Thank you, Rustic Escentuals!

Bought a huge lip balm tube order from lipbalmtubes.com (CLEAR OVAL TUBES coming soon to the shop, those of you who requested them!), then remembered that they are affiliated with Rustic Escentuals and added a note asking for a sample of their "Red Maple Leaf" fragrance with the lip balm tube order. (I received a sample with my last fragrance oil order and instantly regretted not getting more sight-unseen from the description- it smells amazing!) And, yay, they sent me another ounce sample! I know EXACTLY what I'm going to use the two ounces for, but more on that in a few weeks.

So, thank you to the lovely people at Rustic Escentuals/LipBalmTubes.com! (I'll be back for your Peanut Butter flavor oil, which I completely forgot to order with the lip balm tubes...)

Samples from Majestic Mountain Sage!

I received a note on twitter that MMS would be sending me a sample of the Lemon & Basil lip balm that Taylor made on April 29th and I was thrilled because I have always wanted to make a more 'savory' lip balm, but wasn't sure exactly where to start in terms of how much of each essential oil or sweetener to use. Their recipe is a great starting point!

This balm is yet another example that there are many different (and awesome) formulas for different occasions! The balm doesn't go on thick or sticky, so it's perfect for everyday use; smooth texture, very light but still moisturizing. I didn't expect to like the flavor of basil in a lip balm, to be honest- I tend to associate it with our Basil Aromatherapy sticks, I think. But I really liked it! Basil is a complex flavor- you taste a strong herbaceous flavor (not quite "Italian food", but close) first, but that quickly disappears and you taste the "fennel", "black licorice" notes. The last thing you taste is a very mild herbaceous note mingled with lemon. Very nice! I noticed that I reapplied a couple of times to catch the different 'notes' of the flavor- I like that! It shows what a complex blend you could create with a few different 'savory' essential oils. I agree with what Taylor said on the blog- if I made this blend, I'd make the lemon more of the 'main' flavor, with Basil the background flavor. (Ooh, I wonder what Orange would taste like with Basil?) It had the perfect amount of sweetener, too, since it was just used in the recipe as a flavor enhancer. I'll try to remember not to overdo it on the sweetener when I start experimenting. :-)

Thank you again to the lovely people at MMS for sending this sample! We have a really nice starting point to experiment with savory lip balms now!

The second item in the picture above is a lotion sample we received in a recent order. This is very moisturizing for a light lotion and doesn't go on greasy, so if you're looking for a light, ready-for-summer lotion base to fragrance, it's worth a try! I was surprised to find that I like the tropical-but-not-suntan-lotion-tropical Green Mango fragrance in the lotion, even though I didn't like the scent 'out of the bottle'. My boss here at Canfield Crafts loved the lotion and fragrance so much that she stole it and I haven't been able to try it since... ;-)

Blog feature!

A quick note to mention that one of our hanger swirled soaps was featured on Bath Alchemy Lab's Soap Blog - check out their post, all the hanger swirls are gorgeous!

Two new items today!

 

We've been making them successfully for a while now, but today we were able to finally list these amazing multipurpose sprays on Etsy! You can get either a 2oz or 4oz bottle, and you can choose from any fragrance oil we have in stock. See the listing for more details!

Cucumber & Aloe soap - we've had soap with this fragrance in the shop for a while, but in this batch we also added some other nice oils and extracts. You can preorder this soap now, and it will ship after its cure ends on March 19th. :-)

Two new soaps and more to come!

There are two new soaps in the shop- one cold process and one hot process. Take a look!

Carlton fragrance - "Clouds and Sky" hot process soap

 We recently got a request to make a special hot process soap fragranced with Carlton and this was the result! We wanted to make the soap look like a cloudy sky, and since the soap is hot process, the edges and top are a bit more "rustic" than cold process soap- we think it just adds to the 'big fluffy clouds" theme. ;-) Carlton smells like orchid, with notes of champagne, rain, and musk overtones. (It's not a heavily floral scent at all.)

