Introducing..... Holiday Packs!

Hello.  Welcome to the holiday season.  Just wanted to introduce you to these cute little holiday packs.  They are in limited supply and are already selling like hotcakes!  Sometimes it can be hard to tell by a photograph, so I will tell you that each of the li'l soaps in the pack are what I like to call "hotel-size".  Perfect little sampler - stocking stuffer - mid-Hanukkah - for your hairstylist - chiropractor - massage therapist - neighbor - etc...

The Christmas Trio sells for $5.95 on etsy:

The Hanukkah Set sells for $3.95 on etsy:

And the winner is....

This was a tough one.  There were so many lovely entries on the Sudstress facebook page that it was difficult to decide.  There are a few names I am going to keep in mind for future soaps and when I use them, I will send a bar to the person who gave me the idea.

Mademoiselle

Free Spirit

Spellbound

Blue Lagoon

Thank you for all the entries!  

I'm proud to introduce....   ENCHANTED

Thank you and congratulations to Heather Montes for your winning entry!

 

Name That Soap!

It's that time again.  I have a perfectly lovely soap and I just can't seem to come up with a name.  The contest will run for one week and the winner will receive a free bar of this very soap!

You can vote here by leaving a comment, or on the Sudstress facebook page.  There is no limit to the number of entries per person.  The scent is similar to the Philosophy brand fragrance Amazing Grace. It's a very feminine scent, slightly tart, slightly floral and powdery. Very beautiful.  The bottom is accented with a subtle vanilla.  Thanks for your help and I'm looking forward to seeing what you all come up with!

Churnin' it out.

I'm here in Denver.  I made it.  I got my soap operation up and running about a month ago and have been trying to churn it out as often as I can.  It's late, I'm tired, but I wanted to share pictures with you.  So, I'm keeping it short and sweet and let the soap porn speak for itself.

Thanks for looking and thanks for your patience!

Black Raspberry

 Warm Autumn Spice (spiced apple)

 Moonlit Forest

 Fairy Floss

 Name TBD

 Love & Light (a Hanukkah soap)

 tops of Love & Light

 more Love & Light

Holiday Trio (packaging incomplete)

Hope you like!  Some of these are already available on my Etsy site, and the rest will become available in the next few weeks.

Into the West.

View of the Flat Irons from my brother's street in Boulder

Big news.  As some of you may know, I've been yearning to move out to Colorado for a few years now, ever since my brother and sister-in-law moved out there, and especially in the last couple of years since they brought Zora, my niece, into the world.

So, if you haven't guessed already, I'm packin' it up and heading out to Colorado!  There are many things I'll be sad to leave behind in Atlanta, but there is so much I'll be moving towards in the glorious mountainous west.  

A note to my wonderful and loyal customers, you can expect a minimum of two months before I'm up and running out there, and then probably another couple of months for me to restock my shelves to a respectable level, so if you don't want to run out, head over to my etsy site and pick up what I've got left before my co-workers buy it all up (they love Sudstress!).  I don't have a place to live yet, no job, and several glitches in the plan already, so I'm prepared for delays.  Rest assured, however, that I will continue to make soap out in Colorado and I'm looking forward to what I suspect will be shorter cure times what with the dry air out there.  *fellow soapers nod their heads* 

I shipped out the last of the wedding favor projects that I had on the books yesterday and will get those pictures up as soon as I can.  Needless to say, the next couple of weeks will be a flurry of activity as I prepare to become a resident of the mile high city.

Though this move is a long time coming, I'm taking a huge, flying leap of faith moving out there with no job or apartment, but I have family, the love of my life (who will be joining me), and a plan to get my MBA at the Leeds School of Business, so it's calculated at least.  Without great risk there can be no great reward, but I think my sentiment is best summed up in the words of my 15 month old niece...  "Ooooooh my".

I'm back on my feet.

Hello my friends.  As you may or may not know, I recently had surgery and am recovering nicely.  I am starting to get back into the swing of things and what better way to do that than with several inquiries into my cutie pie wedding favors for some upcoming autumn weddings.

A big congratulations to Allison B., a lovely lady who recently got engaged and has multiple bulk Sudstress purchases under her belt.  She'll be getting married this September and I'm super excited to get back on the horse, starting with her wedding favor project! 

On the topic of weddings, I'd like to give a shout out to a very talented photographer Kelley Klein of Kelley Klein Photography in Atlanta, GA.  Not only have we been friends for a decade, but she puts out supremely beautiful work.  If you're in the market for a wedding photographer (or just a photographer for whatever reason) you can find her here:

http://www.kelleyklein.com/

That's all for now.  Short and sweet.  I have a batch of soap with the working title of Choco-nilla that is probably ready for sale that I will list soon and will be churning out more as I continue to heal.  No matter what happens in life, I always come back to soap.  That's true love.

You can learn more about my experience with Graves' Disease and my Total Thyroidectomy here:

http://alumpinmythroat.wordpress.com/ 

Until next time, thanks for sticking with me!  As a token of my thanks, I'd like to leave you with a few happy pictures of springtime around here:

New Spring Soaps!

sweet magnolia

ozone

cloud 9

stargazer lily

Euca-Lemongrass

soap sampler

emerald isle

victory garden

Later this week, you'll be able to find these soaps in the local Atlanta area at Young Blood Gallery & Boutique.  Otherwise, head over to my online etsy store to purchase.

