through paypal yet and haven't sent it out. As soon as the funds come in I'll go to the post office on my way to the grocery store. I'm so excited, this is a great start to the success of my project.

I was actually discussing all morning my astrology chart with my father in law, he is an astrologer. I was asking him if my chart looked like I was going to sell a car today, because after the baby gets here our little prism will not fit all of us and I need a bigger car. Now he whips around a lot of astrology lingo that goes over my head, but basically he said my creativity will be educational and fruitful until about June. He said I have all sorts of trines on my chart, and trines are usually gifts. The "until June" part makes sense because that's when the baby is due. So from an astrological point of view, my experiment looks very promising to succeed. Honestly I think it's already a success, I'm connecting with all sorts of friends and family, and I've learned more in the last 18 days than I ever expected. Thanks every one!

Holly

hmmm

This one isn't bad, but this is suppose to be the bottom of the bar.


This on didn't turn out very neat or clear.


You can't really tell what is embedded in this one unless...


you hold it up to the light!

Well my soap experimenting so far today wasn't a complete failure, however I wouldn't exactly call it a success either. My soaps did not turn out good enough to sell, but I think I learned some tips.

1. Make sure your molds are clean and completely free of left over soap. This will help keep them neat and tidy.

2. There are two bases to start with, white and clear. If your embedding soaps I don't think you should use clear with clear because it is hard to see, unless maybe if your using the loaf technique.

3. Be patient, no soap looks good with a fingerprint right in the front of it, let your soaps harden all the way.

Now remember in no way am I an expert, these tips are just my opinion, and stuff I learned through trial and error. I said I would post some soaps even if they didn't turn out good so here you go.

Enjoy,
Holly