What are you most thankful for this holiday season?

Life can be cruel, and unforgiving but I have learned that out of every trial in life there is always something to be thankful for. One of my favorite sayings is...What the devil meant for bad, the Lord meant for good. This helps me to push through the hard times which I have had many this year.

1. My 16 year old son was robbed at gunpoint for his tablet while walking home from school. (Jan)
2. I lost my job (one week later)
3. I lost my baby and a tube just as I was embracing being pregnant. (Feb 13)
4. My husband lost his job. (One month later)
5. My husband finds work, but they don't have work.
6. Our car was stolen. (one months later)
7. Our uncle takes a downward spiral in his fight with cancer, with my husband being his only local next of kin. (a few weeks later)
8. My husband is declined job after job because he's deemed over qualified. (all the time)
9. Husband finds work making a fourth of his average pay.
10. Uncle passed and husband is unable to attend due the to new job.
11. Husband finds out he has to take a pay cut because the company really doesn't have a position for all the people they hired.


I can go on and on, and the year is not over yet. But through it all, we are still blessed. The bills are still paid, I still have my son, and I gave myself a job. We have grown stronger as a family unit and as a spiritual unit. Even after all we have been through it was by God's grace, and for that the Polk family is very thankful.



 So here I am enjoying my Thanksgiving Eve with my only surviving child.

Earthly Kisses cutting Frank and Mury Soap

I made this soap by request. I have learned with this profession sometimes you have to make things that doesn't necessarily strike me as wonderful. So I tried my best with this soap by making it super cute and fabulous to make up for the fact that I don't like the smell of Frankincense and Myrrh. This is just my personal opinion, someone else may love this scent, especially at Christmas time.



#handmade #soap  #buyhandmade   #artisan soap #shopsmallbusiness

Earthly Kisses Making Black Cherry Silk Soap

I had so much fun making this soap. I admit, I was a bit intimidated by the technique but now that I have done it, I'm in love. I have definitely found a passion in handmade soap making. I love it so much, I have totally neglected my first passion which was making body butters. I would have never thought I had this much creativity in me. I guess I got my fathers artistic genes after all.

The soap gremlins on attack!

 It's a beautiful day in the soap kitchen...

 a beautiful day for a soap....

 Would you be mine, could you be mine. 

I have always wanted to hand make soap, just like you...

 I've always wanted to swirly a do a soap, with you so.......

Hold up, hold up, that is not how it went down!

Somebody  call up Mr. Rodgers so he can come get his soap gremlins. While it was a beautiful day, it wasn't in my soap kitchen today. The soap gremlins were on full attack today, so I had to put my guards up. 

This is how it went down.

I have been working so hard trying to build up my soaps for the upcoming holiday shopping season. I have recently orders tons of fragrances to try out, in an effort to find that killer scent. Today I decided to try out a new fragrance called Cranberry Yuzu. From what I read, this fragrance doesn't have issues so I decided to soap it. 

Everything was going well. I was using one of my favorite vegan handmade soap recipes.  I love this recipe because I have found it to be very easy to work with. So I mixed in the clays and added my lye water, all was well. I was thinking I wanted to do a spoon swirl so I didn't batter to loose. So in with the fragrance and that's when the fun began. 

Working with handmade soap batter can be a bang against the wall if you don't know come back against the gremlins on attack. As you can see in this picture, my batter began to accelerate quickly. I had my batter all separated for mixing in my colors. Got those done and came back to my base color and my soap was nearly at a seize. 

I have heard of the soap gremlins on attack before when talking to other soapers. However, I had yet to experience them for myself, until today. The best thing to do in a situation like this is to remain calm. So I proceeded to mix my color as if the seize was not coming. 

I pulled out my sword (my stick blender) and gathered more ammo (water) and I began slaying the crap out those soap gremlins. The stick blender was working ok, but as soon as I stopped blending the batter would thicken up again. I was working with a water discount, so there was room for more without totally killing my soap. So in went about another tablespoon of water and back to stick blending. 