"Celtic Waters" - Shea and Cocoa Butter soap

Celtic Waters has a knock-your-socks-off fragrance that smells almost exactly like a popular brand of soap (of course, we can't tell you which!). We blended it with another clean, soapy, cologne-like fragrance for a little variation- the difference in this fragrance and the original is that this blend smells more like clean water, moss, and verbena. It leans more toward being a "man soap", but the fragrance is so fresh that ladies are sure to love it as well!

We have more soap to add soon, so check back with us! :-)

Bee-Free Balms are officially in the shop!

We've been working on Beeswax free lip balms for a while now, and since we got a request recently to make some in two of our most popular flavors, we thought it was time to officially add them to the Etsy shop! They are perfect for anyone who does not like to use animal products or has an allergy to bee products.

We decided to make the balms with Soy Wax, as it is readily available and doesn't add any flavor to the balms. The only difference is that the texture of the balms is a bit different- they feel more noticeable when you're wearing them but it's not unpleasant. In fact, since it's now Winter it feels pleasant to feel that extra protection on your lips.

Here are the first two flavors that are officially in stock- but keep in mind that you can order any balm and send a note asking for the Bee-free version and we'll take care of the rest!

Earl Grey with a Slice
Pure Vanilla

New Chocolate Balm in the store!

Last year sometime I was given the task of making a Chocolate Orange lip balm- well, it's finally done and in the shop!

It took a while- first, because life kept getting in the way, and second, because we had thought "hey, let's try a different Chocolate balm formula!" After a long trial-and-error-but-mostly-error testing period we decided to put that on hold for a while and make a Dark Chocolate Orange using our regular formula. The pre-shop popularity of this flavor shows once more that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

We hope you'll try one of our Dark Chocolate Orange balms! (Remember, if you're interested in a bulk assortment of Minis, we do offer different discount levels. Send us a note anytime!)

Dark Chocolate Orange:
Clear tube - Black tube - Oval tube - Mini tube

A note on Minis

We got a note today and the person was wondering if we'll ever lower the price of the Minis from $.99... For various reasons, we can't offer our lowest price for individual Mini Aromatherapy or Lip Balm listings, but we offer bulk pricing at any time.

If you would like to place a bulk Mini order, please feel free to contact me. We do charge a single fee per custom listing of twenty cents to cover the fee Etsy charges us to create a listing, but the savings are definitely worth it. :-) We'll be sure to give you an update if the prices ever change for bulk batches of Minis.

Remember that you can also order Minis with custom labels! Contact us for details.

Want to win $10 worth of free Canfield Crafts products?

We thought it would be fun to host a simple guessing game to celebrate the end of Summer and the start of Autumn! Here's what you'll be guessing:

How many Minis (Lip Balm and Aromatherapy) did we ship from June 1- August 31, 2013?

Only one guess per person, please! Guess as high or as low as you like! We will only give you one small hint: Remember we're still a small business... if you guess in the thousands you'll be too high! 
 
Leave a comment here, send us an Etsy Conversation or a tweet, leave a message for us on Facebook, or send an e-mail with your guess. On October 1 we will look at all the guesses and find the closest one- if more than one person has the closest guess, we will take both names (or all three, etc) and choose randomly between them.

The winner will get to choose $10 of products from our Etsy shop!

** Update: Thank you to everyone who guessed on Etsy, Facebook, etc! A HUGE Congratulations to SW on Etsy for her winning guess! **

Etsyversary!

It's our shop's Etsy Anniversary! Save 10% on all orders for the next week (through 9.18.13) with this code: ETSYVERSARY - http://etsy.me/1eKQhCg

Better news than yesterday!

No fragrance oil tragedies today! ;-)

Wanted to mention that in the past few weeks we passed our 200th individual Etsy sale and our 150th person to favorite our Etsy shop- and today we reached the 50th "Like" on Facebook and the 8,000th blog visit. It's been an incredible year so far, full of challenges and rewarding experiences, and we hope the rest of the year will be just as good! (For all of you, as well!)

