Back on the blog...

Well, the blog has been ignored for a while.  But, that doesn't mean Pepo Park has been at rest.
After the hectic holiday craft fair season, I took several naps.  We had a fabulous holiday sales season and even sold out of beer soap at Black Raven Brewing (restocked now...).

Once the naps were over, it was time for state sales tax.  Not fun, but it forced me to get things in order.
Then, stock taking, beer soap making, organizing the "factory" and quite a few Internet sales.

I also bought some new equipment and will unveil it here soon so that you can ooooh and aaaah.  :)

Today was the first fair of 2010.  It was a really fun one in downtown Kirkland at the Lake St. Bar & Grill.  Hosted by I Heart Indie Crafts, it was the first of many for Seattle's Eastside.  The turn out was good, the quality of the crafts was good and the mimosas we're cheap!

All-natural, hand crafted salve, lip balm, and bath salts:

Soaps await new owners:

Through the end of March, we're donating one bar of soap for every $15 you spend on Pepo Park products.  So, place your order today on our site.  The donated soap will be sent to Clean the World, a charity that "gets soap to people who really need it".  Sounds like a good cause to us!  At this time, a majority of the donations are going to Haiti.

Buyers learn about our sudsy offer:

We have plenty of fun stuff coming up, including the annual Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild Conference.
You can read all about it here!

Holiday update

It's been a while. Here's what's been happening with Pepo Park.
We're in 2 stores in Kirkland (Herban Wellness and uBRDO) and 1 brewery (Black Raven Brewing). At uBRDO and Black Raven, we're selling custom products: Lips Extreme lip balm and beer-inspired soaps, respectively.

We've been in 6 shows so far, with 2 to go. They've all been great.
There were 2 trunk/house shows, the first Holiday EtsyRAIN show, Shoreline Holiday Show, Phinney Ridge Winter Fair and the Kirkland Holiday show.
The EtsyRAIN show led to Pepo Park being carried in a 3rd store! Black Door Studio is carrying dog soap and salve. You can read all about it, and see a lovely photo, here.

What's left:
Dec. 11 - Christmas Brewtique, 5 pm, Naked City Taphouse
Dec. 19 - Holiday Sale on Queen Anne, 10-2
Check out the Pepo Park site for maps, etc.

If you can't make it to a show, you can order online. I can get stuff to you by Christmas if you order by Dec. 16.

Thanks to everyone for your support so far this holiday season. It's been a great one!

Three weeks down...

Three weeks down. In that time, I've made over 14 batches of soap. That is a lot of soap and storage is becoming an issue. :) But, the house smells so good!

Still to do to prep for the holiday sales:

• make lip balm
• make bath salts
• make bath bombs
• make salve
• package and label all of it

I think it's doable. And, it's fun!

While I manufacture products, Defined By Eye is working on our new Web site. It's a vast improvement over the current site - really attractive design. It should launch in early December. Stay in the know and get special offers by becoming our fan on Facebook.

Taste it!

People often smell my soap and say, "It smells good enough to eat." Others see it from a distance and wonder if it's cheese. I say, "Smells better, tastes worse." But, I've never tasted my own soap. I'm just going on my childhood experience(s) of having my mouth washed out with soap when I say it tastes worse.

This week, I was presented with a bar of my soap that had a wet film on it. There are many reasons this could happen and my mind jumped to the worst: Failed batch! Leaking essential oil! Leaking lye!!! Poison!!!!!

If I'd been calm, I would have rememberd that the rest of the batch is fine so this must have been a storage issue. But, I could easily test to see if it was essential oil. Just wipe off the wet film and smell it. It didn't smell. Phew. But, did that mean it was lye?!?!?!

In soapmaking, there is a thing called "the zap test". It is used to test if your soap is lye heavy or leaking lye. You touch your tongue to the soap and if you get a "zap" it's lye and that's bad. Ew. I had never tried this. I have never licked a battery, why would I voluntarily lick soap? But, on this day, I had to figure out what was going on, so I licked the film that was on my hand. Ew. Very soap. No lye. The film was plain water from the air, regular old condensation. The soap was being stored in a cold place and it's been raining a lot.

Phew! And, ew!!! Pass the gum!

I made chocolate soap once. It was really nice soap - very rich, made with cocoa butter, cocoa powder and chocolate. It looked like a brownie. Didn't taste like one, just ask my friend's son. :)

6 weeks!

Wow! Six weeks since my last post.
Six weeks can be a long time or a short time.
It's been a long time since my last post. But, it's only a short time until I'm in the middle of the holiday selling season!

The past six weeks:
Pepo Park finished up the summer season at the Juanita Farmer's Market on Oct. 9. It was a great summer. It only sort of rained once! Absolutely incredible. Thanks to everyone who made it down to Juanita Beach Park this year.
Pepo Park soap is now available in downtown Kirkland at Herban Wellness!
And, our Black Raven Brewing IPA soap was sold at the Enumclaw Oktoberfest by Sweet As Can Bee Honey. We really appreciate them taking our soap down to Enumclaw for us.

The upcoming six weeks:
Soaping and concocting in preparation for the 5 (!!!!) sales I'll be at this holiday season. In addition, we'll have orders from friends, our Etsy site, the Web site. I made a big list of everything that needs to be made and a schedule for getting it done. As always, Shawn is a big help. And, my mom - she's coming from Costa Rica to help with the sales.

Will you be visiting one of the shows? Is there an all-natural product you're interested in seeing us make? Or, a scent combo that you'd like to see? Leave a comment and let us know.

Fun time in Ballard!

Tonight, I drove over the lake on a weekday (something I try to avoid) to meet up with an fellow Team EtsyRain member, Kristen. Kristen is a potter and she's going to be making soap dishes for me.

The only thing is, neither of us is a soap dish designer. I had one that I'd found that I liked some things about, so we took it from there and came up with 5 prototypes that use various methods for keeping the soap dry and drained. It was really nice to play with some clay.

After the dishes dry, Kristen will do the first firing. Then, she'll glaze them and fire again. The prototype dishes will be ready for usability testing in mid-Sept.

Let me know what you'd like to see in your ideal soap dish. Or, what you don't like about your current soap dish.

The right tool for the job

I always want to kick myself after I buy the right tool for the job after struggling with the wrong tool. I was reminded of this tonight.

In soapmaking, you can use almost anything for a mold and almost any pot (not aluminum or tin) or spoon. You need a scale. None of those items needs to be fancy.

But, you might really benefit from a tool to open those 5 gallon buckets. I rejoiced for days when I got mine a few years ago. Long gone is the feeling that I might lose my fingernails entirely as I tried to pry the lid off my base oils. This site has a lot of them. I picked mine up at the local Cash & Carry (Smart & Final for some of you).

My latest "OMG!! Why didn't I get this before!?!? I should just kill myself for being an idiot and not buying this earlier but I won't because I love it!!!!" purchase is the For Crafts Sake QuickCut Soap Cutter. What an incredible time and frustration saver. Not to mention, nice even width bars!!

(photo from For Crafts Sake)

I love my soap cutter. I love my pail opener. I love my DishDrawer and my Tivo.

The soap cutter allowed me to cut 180 bars in 20-25% of the time it used to take giving me more time to watch the TiVo. :)

What is your favorite "right" tool? Talk about it in the Comments section.