Melt & Pour Soap Making: More Halloween Soap Ideas

This weekend was devoted to making fun soaps for my grandkids. I've already shared the bloody, slimy brain soap in a previous post (tutorial is upcoming). Here are 3 more soaps designs that I played with and that the grandkids loved. The bendable skeleton soap is very easy to make and ideal for younger kids ages 4-7 (with adult supervision, of course!). They especially like applying the blood colored soap. It can be done in about 30 minutes which is geat since kid's attention span is so short lived.



The two soaps pictured below are more time consuming due to the multiple colors used in the skull. You can definitely shorten the time involved by pouring the skull in one color. I hope to have the FREE tutorials for these soaps up this week. All of the supplies used can be purchased at GoPlanetEarth.com. You can find countless other soap making tutorials in the PROJECTS section of our web site.

Melt & Pour Soap Making: Bloody, Slimy Brain Soap

I made this soap for my six year old grandson who is staying this weekend for an overnighter. We are decorating for Halloween today (yes, I know it's early but the grandkids were begging to get out all the Halloween stuff) and I thought this soap would add to the fun and grab his attention in the shower. Unfortunately, I only made one and my 4 year old granddaughter was quite distraught that she didn't have one too. She may be a princess, but when it comes to things like bloody, slimy brain soap... she's all over it.

Inside the brain soap is a hidden treat: kid-safe slime. The great part about the slime is that it will dissolve in the bath or shower as the soap is used. However, you don't know there is slime buried in the middle of the brain until you start to use the soap. I'll have a project posted this week on how to make this bloody, slim delight. I'm letting my grandson use the soap this weekend so I'll also keep you abreast of his opinion. As you know, if you want an honest opinion, ask a kid!

The mold is available from GoPlanetEarth. It's found here.

Melt & Pour Soap Making: Jeweled Loaf Soap Tutorial Now Online

Just as promised GoPlanetEarth's newest tutorial "How to Make a Jewel Tone Soap Loaf" is available for viewing. As with all of our video tutorials... it's FREE.

Hope you enjoy!

 

Fun Halloween Molds... look for projects soon!

Three new Halloween molds have been added to GoPlanetEarth's economy mold line up. Look for soaping projects that show you how to use these molds for fun soaps.

Brains.... what kid wouldn't find this to be a fun soap?

And of course, a few bloody eyeballs are a must!

Melt & Pour: Jewel Tone Loaf Soap

Ooh La La! Look what's coming soon. A new tutorial on making these majestic jeweltone soap slices using the Mold Market sqaure loaf mold. Big chunks of jewel tone colored soap dusted with 24 kt. gold mica and covered with a clear soap base. These make lovely holiday soaps. We've only tapped the tip of the soap making iceburg when it comes to jewel tone color combinations.

The new tutorial will be out soon and gives step-by-step instructions for making these soaps. Think jade, gold, ruby... soaps fit for the magi.

Melt and Pour Soap Making: Autumn Roll-Ups Tutorial

The Autumn Roll-Up soap tutorial is now online. You can purchase the full printed melt and pour tutorial at GoPlanetEarth.com or watch the FREE video tutorial below!

There are countless color and cutout options for this type of soap. Red and green for Christmas, red and pink for Valentines day, or green and white for St. Patrick's day. So get busy, get creative, and have fun while you're doing it.

Closing for the Afternoon: Employee's Father Passed this AM

One of my long-time employees, Missy, lost her Father this morning. He was diagnosed with acute leukemia last week and died early this morning from complications. It was very unexpected and our entire staff is in a state of shock.

For this reason, we are closing up shop early today (12 noon) to be with Missy and to offer help in anyway we can. We will also be closed one day next to allow staff to attend funeral services. Thank you for your understanding as order processing may be delayed by one day.

Next Monday, it will be a year since I lost my Dad to cancer. Just a reminder that life is so short. Follow your dreams as you never know what tomorrow holds.

Denise Marks

A Cool Packaging Option for our Sushi Soap Rolls

Every Sunday my husband and I grocery shop at a local market. It's always been a tradition to purchase freshly made sushi from the deli counter for Sunday brunch. There's nothing better than fresh tuna sushi with a glass of Sake. This week the girls at the deli counter were kind enough to give me a couple of bento boxes so I could display our newest soap... Sushi Soap Log.