Oh, before I forget- be sure to stop by our facebook page in the first days of September to try your hand at our guessing game for a chance to win a few dollars worth of goodies from our Etsy shop!

See our products on OpenSky!

Help us open a shop by following us on OpenSky:
www.opensky.com/canfieldcrafts

Hope to see you there!

Today was awesome, but then... it wasn't.

Winding down my day at 4:15ish this afternoon and heard a weird noise in our garage, like somebody closing a window too hard. I wasn't too worried about it, and asked someone to check on it...

My three bins of fragrance oils had toppled- fortunately, from only about a foot off the ground, but still... The garage was already starting to smell like a jumble of fragrance oils and there was broken glass on the ground. (We've got old carpet on the garage floor so it's warm to walk out there.) In my shock I just imagined broken glass everywhere, all of our fragrances wasted- WOW, what an awful thought!

We took the bins, one by one, to the kitchen for cleanup and to assess the damage. Nobody was more relieved than me to find that only three bottles had actually broken. Sadly, they were brand new bottles, and they were three fragrances that absolutely do not go together- Herbal Essence, Cream Cheese Frosting, and Moonlight Pomegranate (all Bramble Berry, and amazing fragrances on their own!). I mean, if I had accidentally made some amazing, never-thought-of blend, I totally would have saved the oil. But no... Herbal musk cream cheese floral frosting spice. Not fun.

The cleanup was all uphill from there. We had to glove up, wash the oil off of each bottle with dish soap, carefully dry them, and we also gave each bottle a rubdown with Clorox cleanup to kill any leftover fragrance. Took. Hours. It's a very strange thing to think about, but I spent a lot of the time being very happy that the labels that many suppliers use are very high quality. Four of the five companies' labels held up under all of that really well, with very little peeling or running. (We spent most of the cleanup time rewriting the labels on the bottles of one supplier. Their products are top-quality, but it struck me as odd that you would not have an oil-resistant label on a bottle of fragrance oil. Maybe people smashing their bottles doesn't come up much.) Our Bramble Berry fragrance bottles' labels were some of the hardest hit by spilled fragrance oil, but they came through it not too worse for wear. On some of them, you can't even tell that they went through an oil dousing, soapy water and bleach spray. (Have I mentioned that I LOVE BB's waterproof label paper? I have. Several times.) It makes me glad we use the same tough paper for our products. It's a small thought, but it was reassuring.

Tomorrow I have to give our house the sniff test to see if I dripped fragrance oil anywhere and clean it up. If you think about it, we did spill a full 12 ounces of fragrance oil between our garage and the fragrance bins. Scary.

Today's additions - Lip balms galore!

Three new additions today- classic flavors Vanilla Mint, Raspberry Earl Grey, and Chocolate Raspberry are in the shop in Clear tubes, Black tubes, and Oval tubes! We've had several requests to make full tubes of these popular flavors, so we hope you'll check them out now that they're here.

Within the next week the long, long, long awaited new flavor will be here, in Minis and full tubes! We're excited about how well it turned out but... you'll have to wait a few more days to try it out! ;-)

PS- The addition of these three flavors in full tubes means that all of our lip balm flavors are now available in full tubes. Thanks to all who requested flavors!

Happy accident!

I had to make a change to one of the new lip balm flavors after I had poured them, so I had to de-tube them (not a word). I am glad I did! One of the balms had no base! I usually check that carefully but this time around I had missed one. :-( Whatever poor person had gotten that balm would have been sadly disappointed, twisting and twisting away! I had to empty it with a metal skewer and some help from the microwave (but not at the same time, for obvious reasons).

Now that I think of the subject, here are some things you can do with a lip balm tube when it's empty. (Best idea... ever? LED Flash light.) Please Reuse or Recycle your leftover tubes!