Cucumber [Canteloupe? Honeydew? Watermelon?]

Just finished pouring 18 tubes of Cucumber Melon lip balm (plus samplers) and our kitchen smells delicious! I was wondering though- what kind of melon in Cucumber Melon is it supposed to be? I've tasted ones that were distinctly Honeydewish- this one tastes slightly Watermelonish. It's good. (I wonder if it depends on the supplier you buy from...)

Now I've just got to make labels, photograph them, and get them on the site...

Blog Post Batch - Conditioner

Conditioner has been the most daunting craft yet for us- with soap, any tried-and-true recipe will give you great results, and you can easily learn the qualities of the oils and what they will do for you. Lotionmaking is a snap once you learn a few basic principles. And you can add as many things as you like to either without worrying too much about messing them up. But conditioner... we really learned how to formulate with conditioner! Each person's hair is so different, and needs different things according to their habits and location (a person who dyes their hair and lives in Florida will need a very different conditioner from someone who lives in New York and doesn't dye, etc.) and even the season.

(Aside: It really surprises me that there is such a huge market for high-quality personalized perfumes, but nothing of the kind for conditioner! I guess it's because with conditioner, it takes a couple of tries to get the formula just right. And in this world where people have little time for experimenting with something over and over, it is all too easy to lose a customer over something not working out the first try. Sad!)

That said, I would definitely recommend making your own conditioner. When you buy supplies in a larger quantity you end up with bottles of shampoo that cost a fraction of store-bought, even if it takes a bit of "that batch was nothing like I though it would be, back to the drawing board" experimentation expense up-front to get there. You'll save money in the long run, and better still, you will know exactly what you're using down to the last ingredient.

Here is a collection of Susan Barclay-Nichols' Point of Interest blog posts that helped demystify the process and get us started- it took us three tries to get a recipe that wowed us, but I am happy to report that we won't be buying conditioner from the store ever again. 

Conditioner: What's That Then?
Let's Make Conditioner!
A simple beginning recipe
What's the difference on my hair between BTMS-25 and BTMS-50? 
You made conditioner! Bragging and questions! (newbie success stories)

Biggest surprise of the process: I found that it's easy to say "I have normal hair" but that's just what I thought before I made a conditioner for myself, formulated for normal (not greasy, not dry) hair, and ended up with haystack hair- I needed something really moisturizing, as it turned out! Never would have guessed!

Have fun experimenting!

Finally fixed the background...

...thanks to Cute and Cool! (found it at the old site, http://itkupilli-cutencool.blogspot.com/)

It was just one simple line of code after the address of my bg image:

...png"); background-position: center;

That easy! But it took me this long to find it! In any case, now the blog will be viewable on widescreen and squarish monitors without scrunching the background. :-)

Etsy reshuffle!

Spent today rearranging our Etsy page to sort our soaps not only by shape, but also by fragrance. Check it out! :-) Lip balms are coming soon, as I am now the proud owner of 300 tubes... I recently had the chance to compare two different types of labels, and will let you know what I thought of both, probably tomorrow.

The reshuffle got me thinking- has anyone out there noticed what works best for them as far as how they organize their Etsy listings or webpage? I'd love any ideas!

Facebook

We finally joined Facebook, so if that's your social network site of choice please stop by! :-)