As you can see, once the sushi soap slices are wrapped and placed in the container (along with some bento grass), they look incredibly life-like. Almost good enough to eat. I'm not so sure GoPlanetEarth will be offering these Asian style bento boxes, but they are readily available from local markets and Asian restaurants. My guess is that local stores and restaurants would be willing to sell you a few of these trays along with the bento grass. If not, there are plenty of online stores that sell these types of boxes.

Be sure to check out our sushi soap log tutorial here.

Melt & Pour Soaps: Autumn / Halloween Roll-Ups

GoPlanetEarth's newest soaping project will be posted soon: Autumn Roll Up soaps. Just in time for the Halloween and Fall season. We used pumpkin orange and black oxide to colors the roll-ups picutred; but, you can make them in a host of other complementary colors. Consider red and green for Christmas or red and white for Valentine's Day. Get creative by using different cut out shapes. We used round cutters, but there's plenty of other options such as hearts, Christmas trees, candy canes... you get the idea.

Watch for GoPlanet's upcoming tutorial on how to make these soaps. The soaps pictured were scented with Autumn Woods, but other Fall fragrances such as A Roll in the Hay, Harvest Moon, Apple Autumn, Pumpkin and Harvest Spice are sure to be a hit. All of these soap scents can be purchased from GoPlanetEarth.com.

New Tutorial Web Site is Launched

It's been in the works for some time now, but our new soap making tutorial web site launched today. There are still a few projects to upload and many more new projects to be added. However, we wanted to get the site up and running in time for the holiday & Fall craft season.

This new site is where you will find all kinds of melt and pour soap making projects, have your questions answered, and find helpful information and resources about soap making. We welcome your input and soap project submissions. There is a "Submit Project" link where you can send us your soap making successes (and failures).

All of the video learning tutorials are offered free of charge with a minimal charge for printed tutorials.

I hope you will take time to check out the new site and let us know what you think. LearnSoapMaking.com

Beyond Soap: My Take on Lawn Art

Remember lawn ornaments made from cut-out wooden shapes? My grandparents we're big on these types of lawn ornaments. I've never been a fan and personally think you should immediately remove any that are currently perched in your lawn. That's not to say I don't like yard art. My hubby and I have our own take on lawn art (pictured above). Our metal wine lady was a display nabbed from a local wine store. She is stately perched amidst flowers ready to pour arriving guests a glass of wine. Note her cool rhinestone earring.

If you have the above cut-outs in your lawn, you should remove immediately!

We are adding a new piece of yard art. The wine butler below is being prepped for installation by the front door. He will hold a chalkboard menu that we can use to write personalized messages to arriving guests.

Version 2 of Sushi Soap Log a Success!

I was so delighted with how version 2 of the Sushi Soap Log project played out. I was a bit apprehensive on how well the shredded soap would hold together when the soap log was sliced, but it turned out just fine. The upcoming tutorial will provide some helpful pointers based on issues we encountered while making the soap. We'll be sharing the online tutorial with you soon.

I'm hoping to show you creative packaging for this soap. Still working out the details. I'll post once I have all my ducks in a row. In the meantime, enjoy your Sunday! Im off to that wedding shower that I posted about here.

Salty Watermelon Soap Slices...yummm!

One of our latest melt and pour soaping projects is a salty watermelon log scented with GoPlanet's watermelon taffy fragrance. The tutorial will be online soon. The soap log was made using Mold Market mold #142 rounded loaf mold. Our finished log yielded 11 watermelon slices in generous 1-inch thick cuts. Each slice averages 4 ounces.

If you want to get even more creative, you can add strips of black soap to imitate black watermelon seeds. We opted for a salty version this go around. The soaps have the look of jumbo sour watermelon candy; the kind I use to buy as a kid in days gone by.

The Mold Market loaf mold used is pictured above and available at GoPlanetEarth.com.

Beyond Soap: Wrapping a Shower Gift (Cheaply!)

I'm going to a wedding shower this weekend and have a number of packages to wrap for the event. Since I won't have time to shop for gift wrap (nor do I want to spend the money on gift wrap), I began brain-storming on ways I could wrap a gift so that it had a somewhat upscale organic look without spending $$. I started scavenging things available around my house and in the warehouse. OK, let me just put it out there... I was looking for FREE stuff.

This is what I came up with. I snagged some sheets of the brown kraft paper that we have on rolls in the warehouse. I used this to wrap the gift boxes. To add some color and jazz it up a bit, I overwrapped the kraft paper using some printed cellophane rolls that I had around the house. The design I used happen to be a spiral print.

