Teaching

I had a telephone call late last week asking me to go to a local girls Grammar School to assist in a Design Technology project. The girls will research Scent Trail and work at designing a soap, plus packaging and point of sale that would fit comfortably in the existing range. There will be two visits involved, starting with this Thursday and culminating with a soap-making day in May. The middle visit is to see how the ideas are developing and commenting on them.

I am really looking forward to it. As any soapmaker knows, packaging is a nightmare. If you can find what you want, it is too expensive, or out of stock, or not quite suitable and if these students can come up with some lovely, innovative ideas, who am I to say "no."

The Silk Route colleciton is coming along nicely. Indigo arrived this week for use as a colour in one of the soaps, and a decicision has been reached for colour in the last one. Hopefully, before long the full collection will be available, and assuming that I can get hold of someone at the company which sells the bottles I want (and so far they have not replied to me) the bath oils will follow shortly.










 

My new favourite blend

I have been playing with essential oils again, and I have come up with what I think is a gorgeous blend which will make not only a lovely soap, but a fabulous bath oil.

I do not find blending terribly easy and the successful blends I have manage to create to date have tended to be happy accidents.  Take my Geranium blend for example. This is something created by throwing everything I had into the pot, because when I made my very first batch of soap, I had not considered the weight of essential oils. It worked and is probably my best seller.

I am planning a new range of products including bath oils, and I need four blends. These blends need to be absolutely fabulous and make the bather feel like a film star so I am not rushing. I have had two of them for a while, but the second two have been somewhat elusive.

But.....drum roll please, I think that the third blend is in the bag with the fourth needing a slight tweak. This third blend, is actually the first in the series (not saying more than that at the moment) and I think it is gorgeous.

I have created a blend containing May Chang and Violet Leaf. May Chang is a lovely, light, lemon-sherbet fragrance which seems to float like gossamer on a breeze. Violet Leaf on the other hand, has its feet anchored firmly in the ground. Smelling it neat in the bottle, it is a little overwhelming and you miss its subtleties. It has an intense, dry, green note with, somewhere in the background, a fleeting tiny hint of violet. Use it in this blend and the green notes take a back seat, and you get nodding heads of violets combining beautifully with the soft lemon of the May Chang.

This has quickly become my favourite blend and I can't wait to send it out into the world. Watch this space!



 

New Soap Style

I have wanted to try a different style of soap, using only natural colours. This week, I have made two different layered soaps. The first one is a rosey blend of essential oils and the top layer is coloured with pink clay.

The second one has a blend of essential oils including Ylang Ylang, Lavender and Orange with the addition of some more smokey oils to add depth and mystery. The top layer is coloured with turmeric. The line on both is made with cocoa.

 

 

I really like the way these have turned out and will be two of a new range of four soaps made with Babassu and Silk forming the backbone of a new product range, including bath oils. I have to decide what to use as colour in the other two soaps and then off they go into the world - once I have decided on packaging. 

 

Christmas is coming!

It is the run-up to Christmas and the mad fair season. I have not done a large number of fairs this year but have three in pretty quick succession.

The fair last weekend was a great success with a decent footfall and people prepared to part with their cash. At the end of this month I have another fair at the same venue, and then one a little more local. With luck there will be plenty of people on the look out for Christmas presents.

Next year, I am determined that I will find more shops to take my products and try to grow the business. I am in the process of sorting out some packaging which will stand up to the rigours of being handled by customers. There is a potential plan in the pipeline which I am not going to reveal at the moment.

Presentation is incredibly important, and is what sells a product in the first instance. What brings customers back is the quality of the item they have bought, and whether it does the job. I think that some people underestimate the importance of packaging because it gets thrown away, but not only does it serve a purpose, it can catch the eye. If you have two products side by side on a shelf which do you go for, the one in the ugly packaging? I think not.

And on that note, I am off to redesign some lables.

Cardamom Facial Scrub

We are proud to announce the launch of the Scent Trail Cardamom Face Scrub.

This gorgeous, oil-based exfoliator leaves the skin feeling cleansed, soft and silky. The ground Cardamom gently gets rid of dead skin cells while the addition of glycerine means that it won't dry your skin.

This is the perfect product for anyone who used the oil cleansing method and for those who don't.

Playing with Scents Part II

I wrote a few days ago about playing with some of the less common essential oils, so I thought I should also write about the results.

I had an idea in mind of the kind of scent I was looking for. Of course, I ended up with something rather different, but which I think might be perfect.

What I was looking for, was something that was slightly reminiscent of the kind of warm, slightly dusty scent you get in old book shops, but I  was also looking for something light like gossamer floating on the breeze. Determined to use Violet Leaf for its green note and hint of violet fragrance which is so lovely and which I knew would give depth to the blend, I needed to find something which was capable of coping with its tenacity. Violet Leaf is a kind of slap you in the face fragrance that is not of the shrinking variety!

I had a choice of other oils to use, including Cistus and Spikenard which do have a smokiness, but no matter how hard I tried using the tiniest amount of one of these with the Violet Leaf was just too much.

I ended up with two potential candidates, and have been sniffing them off and on for the last few days. Having allowed them to mature a little, I have opted for a blend with Violet Leaf and May Chang. The lightness of the May Chang hovers above the base of green, dry Violet Leaf and it makes for a rather nice blend if I do say so.

I have one more blend to sort out, and I can launch this new range of soaps on the poor unsuspecting public, so watch out. You have been warned.

Playing with Scent

I have had a few of the more interesting essential oils for a while but have not got around to playing with them. Tonight, I bit the bullet and started to work on a blend for a new soap range. I want something that has a slightly dusty/smokey base with a lightness at the top and as this is supposed to be representative of a particular place (to be revealed at a later date) I wanted to add a touch of Violet Leaf.

I love Violet Leaf, but fully acknowledge that it is not to everyone's taste. It can be completely overpowering, and luckily, because it is horribly expensive, you don't need much. I have used the aforesaid Violet Leaf, May Chang, Pettigrain and Vetivert, and have ended up with a rather heady blend which needs to be lightened up a little. At the moment, the Violet Leaf reaches out and slaps you around the face. Next, you get a hit of Vetivert with its green, smokey yet sweet undertones. Then, very faintly you smell the May Chang which is a beautiful, soft lemon sherbety kind of fragrance 
which I think I need increase. I may try a couple of slightly different blends tomorrow, one with just Vetivert and one with just Violet Leaf. It may be that the two together are just a bit much. I think that this will be a long road, but the fun is in the trying!

Once this blend has been finalised, I have one more which I need to work on and then the new soap range can be launched. They will have silk and babassu oil in and will be the height of affordable luxury.