Out With The Old...

...and in with the new. It seems I am becoming an expert at change. I spent so much time and effort building my soap business. I started in 2005 and am just this year beginning to make a decent profit. Wholesale accounts are climbing and people are really catching on to my cross promotional marketing strategy. Most people would feel good about this and keep on going. Not me, no, I am my mothers daughter and now the challenge is gone. No riding the success train for this girl, instead I say, sell that business! Yep, that's right, in the middle of a very scary economic time I have successfully sold a home based business. The business is poised to take off and grow like crazy and it was my hard work and persistence that got it there. Now it will be up to the new owner to take it the rest of the way. The recipes will remain the same only the person stirring the soap pot will change.
What's next? Well, I am about to become a triple Grammy! Yes, three of my four daughters are pregnant. I am so excited for this next phase of life. But there will be no sitting around crocheting booties for me. Although I do need my granny glasses to see anything up close I am not ready to hang up my business mind. My girls have known from the start that I am not going to be daycare grandma. I loved being a mommy to our five kids and I did it to the best of my ability with a cheerful heart but now I am D-O-N-E. Daughter number 1, who also happens to be due first had a great new business idea that I couldn't ignore. I applied for our LLC yesterday and am trying so hard to get all of my ducks in a row (not duck soaps!) We will be starting out own mobile concession truck. The girls will be able to bring their babies to work and won't need outside daycare. It's a fabulous plan and we are so excited. I have been on the search for a truck or motor home that we can convert and praying for guidance. The future's so bright I gotta wear shades. I'll keep you posted and don't be surprised at another name change in the near future.

Upcycled Lamp

If you've been following my blog lately you know that I have been feeling extra crafty, so this project won't be too much of a surprise. I was playing with my latest fascination of melting plastic beads. See my most recent attempt at a bowl here:

 I would have written about the bowl but in the same hour I had this idea and totally moved on from the bowl. And besides that, my goal in making the bowls was actually to perfect a way to make a cool lamp shade. It really wasn't working out too well, UNTIL NOW (imagine a deep echoing voice here). I was standing in my kitchen after I made this very crooked bowl and thinking about things that I could use for molds to melt plastic in. Since my ultimate goal is a lamp shade I suddenly remembered an ugly  a vintage touch lamp that I had in my garage sale pile. The "touch" part of the lamp hasn't been working very well so I finally convinced my "reluctant to throw out anything he paid good money for" husband to get rid of it. I had gleefully put it in the garage sale pile that is growing in a spare room and just as gleefully ran to get it when inspiration hit me. I swear a light bulb literally appeared over my head when I had this idea. This is the old lamp: 

You can see it is very outdated. 

The first thing I did was to take all of the glass panels out then I wiped it down thoroughly with TSP to get any dirt or oils off. Then, on the advice of my crafty middle daughter, I took it outside and gave it a spray coat of primer. Here she is with her dog, Snoop, supervising me. I love this picture because Snoop is standing almost exactly like her.

 Of course by this time I had run to Wal Mart, which is less than 5 minutes away, to buy some purple spray paint and was ready to paint as soon as the primer was dry.

The plastic part came in next. I took a piece of tin foil and one of the glass panels and formed a mold. I just folded and pinched until I had it around the glass nicely.  I had decided to do some experimenting and made a few with regular foil and some with heavy duty foil. I didn't really expect there to be any difference in the end product but I wanted to see which one was easier to work with. Then I carefully removed the glass.

                           

I poured equal amounts of black and white pony beads that I had bought at Wal Mart into the crooked bowl (see first  picture above ) I had made earlier and I stirred them around. If you've been following me you know that my original plan was to get rid of the pony beads I had on hand already, but now I am a plastic melting junky and I had to go buy more. So I just randomly poured small handfuls into my foil molds and made sure that they were only a single layer. I popped them into the oven that had been preheated to 400 degrees and set the timer for 30 minutes. Don't forget to turn on your fan when you melt beads. This is where I got so excited about my project that I didn't take pictures until it was done. 

 It turned out so much better than I even imagined! My handy dandy husband wired a new switch into the base for me and Presto Chango! Brand New Freakin Awesome Lamp!