Hmmm... what to do about a bow? I wanted something that would fit the natural theme of the wrap. AH, hah! How about cutting and curling strips of the brown kraft paper. Perfect! I curled 6-8 strips and then stapled them together. I grabbed a hank of raffia from the warehouse on my way out the door. It would be ideal for dressing up the kraft paper and would lend itself to the "earthy" feel I was going for.

Exacta-mo! It worked. A few strands of raffia centered on top of the curled kraft strips was just the ticket.

Oh dear, what to do about a card. I hadn't even given this a thought. No time to run out and buy one. What could I possibly do in Publisher? I know! Some fun quotes about marriage in various fonts and colors. Yes! That will work. I printed out the quotes on white cardstock then added a second page with a personalized greeting . Some natural raffia threaded through a couple of hold punches and I was good to go. The card pages were intact.

The final touch was a strip of brown kraft paper around the outside of the card. It was held in place by a clear 4 x 2 inch label printed with the bride and groom's names and a quote from their wedding invitation. Since I had to print a sheet of 10 labels, I used the remainder of the labels to help hold the raffia ribbon and kraft strips in place on the wrapped packages.

Part 2 of How to Make a Sushi Soap Log

Okee-dokee, the second part of the sushi soap log tutorial is complete. We are starting work on a Version 2 of this soap making tutorial using a different technique. It will be an interesting trial and error learning curve for our staff. If it's a flop, we'll let you know. And, yes, we do have project ideas that are a bust and tend to share the less desirable results. We wouldn't want you to think we are perfect!

It's Friday and I'm smiling. Enjoy the weekend.

Part One of Melt & Pour Sushi Soap Log

Part One of the Sushi Soap Log tutorial is now live. You can view it below. Hope to have Part Two online within the next few days. Enjoy! Email with any questions.

New Soap Making Tutorial...Coming Soon

It can't possibly be August. Summer is flying by and it's been busy, busy, busy around here. We're continuing work on a new web site that we hope to launch early Fall and there are a number of new mold designs in the works. With all this background activity, I've had little extra time to work on special projects. However, here is a sneak peek of a new tutorial on making sushi soap rolls. The tutorial will be released later this month and features two versions that demonstrate different techniques. I've pictured Version 1 in this post.

GoPlanet previously released a tutorial showing how to make a soap sushi roll using actual nori seaweed and included skin nuturing items such as adzuki beans, ground oats, and soy protein. These newest tutorials present a different take on the same themed soap.

The prep work for this project was a bit time consuming but yielded 13 soaps within approximately 2 hours. Sounds like alot of time, but consider this.

• I made one sushi soap roll, but had prepped for two more rolls. I could have easily made additional rolls with minimal prep work.
  
  
• This was a new project and some of the time involved the OOPS factor.

Depending on your level of Melt & Pour soaping experience, I believe it's possible to make 39-40 soaps in about 2 hours. Not bad! My soaps weighed in at around 1.75 to 2 ounces per slice. I'll share more of the details and working notes once the tutorial is released.

Why PDF is Best for Sharing Files

PDF stands for Portable Document Format, a file format that originated in print publishing as a tool for proofing print jobs before sending them to the printer. Today, it has become the standard for sharing print-ready documents via the Internet.

The format was developed by Adobe and was originally available only to owners of the company's Acrobat software. During the mid-90s, Adobe began distributing Acrobat Reader software, a free tool for viewing PDF files – making it a popular choice for authors, publishers, and designers who wanted to get around the formatting limitations of HTML. PDF is now accepted as an open standard, and is widely supported by other software vendors.

Several characteristics of PDF make it a great choice for sharing or publishing documents over the Internet.

• Ability to retain formatting. PDF allows the original presentation and formatting of any document to remain exactly as its original author intended it to look, including images, fonts, and layout. This is a distinct advantage over other formats such as Microsoft Office documents or HTML, which can change the document’s appearance according to the software and fonts installed on the computer used to view the document.
  Security. With PDF documents, you have full control over users' ability to open, print, copy, modify, or share documents. You can selectively enable or disable these actions for each document according to your preferences.
  


• Easy to create. Because PDF has become an open standard, many software vendors support the format. You don’t necessarily need Adobe's Acrobat software to create PDF documents. Many plug-ins for Microsoft Office, print drivers, or online conversion services are available free or for a fee and make it easy and convenient to publish or export to the format.
  


