Marketing Strategy Part 2: Lavender Rave

One of the many great things about making soap is you can easily change what you call it and how you market it.

This started out as Lavender Mosh Pit, but when I realized mosh pits are as much a part of the past as answering machines and record stores, I updated it.

I'm not sure this actually reflects what a rave is like. I've never been to one. I'm much too old.

Made with olive oil pomace infused with lavender/alkanet/charcoal, coconut oil, palm kernel oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, lard and castor oil.

Fragrance: lavender, lemongrass, ho wood, may chang, sage and rosemary.

Marketing Strategy Part 1: Lavender Mosh Pit

I had this whole punk rock thing in mind when I made this batch.

It's a collage—like the posters we made back in the 80's with letters cut out of magazines and and photos of Ronald Reagan. I used all the bits and pieces of every lavender-based soap I had hanging around my kitchen (including an entire batch of lavender castile soap that was going to become this year's Be My Guest Soap, but I just never got around to doing it).

The fragrance blend (which includes rosemary, may chang, sage, lemongrass and ho wood) is more energizing than relaxing, almost aggressive. It definitely ain't Yardley's.

I cut it, cured it, labeled it using an adorable punk rock font (no more cutting letters out of magazines!), wrapped it in a ripped up black t-shirt fastened with safety pins, spent an entire afternoon trying to get the right photo (it's not a very photogenic soap)—then realized the people buying this soap will most likely not be old punk rockers such as myself. Kids today don't know a mosh pit from a Ramones picture disc. They weren't even born yet when Sid killed Nancy.

I learned a valuable lesson from my Mommie Dearest soap: sometimes you can be too clever and snarky. It results in dismal failure.

So the punk rock theme got trashed. Eighty-sixed. The soap was renamed for this generation, relabeled using a hip and trendy font and rewrapped in black vinyl (a tablecloth from the 99 cent store) and fastened with lavender rubber bands.

And so I present to you and everyone under forty: Lavender Rave

Chocolate, Almond and Raspberry




The little pink embeds are rejects from my (Not) Seeing Red experiment.



 

This batch is completely out of character for me as I'm not a big fan of candy-smelling soap, but I'm not just making soap for my own selfish self anymore. And I've had a few people tell me they love sweet scents.

I received a free sample of Holiday Candy fragrance oil with my order from Brambleberry, so I figured I'd use it to make soap for those with a sweet tooth in the shower.

I blended the sample (which smells like those hard candies shaped like raspberries with the gooey centers that your grandmother had at Christmas time) with some almond fragrance oil. The almond mellowed out the sweetness factor and made it a bit more sophisticated.

The soap itself is made with a big dose of cocoa butter and colored with cocoa powder. That added to the overall scent as well, made it more complex and smoother. It's still not my cup of tea for a bar of soap, but it is heavenly.

They all got packaged in pink fabric. Cute, huh?





The bathing beauty in the background is from a signed paint-by-numbers painting

I found on the street. Who could throw out art like this?





Shaken and Stirred: Packaged

I wanted to show off the packaging for Shaken and Stirred. Well, not the actual packaging which is just a cello bag cut in half and some incredibly expensive yarn given to me by my friend, Poppy to try my hand at felting soap (a dismal failure). It's the label that I'm so pleased with.

I love art deco fonts. I love art deco anything. Who doesn't? 

Basil, Lime and Coconut Milk








Originally, I was going to name this soap '9th Avenue' because it has all the ingredients for Thai food (coconut milk and oil, basil, lemongrass, lime, ginger) and there are a ton of Thai restaurants on 9th in Hell's Kitchen—too many really—on some blocks there're four of them. But in light of this soap's appearance, I've nixed the snarkiness and am being straightforward.

It's a rebatch of soap I'd made using some of that beeswax I'd rendered last year. I made balls with some of the overly rustic honey/beeswax soap then rolled them in powdered lime basil before embedding them. The effect just didn't work. Hideous, actually. The embeds had a regulated look to them—although the embeds I made with the same soap looked great in Plan Bee. Go figure.

So everything got shredded and melted down in some coconut milk. It's still not a pretty soap, but the coconut milk makes for a creamy lather. And it smells great. And makes your skin feel fab.

To make up for the soap's humble appearance, I package it using fabric samples that a decorating store on the Upper Eastside was tossing out. My mother was a decorator when I was growing up and she had tons of swatch books that would get tossed when the fabric was discontinued. She gave a lot of them to a neighbor who pieced the swatches into quilts and cushions. My Barbie doll house also had its fair share of brocade draperies.






The look is a little clunky (so were my Barbie's drapes), but no glue or sewing was involved and it's kind of sustainable.

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Marketing Failure





Well, Mommie Dearest took off like a lead zeppelin. I sold two bars of it.

It might be a generational thing. A few younger people (even gay men!) didn't get that the wire coat hanger refers to the movie Mommie Dearest. Oh well. Even Apple has failures. It's still great soap.

And it's now had a make-over. Same bar, new name, new photo and new product description.

Presenting Bed of Roses:

A surprising mosaic of Arabian rose, lavender and fresh anise. Moroccan red clay and charcoal  to remove impurities. Cocoa butter to soften. And gorgeous, fluffy lather thanks to a generous dose of reduced red wine.

Hopefully, this will be more successful.

I'm still keeping a wrapped, coat hanger bar of Mommie Dearest in the soap box.  You never know…

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Heartwarming Holiday Soap 2012

For the past eight years, I've been writing a 'Heartwarming Holiday Story' and making a little booklet out of index cards for my A-list friends. Everyone else gets to read the stories online. The stories are never really heartwarming, but my friends are used to my cynical nature and tongue-in-cheek stance on the holiday season.

