Compact for Safe Cosmetics

HOLLYWOOD here we come;)

Shipping our soaps to Culver City CA today! It will be a prop in the movie Bridesmaids-release date of 2011! http://bit.ly/bridesmaidsmovie

We were contacted last week and were playing phone tag trying to get more info. They requested 3-4 bars of soap that will be given as a gift in the movie! They wanted a real Milwaukee product that would be recognizable verses a made up one. Peninsula Soap is going to be famous:) We also got a text last night that they wanted 2 of each of the soaps for doing scenes... after one scene of opening the gift they'll need to re-wrap and open it over and over again so 2 sets of soap will make it easier.

So this morning 2 Olive Bar, 2 Bay View Sunset, 2 Door County Cherry, 2 Baby Buddha & 2 Herbal Bliss will be making the long trip out to Culver City California to Sony Pictures!!
We wish them luck!!

Buy Green, Sell Green, Be Green

We're on GreenPeople.org! An online directory of eco-friendly businesses, organizations and events (since 1998).
http://greenpeople.org/listing/Peninsula-Soap-Company-59321.cfm

Coloring with ROOTS...

specifically Madder Root (red coloring) and Alkanet Root (purple coloring) for the Door County Cherry & Wino soaps. We also used Ylang Ylang essential oils for the Cherry & Clove Bud for the Wine soap. So far the Cherry looks really nice! The Wino I'm not sure what to think of yet but it sure does smell good... like a spicy mulled wine:)

The people online said the Alkanet Root can give more of a gray color in the CP of soap making so that made me nervous but we use the HP so we'll have to wait and see. I was surprised it didn't dye my clothes when I dropped the stick blender on myself:)

The Cherry soap of course still has ground Door County Cherries in it but the Wino we decided didn't need crushed grapes we just swapped out one oil and added grapeseed oil instead... those dried grapes were a pain and not really giving us the dark color we wanted.

BABY BUDDHA Rocks Sturgeon bay Farmer's Market!

Round two of weekends spent in Door County selling soap was a success! With 15 bars sold we also featured our first essential oil soap for the first time. Baby Buddha, named that because Jesse was awesome enough to give us a bottle of blended essential oils (orange, pine, patchouli & frankincense) sold out by the end of the weekend. Although it was only a half batch were still thrilled and are spending the week adding fragrance and new colors to our soaps hopefully in time for two different sales events next weekend in Door County. Fourth of July weekend should bring in huge crowds and were not only doing the Sturgeon Bay farmer's market on Saturday from 9am till noon but then we're heading to Egg Harbor for a new one that includes more crafts. It's called Blossom Hill and we chatted with the woman who owns the land and is organizing the event. She also has it running Sunday so we'll be there that day too.

Sturgeon bay Farmers Market...

this past Saturday was a success! Even with the cooler gloomy weather we still sold the same amount of soap in 3 hours as we did in Milwaukee on a nice sunny day in 6 hours. The farmers market isn't in full swing yet and neither are the tourists due to it being early in the season (so there isn't a lot to sell) and the cooler rainy weather recently. We're positive things will pick way up though in 2 weeks when we go back. We were the only soap company there so that's good & we even met another vendor that was into healthy living & all natural products so we chatted with them for a while. We sold an Olive Bar to a woman who mad a straight line to our booth who's daughter is highly sensitive to soaps so we may have made a long term customer out of her because she said they usually have to throw soaps away that they try. With just Olive & Coconut Oil I can't imagine it giving her a problem.

We also sold 7 bars a piece to two awesome women one from Shaun's dad's office and one that his mom gave a sample to earlier in the month. Both loved Olive Bar but bought some other varieties. One of them is sending a few bars of Door County Cherry Soap to her daughter in Hawaii. Very cool our soap will be going to Hawaii but I wish we were going with it:)

The National Cafe is Selling Our Soap!!

We're officially being sold in The National Cafe in Milwaukee!! They started with 2 bars of each of the 7 varieties I brought in yesterday. Cheers to them for being the first to carry our soap:)

Today I started sending soap samples to places in Door County... Brick Alley in Sturgeon Bay, Fish Creek market in Fish Creek & The Flying Pig in Algoma. No word yet from the sample I sent to Greens & Grains in Egg Harbor but we're hopeful. We really need a retailer up there because we're only going to be able to do the farmer's market in Sturgeon bay 2x a month.

I also contacted Vegan Essentials and they requested a sample so i sent that out today and I emailed the Riverwest Co-Op to see if we could get our soap sold there as well. Waiting to here back if they want a sample but I think I'd rather deliver it in person and talk with them so we'll see when they respond.

Door County Sales this weekend!!

We're selling at the Sturgeon bay Farmers market this Saturday 9-noon. We will also be dropping off an order for Olive Bar to one of the other people in Shaun's dads office building who said after the samples he brought in for everyone she "fell in love with the Olive Bar". YAY! 2nd time we've received an email with good feedback! Now that the farmers markets are open for the season I'll be trying out new locations weekly.