 I did have to remake 2 of the panels because I got sloppy and made the molds a little too big. The thing I discovered with the two types of foil was that with the regular foil, only the side open to the air was shiny. The side against the mold had a matte finish. With the heavy duty foil, both sides were shiny. The only thing I would do differently if I could would be to throw in a few glow in the dark beads so that they would shine for awhile after the lamp was turned off. I made this for my youngest daughter who is away right now. We are painting her room purple while she is gone and zebra print is her favorite. I can't wait to show this to her. 

So, the next time you are out thrifting keep your eyes peeled for a lamp! If you do try this project be sure to come back and tell me about it in the comments. If you write about it post a link as well. We all love to see each others projects!

The Things We Remember

 I have been looking at different ways to upcycle old bottles. I have a great friend who is a bartender and she saves me the coolest bottles. At Christmas hubby got a bottle cutter and made each of the girls a set of glasses. He said it was a pain in the rear but they all loved them so it must have been worth it. He doesn't read my blog so I can say anything I want.  I have been wanting to make hummingbird feeders.These are the bottles I decided to use.

Here are the supplies. A bottle, A spool of Jute macrame thread, a metal ring and some beads with big holes.... and of course, a messy table to create interesting photos.

I started by remembering something I learned in the third grade. Never underestimate the things that you learned in third grade art class. That's right, I said third grade. Way back then macrame was hugely popular. Hey, it was the 70's, no more need be said. Our class made plant hangers for Mothers Day. Even though I barely remember it, I remembered that you have to have an even number of strings to start with. I measured out  4 strings with great precision   that were double as far as I could stretch my arm. Get it? So each one is 2 arm lengths then I folded them each in half to form a loop.

I did a slip knot (is that the right term?) around the ring with each of the doubled pieces of jute..............

                                                                 Like this.....................

So finished it looks like this: 

So you are working with 8 pieces of jute.

When that was done I slipped it over the neck of the bottle and started by taking the two strings next to each other and adding a bead, like this:

 I just kept taking the strings from different pairs and knotting them and adding some beads where ever I felt it looked nice, remembering to embrace the imperfection. It is very much like a net.

 When I finished my knots I simply tied a knot at the top and made a second loop so that I could hang it from my outside plant/bird feeder hanger. I filled it with nutritious sugar water humming bird food and pushed the cork feeder in place.
                                                            Ta Daaaaa. Here it is.

 Here the birds are coming in to inspect the new feeder. I was sitting so close but they didn't seem to mind too much.

I'll tell you though, they did seem to mind that I took down their feeder that I made with the screw on bottom. They did not embrace the Cha Cha Cha Change. This little guy just sat right down beside me to wait for me to bring back the blue feeder that I made a few weeks ago. And then......................

                      He found it on the ground where I had set it to hang the new one.

I had purchased two types of feeder bottoms. The birds seem to like the screw on ones the best but it's hard to find bottles that fit them. The cork style are much easier but the birds are not as thrilled with them. I think they will figure it out though.

Fun Little Project With A Lot Of Possibilities

I was wasting my morning browsing Pinterest researching creative projects when I came across a post about melted bead art. Have you already heard of this? This is new to me and since I have been thinking about getting rid of stuff in my crap room Art Studio, it was perfect. Way back in the day when my kids were really into making geckos from pony beads and lanyard ( does anyone else remember that craze?) we built quite a collection of the little buggers.

I have been hanging on to them for God only knows why.Uuntil today, now I know why too. First you find a metal bowl and you pour a cup of coffee. I live in the Northwest and we don't do anything without coffee.

T
 Then you start picking out colors that you like. I recently got a peacock tattoo so I picked peacock colored beads. You can see my pattern started off really even but quickly got a bit wonky. This does not matter to the end result. (see previous post about embracing imperfection)

By the time I got to the top rim of the bowl I started to question my decision on that 5th cup of coffee. You have to have a steady hand and I found that when I did drop or misplace a bead a wooden skewer was perfect for moving them. In fact I got so nervous about carrying the thing without messing it up that I forgot to take a picture until it was inside the oven.You can see that by the time I got to the top it was pretty wonky.

I baked it on 400 degrees for 20 minutes and then another 15 minutes because it wasn't melty enough for me. So 35 minutes total. I also kept my stove vent on high to help with the fumes that come off of melting plastic. There are a lot of fumes and I wouldn't do it unless you have a good vent.

This is what it looked like when I took it out of the oven. I was so excited I forgot to take a close up before I cooled it.