Also a quick update: I'm headed in for surgery on March 20th and will be putting my etsy shop in vacation mode until I feel well enough to pack and ship soap.  This could be a few days or a few weeks.  I'm sorry I can't be more definitive than that.  So, if you are going to want soap soon, please order by Wednesday, March 14th.  If you'd like to learn more about my experience with Graves' Disease, you can go to my other blog:  a lump in my throat.

Thanks for your support and thanks for looking. 

....and the winner is

I originally thought I wanted 'Midnight' in the title of this bar, because of the color and because of the nostalgia associated with this scent.  As the entries came in, I couldn't decide and I thought I was in trouble because I liked several of them, but none jumped out at me.  So, I took a break and didn't think about it, then came back with a fresh pair of eyes.  When I did, one jumped out at me this time.  I tend to like plays on words and dual meanings for the same phrase.  One entry satisfied this while also incorporating the scent theme.  Without further ado, the winner is......

'Pipe Dreams' submitted by Allison Burrough.  Congratulations!  You win a bar of this soap :)

mmmmmm..... woooooddsmoooooke....

Okay, Homer Simpson might not drool over woodsmoke, but I do.  I grew up hiking the Franconia Ridge, Mount Washington, and other parts of the White Mountains of New Hampshire every summer.  I look back with fond memories of Greenleaf Hut, Pinkham Notch, Tuckerman's Ravine, Zealand Falls.  As I got older, my practice of week-long backpacking trips settled into what I consider luxury or lazy-man camping.  This is where you drive into the campsite and go on day-hikes.  There's usually a primitive bathroom and sometimes even a shower on site.  This way you can fill up half the car with fire-wood and have a campfire every night.

The smell of woodsmoke is deeply embedded into my sensory memory.  It carries with it the feeling of being deep in the woods, cultivating an intimacy and trust with nature and with my camping partner.  Camping is one of my favorite, favorite, favorite parts of life.  Every autumn, I must have a few nights in the Blue Ridge or Smoky Mountains.

That is the feeling with which I made this soap.  Granted, every batch I make is a labor of love, but this one makes me swoon just a little bit longer every time I catch a whiff of it.  I'm thinking of naming it Midnight in the Woods.  I'd like to know what you'd name it though.  If I choose your title, I will send you a free bar of this soap.  Comments, though moderated, are open to anyone - subscriber or not.  Thanks for your input in advance.

You can enter your submission via comment or you can also see other submissions and enter your own here. 

 

Babies and weddings and boyfriends, oh my!

This has been a good month for Sudstress.  A few weeks ago, I got an email from a woman who was looking for 40 baby shower favors and had been referred to me by the lovely Joanna of The Soap Bar and Product Body.  (Thanks Jo!)  Her shower is this weekend and all has been delivered and signed for.  She was so kind to still work with me even though I couldn't do custom without more time; we figured out a way to make what I had in stock, custom for her.  I hope they're a hit.  We went with exotic berry, stamped 'Baby M' with some pearlescent purple mica.

Then I got an email about a week ago for 60 wedding favors.  All was confirmed a few days ago, and I made them Tuesday morning.  Her wedding is in September.  I've already ordered the gift tags - my best design yet, thanks to istockphoto and their amazing vector artists.  One in particular whose style I LOVE.  A month seems like plenty of time, unless you're talking making soap, cutting it into 60 little pieces, stamping 60 little pieces, assembling 60 boxes, filling them with shred, packing the soap in them, tying a ribbon and gift tag around each one, packing them and shipping them....  whew! 

They will look similar to this:

Today I received confirmation from Allison, who bought a custom order of Gravel Road Grunt - a novelty scented soap with pumice in it that I made for gift bags given away at the Fool's Gold 50/100 mountain bike race a few years ago.  Apparently he really liked it because he kept the label all this time and this is the second custom bulk order for it!  I'll be making the batch this Sunday for local delivery in a handful of weeks.

Sorry for the poor quality on that last picture.  I sort of took it last minute before moving it to the curing shelves.  I wanted a record of it, but who needs it when it looks so poorly lit and on paper towel...  clearly not staged properly, but you get the idea.

not ready yet

So this soap is not fully cured yet, but it turned out really cool and I want to share it.  The scent is lemon verbena mixed with lime, so I'm thinking of calling it Limon Verbena.  It looks like a sunny day to me.  I want to take a picnic on each bar...  Without further ado:

Also, I stopped making Healing Waters Spa Bar a while back because the fragrance was really difficult to work with.  I've had several requests, as this was a favorite of many people.  I had a bit of the fragrance left, so I made a smaller batch.  It wasn't as terrible in a smaller quantity, but I'm still going to have to find a different fragrance.  I will keep the design and recipe the same, but it might take some time before I get it right.  So for now, there is a limited quantity available - though it's been so long since I made any that the aqua came out a little darker than it used to be and I had to add an ever so slight amount of a complimentary fragrance to have enough for a full batch.  It's still got the aloe and sea clay in it, however.  Here's what the current batch looks like: