June 7, 2000

OK. Begin the stress: I dropped off the application (and $80.00 check!) for my first craft show today.

I'm really nervous. I've never done a craft show of any kind before. I knew a few months after I started soapmaking that I wanted to have a tiny little soap business, nothing ambitious but something fun and to bring in some money to pay for the hobby, but I wanted to wait until I was comfortable with everything and knew I would be selling a good product. So I waited until now. Actually, I would probably still be waiting, if it wasn't for Mary Lou, who owns the coffee counter where I get coffee in the mornings, on my way in to work in the mornings -- she and I chatted and soap came up, and she knew the lady who does this particular craft show, so she brought me an application one day and encouraged me to go for it. So, here I am! An official craft show applicant.

Oh, I've got an official business address and telephone number now, as well. And I ordered business cards yesterday, which I'll have to go by this evening and check the proofs so they can get them printed. I wanted those plain black business cards that look classy, no graphics or other things busying them up. The good thing about "simple little classy cards" is that they're cheap! LOL. And the place where I'm buying them from lets me bring my own card stock, since I didn't like any of theirs. I bought a ream of card stock (250 sheets) for $14.00 at Office Depot, which is a really pretty recycled paper with colored speckles throughout. They had recycled stuff at the printer's but it was either plain white or expensive. :-)

So, speaking of business things... I finally put stuff up on my web site. www.eclipsebodyworks.com. Check out the soap page -- I took snapshots of a bunch of my soaps with our digital camcorder, then used a photo program on our iMac to make them smaller and interlaced gifs. I'm a little peeved because due to the flourescent lighting downstairs, the white wall background on all of the soaps turned blue! And the colors look sort of washed-out. I need to take photos with better lighting. Oh well, the photos themselves don't look bad, I mean I like how I arranged the soaps in the snapshots. It's just that everything is kinda blue. :-)

I'm having an interesting problem with my bath salts. They keep "freezing" in place -- once they hit the air, and I get them scented and colored, they harden. I'm not quite sure what's going on there, because I'm using anticlumping dendritic salts as well as ordinary salts. I am using baking soda and citric acid together for fizz, but the clumping occurs if I skip the citric acid and it's just salts and baking soda. And I mean the stuff gets *hard*. I was really annoyed because I mixed up a half gallon tub and a gallon tub of the salts base (half gallon had citric acid in it, the gallon didn't), and the next time I went to scoop salts out, both tubs were harder than cement. And I can't even dump the stuff out because the mouths of the tubs are less wide than the tub "bellies." I have two cement tubs. Hmm, maybe I can use them as anchors for my craft show tent's legs!! It's pretty crummy "lemonade" as "lemonade from lemons" goes, but at least it's not a complete waste. The idea of using my wonderful dead sea salts as a tent anchor just kind of irks me. Aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrgh. I don't know what the heck is causing this, though, because none of my salts are kept in perfectly airtight containers, stored individually, but they all stay fine. Until I get them together, and then they *poof*. I mean, I just don't understand what is causing different kinds of salts that are individually unreactive to this humidity to turn into SuperClumpSalt when they're mixed together. I guess it's a good experiment to play with, but the waste....sigh. They never *used* to do this. :-P I could just get a dehumidifier for the soap room, but that won't help the people who buy my salts and end up with a rock when they get it home. Need to solve this little mystery asap. 'Cuz, really, I love using my own bath salts, and this is a total bummer. LOL!

On a slightly happier note, I got in an order from Cari at Sunshine Soapworks yesterday. I ordered ten pounds of shea butter, which is truly awesome stuff. I also got a bunch of herbs to use, and some polymer crystals for air fresheners. And I got a box of packaging in from E.D. Luce, which has good prices and you can order in relatively small quantities (let's face it -- I just don't need two gross of 4 oz PET bottles!!). I bought little jars for facial masques (which are great; if you haven't tried some you definitely should -- just take powdered clay (green, pink, bentonite, kaolin, whatever works best for you!) and mix it with a LITTLE water to make a little slurry, and pat it over your face. Let it dry and change color, and at that point you can rinse off with warm water.), and little bottles for lotion and liquid soap and spritzer, and little tiny glass perfume bottles, which are kind of art-deco and cute.

I would tell you the UPS saga, but if I got started on that I'd be ranting for a couple pages. Suffice it to say that I HATE United Parcel Service. Those guys just can't get it together. Maybe someday I'll look back and laugh -- but for now, I think I'll just ship things USPS.