 I used a metal bowl just because I knew that I would not be patient enough to wait for it to cool on it's own. I read that you can use glass but if you did then you would not be able to dunk it in cold water to cool it off. As soon as it cooled it came right out of the bowl and looked like this:

I can't wait to play with this idea some more. If you left a hole in the center it would make a really neat lamp shade. I saw some online somewhere and they were pretty. The edges are kind of sharp and I think when I do another I will leave it in a bit longer to see if the bottom will flatten out a bit.

A Worthy Venture

I met Tom and Vicky Brown several years ago when they came to buy a goat from my farm. They didn't buy the one they came for but they did buy a goat. This goat was beautiful but we had a love/hate relationship. I could not have been happier when Vicky told me that Layla had chosen her. Layla was the first baby born on our farm way back in the beginning when the goats were the sole responsibility of my middle daughter, Sarah. Sarah was a young teen then and we hadn't yet realized that the reason Sarah was miserable most of the time was that she was allergic to pretty much everything to do with farming. Sarah loved her goats though and she took good care of them. She let her pet Jo raise her own baby, Layla but always would go out and give them scratches before school and share her toast with them. Layla loved to be scratched through the fence because of this. However, when it came time for her to be a mama and be a milker she did not want to get on the milk stand and pretty much did not want to be touched anywhere near her hind end. Scratches through the fence, yes, milking, no. But she was so well put together and she kept birthing quads every year and yes, she was also a big giant pain in my butt. The year that she gave me quad bucklings I threatened her with her life. On a dairy farm bucklings are pretty hard to use and harder to find good lasting homes for, if you know what I mean. When it came time for the next breeding season I looked at Layla and told her in my best angry voice, " I will let you live and I will even forgive you if you give me girls this year." and I really meant it. I awaited the births anxiously as I always did and I watched Layla grow bigger and bigger each day.  I reminded her often that her future depended on those babies being girls. Well when the blahs of winter were solidly upon me it was time for baby goats to arrive and Layla did it up in style by giving birth to 3 healthy doelings and 1 beautiful buckling. They were gorgeous and I told her that I would forgive her. She did not ever really enjoy milking the way my other goats did and so while I forgave her I really didn't like her very much. 
Enter The Browns, they came to look at some goats that my niece was trying to sell so  of course, I didn't mention any of my own. Layla persistently came to the fence to get her scratches from Vicky. She just wouldn't leave her alone while Vicky was looking at the goats that were for sale. This was typical behavior for her but Vicky was so enjoying it that I didn't have the heart to tell her that Layla would do that with anyone. When she told me that she felt that Layla had chosen her and that she she wanted to buy her instead of the goats that were for sale I was truly laughing on the inside. I jumped on my opportunity,knowing that my niece would also get a good laugh about this and made her a fair deal. I have to admit that I giggled out loud when they drove away. The browns have come a long way since then and I truly admire their hard work. They are trying to expand their farm, which is a huge undertaking so when I found out, I had to help. I wasn't able to give a lot but if everyone could give a little they could certainly reach their goal. They are getting down to the wire so please check out the link. What they are doing is important work and I wish them the best. Support them if you can.
Promote the Goat!
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littlebrownfarm/cheese-cave-and-classes-and-farm-store-at-the-litt 


This is Layla and her mother in one of my favorite old pictures of my past life of farming. I call it Butt Head. Layla is the goat in the front.

Embracing Imperfection

I read on a sign on Pinterest today that 40 is the new 20 and something about not caring what other people think. I think it is true that as we age we realize that some things that we thought were important are not so important anymore. Especially when it comes to what other people think. In my 20's I was a widow with a brand new baby so it was more about trying to keep my life from spinning out of control, which translated into perfectionism. Trying to make things perfect is exhausting so in my 30's having 3 kids of my own and 2 full time step kids knocked the perfection right out of me. Exhaustion is only the tip of the iceberg in that situation. I simply didn't have the energy for perfection. Now that I am in my 40's I say embrace the imperfection! Live in it, love it, and search for the beauty in it. I have learned that you have to search for beauty in less than perfect situations, it is the key to happiness. Look for the small, quiet joys in life and relish their simple beauty. This may seem odd but I thought of this while I was packaging soap. I often get lost in my thoughts when doing tedious tasks. Not too long ago I was re-evaluating how my soap bars look. I have been selling soap for 6 years now and in all that time I have been trying to get my bars to look as perfect as possible. Measuring their beauty against store bought soap and against other soap makers who seem to be able to accomplish this easily. I over filled my molds and then cut the tops off so that they would be perfectly smooth. I hand beveled the edges of each bar so they had a nice finished look. I carefully brushed any crumbs off before I packaged them. Now, don't get me wrong, I still want my products to look nice, I just realized that looking nice doesn't necessarily mean perfection. Beauty is in the imperfection. These are the bars I was packaging when I had this epiphany.

