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!!