Monday 28 January 2013

Lavender Dream Soap Cupcakes

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a good weekend. I put a new product in my shop over the weekend, and thought I'd do a blog on them. I love a good excuse for a bit of soap eye candy!

A lady I know asked me to make her some purple cupcakes to match her purple theme in her house. I didn't have a purple colourant at the time, and had to wait to get some stocks in, but she was very patient with me and after playing around with pink and blue colours, I managed to make a lovely purple for the soap frosting.

Handmade soap cupcake

Handmade cold process soap

Handmade soap cupcake with lavender

Handmade soap
It piped wonderfully well, and as I was hunting through my soap drawers to find my sprinkles, I realised some heather flowers might look really pretty. So I tried it on one cupcake first, (after a good sprinkling of glitter) and it looked so good, I did it to them all!

The above pictures are about a week after I made them, all in their packaging so you can all see how they come. I've added the product to my Folksy Shop - and because I got such good feedback from the lady who ordered them, and from everyone else who saw them, I'll be making them a permanent feature in my soap cupcake range!

So there you go folks!

Have a lovely week,

Naomi

Thursday 17 January 2013

Gotta love free business cards!

Hi everyone!

Just thought I'd do a quick blog about my new business cards that arrived today.

Business cards from Moo - front and back
Moo are a company who make business cards, labels, stickers and all sorts of lovely little signage things for your business. I've wanted some business cards for a while, but when I signed up to Folksy, I was offered 50 business cards for free via Moo. All I had to do was pay for postage! Couldn't say no to that one, haha.

I found the styles of the business card to choose from were fairly free-ranging and gave you lots of options. The only thing I found quite annoying was that I couldn't change text that was on the card. So all I have on there is my website, but I'm pretty sure people can work the rest out from there if they visit it. As well as this, there's a nice big 'F' on my card which promotes Folksy, but I guess they're technically paying for it!

I ordered them Sunday and I got a 'your order has been dispatched' email on Tuesday, and they arrived today (Thursday), which is pretty cool.

All in all, I'd buy from Moo again, and I've got a hunch that if I was a paying customer I'd be able to alter my card a bit more and add text i.e. my email etc. But for 50 cards for about £3 for postage, I think they're pretty good! And I had mine printed on "green" paper which means they're nice and environment friendly (never a bad thing) and recyclable :)

I think I'll be slipping them into orders for when people order things, so be on the lookout for them when you order something from my shop!

Have you ever ordered business cards before? If so, where did you get yours?

Hope you're looking forward to the weekend as much as I am!

Naomi

Saturday 12 January 2013

Soap Cupcakes & New Blog look!

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I've written a blog, I do apologise! It's not that I haven't wanted to, I've just been re-vamping my company a little bit. It's got a fresh new look courtesy of James who did a fantastic job listening to me and helping my brand look exactly the way I wanted it to. Thanks James!

December was quite a busy month for me, as I'm sure it was for all of you as well! One evening I made three batches of cupcakes one after the other. I went to bed pretty knackered I must say! But it was all worth it, because I've perfected my cupcake recipes now, and they look like this:

Lemon Sherbet Soap Cupcakes

Cold Process Soap Cupcakes

Soap Cupcake Closeup


My cupcakes are all made from scratch using the cold process soap method, and not with any nasty melt & pour soap bases. (blech!) I worked really hard to perfect the recipe and I think I've got it down now. It took me around 3 months of practising to get it right, and I finally got it in December. I also found some great jojoba wax sprinkles and cosmetic glitter to complete the look. So now they're ready for everyone, you can find them in my Folksy shop if any of you are interested!

 I wanted to make them because cupcakes are so fun to make anyway, but after a couple of days - they're gone! Cupcakes are such good eye candy as well, it's the kind of thing you want to eat, but don't want to at the same time. So these lovely soap cupcakes are a great way to have all the eye candy you want, and none of the calories! Plus, when you do come to use it, it'll make your hands super soft because I've added a big hunk of shea butter into the mix ;)

So there you have it! I promise to write more blogs on what I'm up to, and now everything is sorted brand wise, it'll be way easier.

Happy new year! (sorry it's so late!)

Naomi