Hi! New member from NY

[esheh195]

Hello all,
Just stumbled onto the forum while researching and decided to become a member.
I'm relatively new to soaping. I made two batches early last year which I loved: both olive, shortening, castor and coconut oil based, one with orange e/o and the other with peppermint e/o with rose petal flakes. They came out pretty nice but that was as far as my soap making adventures went at the time.
We recently started a destination blog related to a specific area in Mexico and decided it would be nice to create soaps both for ourselves and hopefully for sale that had little inspirational touches from the region. So we just finished our first 3lb trial batch last week. Came out great and already decided to dive in head first and bang out some 5lb batches with little variations. Can't wait to interact with everyone here and hopefully learn some great pointers.
Eric

 

[Hazel]

Hello and welcome! I'm glad you're excited about soapmaking and you like the batch you've made. However, do you know how your soap and additives will hold up over time? It's not good business practice to jump into selling soap and find out that in a few months the fragrance may fade, additives may discolor or possibly cause issues or your soap may develop DOS. You don't want to get a bad reputation for selling poor quality soap. You'd be destroying your business before it even got started.

Here are some links to info on starting a business which you may find helpful.

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=16002
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=33144

 

[esheh195]

Thank you for the threads, Hazel, I'm going to get to reading them now. I'm sure there are other useful threads around here too so I'll try to remember to take my time and ensure that what I'm offering is in fact a good product.

The batch I just made was basic and I'm hoping since it only had a handful of natural ingredient, that it will end up being a pretty stable bar. I used the basic 3lb batch recipe for a 100% coconut oil soap, 33 oz of oil I think, with a lye discount that brought me to a 20% superfat.
The only additives in this particular batch were:
- 1 oz of essential oil, half lime and half lemongrass
- 3 tablespoons of moroccan clay powder to give half the batch an orangish color, though my swirling technique definitely will need more practice lol
- and for curiousities sake, I powdered up 2 teaspoons of copal incense resin (similar to frankencense I guess) and added it at trace to see if any hint of that smell would remain..that part doesn't really seem to be noticeable in the final product though.

I'm definitely going to hold up and wait the 4 weeks to see the final product and will be working on a similar basic batch, perhaps with a touch of avocado oil, tomorrow.
Thanks again for the advice though, it's greatly appreciated.