Region #19's Boutique Results

I certainly learned a lot from this event!  It was only the second time that I set up a booth for direct sales and I was quite nervous about the display and the stock I brought along.  However, Thursday night was a huge success and actually represented 50% of my sales for the whole weekend.  I am grateful for both my husband, Tom, and my mother, Midge, for their help in making this whole thing work.

Here is what was popular:

20% of sales: Tenor, Lead, Bari, and Bass soaps
10% of sales: Lavender Butter Bars
10% of sales: Lavender Loofah
10% of sales: Coffee Kitchen Soap
10% of sales: Tea Soaps (Green Tea, Chai Tea, Mint Tea combined)
8% of sales: Goat Milk Soaps (scented and unscented)
7% of sales: Castile Soap (including the baby soap.  If I had more, this might have been higher on the list)
25% of sales:  Everything else combined (Beer Soap, Wine Soap, Shampoo & Shaving Bars, Men's fragrances)

I do have a lot of the voice part soaps left over and am trying to decide what to do with them.  They will last for over a year so I guess I need to decide if I'm going to take them to FLASH or not.  Decisions.

Finally Catching Up!

Working as a team, Tom and I have 200 bars of soap made, labeled, shrink wrapped, and packaged ready for the convention.  Another 100 bars will be ready to wrap soon.  The 250 voice part soaps are also finished but are sitting out to cure and harden before we wrap them next week.  

I have my temporary license to sell in Maryland for the weekend and I've been improving the display set up with a few new purchases.  The new hang tags and stickers have arrived so I just need to make table top signage.  

It's a good thing I'm home for a few more days at the beginning of this week!  With each "batch" of soap yielding 26-30 bars each, getting to this point has been quite labor-intensive.  Yet, it's been fun exploring and being creative.  Being a vendor at the Boutique for the Sweet Adeline Convention will be my second chance as a vendor.  Lots to learn.

Milk & Honey Soap

Today I split a batch of goat milk soap so that 1/2 is just milk and honey (unscented) while the other 1/2 is my traditional honey oatmeal soap with cinnamon leaf essential oil for the fragrance.  Both were set in the mold with bubble wrap around them so that a "honeycomb" will be on the outside of the bars.

Then I made my second (final) batch of Baritone soap.  Both traced nicely and set up just right.  I love it when all goes smoothly.

Productive Weekend

I took full advantage of the weekend and time at the house to really produce a lot of soap.  Saturday I made some beer soap and another batch of Lead (floral) soap.  Sunday I made a men's soap with Leather fragrance oil, the third and final batch of Lead soap (used up all of the flowers), and then a Lavender Loofah set.  I'm running out of space for storage so i did buy another rack of drawers from Michael's.  I have soap everywhere right now.  Great fun.  The house smells wonderful!

Four More Batches of Soap Today!

Whew!  Another productive day.

1.  Bass Soap (for the Sweet Adeline convention)
2.  Trogenator Soap (to keep my inventory ready for Troegs)
3.  Epiphany Soap (Frankincense & Myrrh)
4.  Castile Soap (another batch of the Baby Soap but scented with Lavender)

In between, I baked two pans of brownies for the Red Rose Chorus' Guest Night tonight.  It's been a full day.

Awesome Day for Willow Creek Soaps

This has been a great day for soap-making!  Now that the new shrink wrap equipment has arrived, Tom made new label templates for me and he's my go-to guy for all stuff printed.  The new labels with the shrink wrap will make my soaps even better for craft fairs.  So I boxed up the many soaps that have been cut and are waiting to harden and then made four more kinds of soap.

1.  Lead Soap (I already made Baritone and Tenor for the Sweet Adeline convention)
2.  Yuengling Soap (This is for the Arts Barn)
3.  Troegs HopBack Shampoo Bars (a new product for Troegs to try)
4.  Baby Soap (Something new for my regular customers!)

The Baby Soap is 92% Olive Oil and 8% Castor Oil (for lather) and is superfatted by 8%.  I have a gentle baby fresh fragrance blend to make this Castile soap something that people are going to like!

A Great Compliment

I received an email from a guy in the Baltimore area who stumbled upon this blog but also purchased one of my soaps during a visit to the Troegs Brewery.  He noticed that I make Nugget Nectar Soap and really wanted some but didn't want to drive all the way to Hershey for it.  My friends at Troegs were very happy to ship him some even though it's not listed in their online store.  How cool is that?!

Anyway, he liked the information I've been posting about oils and what they do along with my recipes.  They aren't a secret.  If you want more information about my soaps, please ask.