This year, some of the A-List will receive a bar of 'Heartwarming Holiday Soap' as well. I made two different kinds—one for omnivores that contains lard and one for my vegetarian and vegan friends.

Both have the same heartwarming blend of pine, ho wood, cedarwood, orange and clove essential oils.




For omnivores



Ingredients:

olive oil pomace infused with charcoal/spirulina

coconut oil

shea butter

palm kernel oil

lard

castor oil

poppy seeds

NYC tap water

   

The spirulina didn't come out as green as I wanted. I'm a bit disappointed in that.

And it was another attempt at swirls. I tossed some poppy seeds into charcoal soap batter. It's not bad, very subtle. I might try adding the exfoliator to a swirl again sometime.

 



For vegetarians


 

Ingredients:

olive oil pomace infused with mint and lemongrass

NYC tap water

melt and pour soap



I used olive oil infused with mint to get the color in the melt and pour and I really like the stained glass effect. In fact, I really love the way melt and pour looks in cold process soap. I just wish it wasn't such a pain to work with.

 

A bunch of the booklets

The booklets were easy. I've done a few of them now using Photoshop—not the best program for text, but I do it in high resolution (600 dpi) then reduce it to 300.

I'm planning on including similar booklets of my short stories with upcoming batches of soap in 2013. This is how making soap will tie into my writing (there it is—finally!).



Packaged and ready for giving



One thing I'm going have to work on going forward with the Bar and a Book (just came up with that…have to decide if I like it) concept is cutting each bar of soap so it's slightly larger (to allow for shrinkage during the cure time) than the booklet which is 4" x 2 ½". That way the 'packaging' will be tidier. Stay tuned for that.

Anyway, if you'd like to read the story, here it is. Beware—some people might find it offensive.

Heartwarming Holiday Story 2012


Hope you have a happy 2013!

Experiment with Booze #1: White Star




Extra special labels for these babies.

 
So there are in soap-making (and in life) 'Happy Accidents,' 'Screw Ups' and 'Screw Ups That Don't Really Matter.' White Star will be filed under the later.

Surprisingly, adding Champagne to lye wasn't the 'Screw Up' part—due to my vigilant research on soaping with alcohol.  I let the Champagne go flat (fizz will cause a volcano), heated it in a sauce pan to reduce it, then popped it into the freezer. The sugar in Champagne (or any booze) can make the lye mixture heat up too much, causing scary and smelly things to happen. Ya gotta keep everything cool.

Which I did. Even the oils. Heated them up just enough so the shea butter melted.

The 'Screw Up' part was the almond fragrance oil I added at trace. It made the soap seize then separate. It looked and smelled like I was making some sort of cookie dough.

I took the stick blender to the mess, got it straightened out then blobbed it into the mold where a layer of grated clear melt and pour soap lay waiting. The idea was the melt and pour was going be 'bubbles' on top of the soap.

After just a few minutes in the mold, the soap began to separate again, so I dumped the whole thing—layer of 'bubbles' and all back into the pot for another round of stick blending.

The result was 'bubbles' throughout the soap rather than a layer. A 'Screw Up That Doesn't Really Matter.' It's still beautiful soap. And the sugar from the Champagne makes the lather creamy, fluffy and so decadent.

Still bubbly looking, but not what I planned.

I walked away with two lessons learned:

1) I love making soap with booze and will be doing more soon (vodka martinis this summer!)

2) I don't like fragrance oils and will stick to essential oils that don't play tricks and misbehave.

So, cheers. And please lather responsibly.

Ingredients:

olive oil

coconut oil

shea butter

palm kernel oil

castor oil

Moët & Chandon White Star Champagne

almond fragrance oil

 

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries

Be My Guest Soap

Made these for my mom to give as Christmas gifts.

They're trimmings and scraps that I molded together while the soap was still soft. About a week later I'd put a hole in the center using a chopstick and string each bar on some jute. Once I'd gotten three bars on a line, I hung them in my closet to finish curing and hardening.

I love the idea that so many people I don't even know will be lathering up with my soap this year.

Somalian Rose and Sandalwood





This soap wasn't supposed to look like this at all.

It's made with olive oil infused with dried rose hips—which are said to be loaded with vitamin A and C, calcium and plant flavonoids.  Great stuff for your skin. And from what I read, would make a peach to mauve-ish soap.

The plan was for that with a charcoal swirl as contrast.

However, I screwed up by making a rose petal tea for the lye water, thus turning the soap brownie brown. And the fragrance oils I used accelerated the trace so there're blobs instead of swirls.

The fragrance is amazing though. I don't like straight rose (in this case Arabian rose). It smells too old lady to me, so I added Somalian rose, black sandalwood and ylang-ylang. The result is very exotic. Picture harems, silk pillows and men with thick mustaches.

It's lovely in the shower. Incredible (although brown) lather. Makes my skin feel soft and smooth. Like a rose petal.

I took a bunch of photos of the soap, but no matter how many rose petals I added or silver trays I placed it on, it still looks like a brownie.

Then I labeled it with an under layer of paper with roses on it and it did look a better--since you can barely see the saop.

Ingredients:

olive oil pomace infused with rosehips/charcoal

coconut oil

shea butter

palm kernel oil

lard

castor oil

powdered rosehips

NYC tap water infused with rose petals

Fragrance:

Somalian rose, Arabian rose, ylang ylang and black sandalwood fragrance oils

If you like this blog, check out my new one: The Haley Maxwell Soap Making Mysteries