I'm also meeting with one of the owners of The National Cafe because they my be the first retailers to sell our soap! I'll know more Monday afternoon.

Created a listing on www.GreenPeople.org & peninsulasoap@gmail.com will be notified when your free listing (# 59321) is made
visible. The review process takes 1 - 2 weeks.

I also added us to Google Places & placed free ads on Shepherd Express & Craigslist online plus I got all our products listed & reviewed on Sustain Lane and Olive Bar and Door County Cherry are now on Etsy.

I also contacted Vegan Essentials today based in Waukesha with a strong online presence to see if they would be interested in carrying our soap so I'm also waiting to hear back from them.

We're on Etsy!!

I got Olive Bar and Door County Cherry soap on my Etsy shop now. I decided it was a good way to get our product selling online and hopefully get people directed to our website. We don't know how many times anyone has been to our website but we haven't had any online orders yet. We have a #1 presence on all the top search engines though when it comes to searching our company name so that's good... the more we're on the web the better.

7 Mile fair did not go over well yesterday so we're a little bummed about that but we didn't know it wouldn't be our target audience. They say they are a flea market but I would have to disagree. It's more like a festival with a lot of vendors that seem to sell a lot of stuff that's probably stolen. Not a good environment for people who care about their health or being green. It was a wake up call to me because I assumed everyone has been touched and had some kind of awareness about the dangers of chemicals in food & skin care products and that most people used reusable bags and cared about organic, sustainable, fair trade living-but these people were all "dollar menu" people with zero awareness it disturbed and saddened me and I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the cluelessness.

Now we know and can move on though. I'm going to start scheduling weekday farmers markets in Lake Geneva, Cedarburg & elsewere come June when they start up.

We're on FACEBOOK!!

We're finally on Facebook (link above) and we have a bunch of "likes" that I don't even know:) How cool is that? I set up our new Milwaukee event for sales this Saturday and the first Door County sales event at the Sturgeon Bay farmers market. I'm making tons of Door County Cherry soap for that one as it's expected to be our biggest seller. I also experimented with a purple carrot extract dye (all-natural/pure of course) with the Wino to try and get it more purple and it helped... made it marble. Not sure if I like it but I'm dehydrating blackberries right now to try too.

Carrot extract as a purple dye?

Yep that's one of the things I'm working on today. I'm re-melting a couple bars of Wino to add this organic carrot extract that is supposed to be a pure all natural purple vegetable dye. We'll see if it works! It says if heated it may change colors so I'm not sure what to expect. I'll of course add them at the every end but they'll still be heated for a short time. Outpost had a few food colorings like this. There was a red and yellow one too.

Second on the agenda for the day is waiting for the outcome of the beer soap I made this morning. Alpha Brewer is chilling in the refrigerator right now. We got a really amazing smelling cherrywood smoked barley from Northern Brewer (a home brewery supply store). It smells fabulous so hopefully by adding it at the very end of the cooking process when I was ready to pour it will retain it's smell. I then put it in the fridge asap to keep the heat from killing the smell but I'm still waiting for the outcome. We also got some simon hops to map a soap I'm wanting to call Hop-a-licious:) I want it to green but who knows how it will react with the heat.

Update on another special soap... Lush Lilac is cut and curing right now in my lab. It looks really cool with the flower petals in it but it doesn't smell like lilac. It smells more like a potpourri. It still has a smell that is nice though so it's a success as far as I'm concerned. We'll see how it sells on May 15th at the second flea market we're selling at. I'm going to have that one and hopefully 2 beer soaps along with the standard ones available. All for $5 a piece and if one or more of the special small batch ones go over well maybe I'll have them become regulars and add them to the website.

Great Day of Soap Sales!

We sold 15 bars of soap today at the Fox Skylight Antiques Flea Market. Really great reaction from people about it too. Olive bar was our number 1 seller hands down. We sold more of that then the rest combined. Espresso buzz took second. We can't wait to do it again! We signed up for Saturday May 15th and it's going to be bigger then this one plus Rummage-o-rama at State Fair Park won't be going on to compete for customers:) CHEERS!!

Saki takes over the label making...

ha! yeah right even she can't get them to line up and print out even:) What a process I thought the idea of these companies making templates for there labels was so it was easy to line up and print. Ugh! long evening of not getting them done, hopefully we have better luck tomorrow.

On a more positive note, our soap making lab is coming along fabulously! I'm designing it while I work in there so It's as practical as possible. This is what we've got so far. Great lighting in this room due to the tons of windows. LOVE! I've still got too much on the floor though.

Business Cards are HERE!!

Just got the business cards in the mail this afternoon! It only took a week... thanks www.OvernightPrints.com you guys rock! They did a fabulous job. Super vibrant colors, clear clean print overall and great cutting job. So happy we'll have them to pass out at the flea market this Saturday at Fox Skylight Antiques in Milwaukee.

