Thursday, January 28, 2010

Great Valentine's Day Crafting Ideas

Valentine's Day is quickly approaching, so I thought I would share some of my favourite Valentine's crafting ideas:


Folk Valentine Hearts from Craftbits.com

This is an inexpensive craft that can be finished in a short time. All it takes is some scraps of red, pink or heart patterned fabric and some buttons or other decorations. When you are finished, you have got a great heart decoration to place anywhere around the house.




Heart Candle Wreath from Better Homes and Gardens

What would Valentine's Day be without candles? This is a very simple project to dress up your pillar candles. With some pretty pink paper and some craft wire, your candles will set a romantic mood on Valentine's Day.




Heart-Shaped Soap from Martha Stewart

Another excellent crafting idea from Martha! Of course I had to include a heart-shaped soap recipe for Valentine's Day. This fantastic recipe creates wonderful gifts for your friends and family. As a note, the glycerin soap Martha refers to is melt and pour glycerin soap. Use clear or opaque to obtain a different effect.




I hope you enjoy these crafting projects and have a wonderful Valentine's Day!
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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Where Do I Buy Soap Making Ingredients?

Whether you are a seasoned soap maker or just starting out, I thought I would share some great websites and ideas about where to get your soaping ingredients.


First, do not go to Michael's. Michael's is great for a lot of things... a wonderful crafting store, but they are VERY expensive when it comes to soap making. A 2lb container of melt & pour soap is almost $13.00CA, but if you look around you will find more reasonable prices like $8.50 or $6.00. Michael's is fine if you want to just experiment with one or two melt & pour recipes, but not for a business supplier! Also, I find their soap making products to be few and of poorer quality.

Second, I always will recommend buying ingredients locally. If you buy online you will usually have to pay for shipping. This means that if you are planing to sell your soap you will need to incorporate the shipping cost into your product. This results in an inflated price passed onto the customer, or you don't make as big a profit on your product. If you are making cold process soap, one of your ingredients is lye. Now, if the lye is shipped across borders, for example from the U.S. to Canada, your package might have some trouble crossing the border because lye is a corrosive alkaline substance. The guys at the border might wonder what your doing shipping it across the border! Try to buy locally, and as for lye, you can find it at most hardware stores.

So, above I mentioned about the U.S.-Canada border. Yes, I am a proud Canadian soap maker! If you are too, you might already know about trying to find great Canadian soap making supply websites: There aren't very many and if there are, they're hiding. Buying from Canada should reduce your shipping costs and then you can advertise your soap as MADE IN CANADA! Ha ha! Here are some great Canadian soap maker websites:

Aquarius - Great products & excellent service
 http://www.aquariusaroma-soap.com/ 

Cranberry Lane - great all natural products
http://www.cranberrylane.com/

Lynden House
http://www.lyndenhouse.net/

New Directions Aromatics - Excellent for essential and fragrance oil
http://www.newdirectionsaromatics.ca/

Tub O'Soap - Excellent prices
http://www.tubosoap.com/merchant.ihtml

If you are not from Canada, here are some more great links where you can purchase high quality, inexpensive ingredients:

Bramble Berry - By far the best online soap making supplier I've come accross.
http://www.brambleberry.com/

The Soap Goat
- This is a great website with prices in U.S. dollars, but they have locations in Canada and the US.
http://www.thesoapgoat.com/

Wholesale Supplies Plus - Excellent pakaging options

http://www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com/

Sweet Cakes - Great source for fragrance oil
http://www.sweetcakes.com/

These are just some of the amazing online soap making suppliers out there. If you know of any other great soap making sites, I invite you to leave the link in the 'comments' section.  Thanks for reading!
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Monday, January 25, 2010

Chocolate Without the Guilt



I never thought I could have chocolate without it going straight to my thighs! Well, here is Scrub-A-Dub Soap's brand new scent: Dark Chocolate Peppermint.


This bar was made with real cocoa powder, believe it or not (heaps of cocoa butter helps too!). That's right! Cocoa powder acts as a rich chocolaty scent for your soap and also gives it a rich deep chocolate color. For a 2 lb batch of soap, I use approximately 3/4 of a cup of dutch processed cocoa powder. If you desire more of a 'milk chocolate' scent, I recommend adding a few teaspoons of vanilla essential oil. A boosted extract could be used in place of the essential oil here, as pure vanilla essential oil is quite expensive. If you are overtaken by a spontaneous spirit, try adding some finely ground cinnamon!

If you would like to purchase our Dark Chocolate Peppermint Soap, please visit our shop on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=39279034
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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Welcome

Hello world! Welcome to the brand new blog from Scrub-A-Dub Soap Co.


Scrub-A-Dub Soap Co. is a small Ontario based business providing soap and other fabulous bath products to our customers. Here, we will do our best to answer any questions you have about any type of craft, but of course our specialty is soap and the soap making process.

Please feel free to contact us at scrubadubsoap@gmail.com or leave a comment on our blog to ask questions or suggest topics. You can also find links to our store and official website in the 'Contact' section. Please forgive the early state of our blog, as some page formatting is still underway. Thanks and we hope you enjoy!
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