• Compressible. PDF file sizes can be shrunk to suit the needs of target users. PDF documents can be packaged and compressed while retaining the original quality, or can be down-sampled and compressed to dramatically reduce file size, making it quick to download over the web.
  


• Powerful and flexible. You can add interactive elements including form fields, hyperlinks, electronic signatures, and multimedia such as sounds and videos to your PDF documents. Although these features are also available with other formats, they are not as easy to package and share as PDF.
  

You may want to consider switching to PDF when you want to share or publish documents over the Internet. There are a number of free programs online that allow you to do this without the need of purchasing software. Loop PDF is one that I like and I have found it be one of the simplest PDF conversion tools out there. You have to create an account to use it, but after you do, the free tool lets you add PDFs from your computer or URLs, and combine them into a single document. You can also convert other file types into PDFs. Loop PDF easily converted files in just a few seconds for me.

Once you've converted your file, you can then download, save or publish. A quick, handy application for any growing business. Best of all, it's FREE.

Easy Eco-Wrap for Bars of Soap

I'm always scouting out new eco-friendly packaging for bars of soap. I love the simplistic packaging of this Argan offered by Capriflavors.com. To me, the packaging alone lends creditability to the eco-friendly soap beneath the wrapper.

GoPlanetearth.com sells corrugated wrap and natural raffia along with printable handmade papers. Use this packaging idea as inspiration to create your own earth-friendly soap wraps. Just remember, if working with melt and pour soaps, you will need to wrap your soaps first to ensure that they remain free from glycerin dew and to keep them from shrinking due to water evaporating from the soaps over time. Shrink wrap or stretch plastic wrap is best for wrapping melt and pour soap.

Not sure how to wrap your MP soaps. Watch a short tutorial at GoPlanetEarth.com.

Don’t Short-Sell Yourself on Success

I recently attended a golf outing with my husband’s 1973 high school friends (OK, I’m dating myself). While having breakfast in the club house, I listened as my husband engaged in conversation with a young woman servicing our table. Listening to the interaction, I was reminded how so many individuals are moving outside their career paths and finding new ways to market their skills.


Our 30ish aged waitress, Jamie, was very attentive to our needs, Her communicative skills were well beyond the average wait person. I remarked to my husband that she seemed out of place in her surroundings. This was not to indicate she wasn’t doing a great job or providing great service. The comment was prompted because she demonstrated a mindset that definitely added a sense of value to our dining experience. Her demeanor and verbal skills alone made us believe that the product and services being received were well worth the cost. In a nutshell, she sold herself and never once devalued her service.

My interest was piqued and I casually asked about her background. Jamie shared that she had recently relocated to Northern Michigan (there is not much in Northern Michigan except golfing and skiing) about a year ago from West Bloomfield Hills (sidebar: this is a very exclusive suburb of Metro-Detroit) with a law degree. She had been a State Mediator and decided it was not for her. She opted to forego a steady and secure income and translated her mediator skills into the hospitality world.

What I love about Jamie is that she never sold herself short. She never undervalued her abilities, capabilities, potential, and worth based on a change in her career strategy. She identified reasons why she could succeed; then started taking the necessary steps to reach her goal. She refused to short-sell herself even in the midst of a major career change.

What ways could you be short-selling yourself?

1) Are you short-selling yourself by reducing rates for customers that say they can’t afford the product or services your offer?

2) Do you volunteer time and expertise when you can’t really afford to?

3) Do you let the market rates limit you?

4) Are you moving in the directions of your dreams?

5) Are you selling yourself short by coming up with reasons why you can’t do what you want?

6) Are you short-selling your business because you want a steady income?

7) Do short-sell yourself by pricing yourself or products considerably lower than your competitors?

8) Are you promoting your product or service in such a way that customers are convinced what you provide is “worth” what they are paying for it?

When asking Jamie for a defining “ah-ha” moment between managing a restaurant and banquet facilities versus her law degree, she stated,

"As a State Mediator, I had to negotiate terms for some pretty difficult situations and deal with irate individuals. The restaurant business is no different. A meal or drink order, unruly guests, or event scheduling can go awry at any time and people get angry. It’s my job to negotiate a deal that works for all parties. "

You can sell yourself short and come up with reasons why you can’t do what you want. Or, you can identify reasons you can succeed. Then start today taking the necessary steps to reach your goal. Either way, you will meet your expectations. Don’t sell yourself short!