Flea Market Sales!!

We'll be selling our soaps May 1st at the Fox Skylight flea market, 112 E. Mineral St. in Milwaukee from 9AM until 5PM or until we sell out! I came up with a great idea for a sign at our booth too, it will say:
ANTIQUES MAKING YOU FEEL DIRTY? CLEAN UP WITH PENINSULA SOAP!

How cute and catchy is that;)
So exciting but I've got a ton to do this week because once we start selling in person we will be directing people to the website too because it's on all the soap labels so we need to have the ordering process set up just in case. I also only have like 10 bars of each soap perfected and made so we need to get to work:)

On the schedule today... get the website up and running for orders and get lots more molds cut down and ready.

Tomorrow... we'll be making at least 2 batches of Door County Cherry soap and 2 batches of Olive Bar soap it will be a long day!!

Pop Ups Out...

instead of pop-ups when you click on an individual soaps page for more info and to add to your cart were going to do a whole normal web page for it instead. Today we updated web pages and added the "view cart" to each page in the same spot by the other icons (twitter & blogger). We had a lot of fun the other night coming up with the descriptions and wording for each soap. I also created a "add to cart" icon that will be on every individual soaps product page in the same spot.

I don't know which version I like better... I'm thinking the one with more photos though even if the type in the description and "add to cart" have to be smaller. I emailed these versions to a couple people we'll see what they say.

Espresso Buzz perfected in trial #3

Cut down our 1st perfected batch of Espresso Buzz! Were loving the creamy color and swirls of Espresso grounds:) We're still loosing about 1/2 the batch due to air bubbles. Small imperfections are fine and expected because it's handmade and that's what makes it unique and reminds you that a person made this soap not a machine in a factory. We can't waste that much though... I think we could solve the problem if we cut our molds in half because the air pockets usually occur in the middle and right now the molds are around a foot long. We're going to try that with the next batch of Wino I make and see if it fixes the problem.

Currently all 4 soaps are now perfected for selling, just one more to go. Wino needs to be perfected and today I'm going to get a new round of grapes to squeeze, dehydrate, grind and brew for a batch tomorrow.

Product Shots & Lab Organization...

all getting organized today. We got some great light coming through this afternoon so I took the opportunity with the recent printing of the labels for Olive Bar to get product shots done for the website. I also spent most of the afternoon setting up my lab:) We needed a stop to make the soap so that I could have soap saponifying at any time and the kitchen wouldn't have to be off limits to food. It looks like it's going to be a great way to use our sunroom which is probably the least used room in the house and until recently just had plants in it. After hanging some shelves we should be able to make the soap, dry, label & package it for shipping all in one place instead of having everything scattered in every room.

Business Cards ORDERED!!

We ordered our business cards from www.overnightprints.com today. We're excited to get them in 5-7 business days:) They have such a sweet deal of 500 cards for free it only cost us $7.75 for shipping.

The website also went live over the weekend with paypal so we can now sell Olive Bar online! Were making some finishing touches to it now and we'll be taking better pics tomorrow when it's sunny.

Label Satisfaction!

Thanks ULINE your labels were perfect! We got the templates working and the first label printed last week. I've been a little slow about postings since our New Orleans trip but were back to work now and ready to get product out there! Next are the business cards and brochure cards.

Rose Water Experiment

So I have a lot of scrap soap from the Bay View Sunset batch that I want to try adding a scent to. Right now it looks like Mac & Cheese but after it melts down I'm going to add Rose Water mix it together and pour it into molds to cure again.

In the book it suggested 2.5oz on average for adding essential oils (that's for a full recipe) I'm going to see what 2.5oz looks like but I'll most likely use that much with this first trial because essential oils are so much stronger... I'll need more rose water to make the finished bar of soap smell. So I think, so far success comes in two's:)

We checked out high quality organic essential oils at Future Green today and also took a look at their soaps ($7.50 for 4oz!) to get some ideas. We smelled and tested them but none seemed to have scents that would go with our "flavors" of soap. So we'll have to see how this rose water trial goes there is also orange blossom and lavender water we could use if this goes well that way we can stay away from the essential oils.

New Soap Cutter DONE!

So this is our 2nd attempt at making a soap cutter and it works beautifully!! So fun to cut soap now!! The wooden box I bought from Jo Anne's Craft's and then cut a inch slit through it. Then used some craft wood to secure the sides where the cut was made. The metal thinging was given to us a while back as some sort of chopping/scooping kitchen tool we never used and it fits perfectly. So far things are successful on the 2nd try... and we're good with that.

Also this is our newest product shot of the Wine-O soap made with grapes. Pretty color... and the 2nd try will only be better!

Nothing to Wine about...

the melt-down worked great on the wine soap:) It's purple in spots and brown in others but at least it's an overall color like we wanted! The brown color came in because we left too much juice in the grapes when we dehydrated them so next batch will be perfect. Who knew grape juice was actually brown not purple. LOL:)