The beauty is in the imperfection. These are scented with Coconut Passion fragrance. They are not colored, the fragrance turns them this color of brown. I am really not a fan of dark brown soap in general, at least I didn't used to be. When I poured this soap I decided in the spur of the moment to texture the top like you do with cake frosting. I don't know why I did it but I love it. I decided that I am done beveling edges and that I like the look of a rugged square edged bar. It's less polished looking, more hand made looking, more real life looking. After all, don't we find the best things in life in and around the rough edges? The adventure of life is often found in the peaks and valleys of life. All of the time I spent perfecting was wasted, all of the soap I cut off was wasted and I highly doubt that anyone would have stopped buying my soap simply because it did not look perfect; because the fact of the matter is that I make a darned fine bar of soap and once you try it you most likely won't go back to whatever you used before.

Creating Buzz

You've heard that it's all about the presentation, right? Well, maybe it's not. When I google "Handcrafted Soap" There were over 400,000 results. They say (whoever "they" is) that if your business doesn't come up on the first page you may as well pack it up and go home. There are a lot of soap makers in the world who make a prettier bar of soap than me. So how do I set myself apart? How do I stand out?  I have to create buzz, I have to get people talking about my soap so that they and other people will want to try it. Now that I am all grown up a mature business woman, I find that a lot of my time is spent thinking up ways to create buzz.  "How do you do that?" you might ask. Well, some people blog (eh hem),-"Stupid Duck Soaps". Some people create video tutorials,-" Everyone Can Make Soap, Let Me Show You How (and buy your supplies here)". Some people may even create scandal- "Senator Caught In Yet Another Soapy Scandal" (I'm not really sure this would work).  Another way to make something seem grand is by giving it a fun name. I discovered this when my kids were small. If I was making a "throw everything from the fridge into a casserole" type meal, my family was much more tolerable of it if it had a cool name. To this day my middle daughter still remembers "Cow Pie" fondly. We would even sometimes give naming rights to a particular child for the day, they especially loved that. I believe it grew more out of exasperation than anything. With five children, every night, each one asking, "What's for dinner?" That question started to drive me crazy. When something I can't change starts driving me crazy, I start trying to have some fun with it. So, now to apply what I learned from being a mom to selling to the public, after all, it's not that much different. How do I sell this ugly chocolaty brown soap that reeks of  contains the heady aroma of Patchouli?

I spend some time thinking about who likes this smell, and I come up with the name, "Happy Hippy". People love the name, people who love Patchouli really love the name. They come by my booth, read the name, laugh, pick it up and smell it, their eyes close and they smile remembering a time in the past when that smell was everywhere they went. So I top the experience off by making it from wine from Harbinger Winery. This appeals to my local customers because Harbinger is a local winery. It does not, however solve my problem of setting myself apart in cyber space. So here I am again, how do I create buzz in an online world where there are over 400,000 soap makers and I have an advertising budget that would make most business people laugh hysterically? I blog... and I hope. I hope that people will read what I write and maybe tell their friends about this odd woman who blogs about her life, her art, her soap.... maybe they will share a link or pin a picture on pinterest and maybe, just maybe they will even buy some soap.

Thinking Ahead

Even though as I look out my window there is snow falling and the trees are heavily covered in soft, white overcoats of snow I am thinking ahead to summer. As a soap maker I have had to learn to plan far more into the future than ever before. It took a lot of practice because I am a "living in the moment" type person. I have had my rug pulled out from under me far too many times to think that I can plan my life, so I don't. Planning what I will need for soap stock throughout the spring and summer months while my body is fighting hibernation mode during the cold, blah days of January and February has been a real challenge. Last week I started making my summer soaps. I started with Lavender and ended with Watermelon. This is a favorite of my customers. It is very cute and smells delicious but most people don't realize that it takes the time equivalent of making three batches of a more plain looking soap. I don't charge more for it than my others because I believe it all averages out. Maybe I will hibernate a bit while I wait for it to cure.