I the beat that soap right back into submission with just water and my stick blender. I was not about to let those gremlins get the upper hand over me. The interesting part was, the base color was the only part of the batter that gave be a problem. My other colors, while they were thick how I wanted, they were still workable. So in went the base color and the rest was a plop and swirl. 

As you can see I made a royal mess of my soaping area. I had soap flying everywhere trying to hurry it into the mold.

At the end of the day, I came out with a great soap. I can wait to cut it and show if off to the world. 

 

Happy Soaping!

Sqaure Up Market vs Miiduu Free Shopping Cart Comparison

Welcome to the headache of eCommerce. Since starting my business I have been beating my head against the wall searching for a free shopping cart option for my blog. When starting up a small business such as mine, I'm looking for the most cost effective option as possible. While there are many options available I decided to start with comparing Square Up Market and Miiduu Shopping Cart. Keep in mind that this comparison is against free options only.

1. Secure payment processing and fees

This can be compared two different ways depending on your angle here.  If you are looking for a more established company for your payment processing needs you may say that Miiduu wins this battle. Miiduu offers payment processing from Paypal to Western Union. There are many options but as your know even these well established options have there issues. This means your processing fees, as well as reciept of funds, may vary depending on which processor your choose to use.

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While Square Up is a new up and coming payment processor, when you consider the reviews of the vender community, Square may win this battle. I, myself, have been using the Register App for payment processing on the go, and have not experienced any problems in over three years. My payments taken via credit cards are deposited to my link bank account the next business day without fail. Accept credit card payments and run your business anywhere it takes you with Square Register. Process Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express, pay just 2.75% per swipe, and access your funds in 1-2 business days. No monthly fees, commitments, or surprises.

For the most part, I would say this is a tie.

2. Ease of listing products

 I have to say that Square Market wins this hands down. Not only is the website very user friendly, you can set up product listings on the go via the Register Mobile App. I found it only took a matter of a few seconds to set up a listing via the Register app seamless and simple. Listing can be set up complete with picture and pricing. No need to adjust photos, just post and go. You can then sale your items on the go as well using the swipe dongle on your mobile device. Bonus, you can list as many products as you like, no limitations. 

The only disadvantage of this option is you cannot enter complete descriptions, however you can immediately post the items to your cart. Even with this minor disadvantage I found the website simple and easy to enter product descriptions. The biggest disadvantage of Square is that they do not offer any SEO solutions with their cart. We'll get into that later.

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Miiduu, while still user friendly to a point, requires an extra step to complete your listing. First you need to adjust the size of your photos to under 2MB prior to uploading to the site. If you are not familiar with photo editing this may be a task just to get your product listed. Miiduu offers categories for your product, just as Square does, however they also offer sub-categories. However, I'm not sure how effective this can be seeing how you can only list 15 items for free. After which you will need to upgrade to a paid membership to list more items. This was a big no-no for me.

3. Appearance

There really is no comparison here. Miiduu offers several templates to choose from to create a shopping experience catered to your style and presentation.

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Square Market which does not give an option of a different template. While it does offer customization and that makes for a nice site, it does have a plain feel to it.

4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Again there is no comparison here. Miiduu does ofter some SEO editing, such as keywords and Google Analytics. However, more SEO options are available with a membership or with the installation of applications.

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Square Market which does not offer any SEO editing at all. I have emailed them in regards to the importance of these measure and was told they are working on this and hopes to implement it in the future.

5. Website Integration

Last but not least, how to apply all of this to your website. Square Market again makes this step so simple. Just copy the embed code and apply to your website. Your full shopping cart is then embedded to your site in one easy step. Your visitor can shop just like any other ecommerce site. Complete with shopping cart updating without leaving the sites page. You can see how it appears here on my blog.

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Miiduu does not have this option that I have found. The only embed codes I have been able to find is on the individual product. Which for me means I need to edit another page, even after setting everything up. Which could mean even more hours of setting up my site. Due to this, I have yet to test this method to see if this option is fully customer friendly. It can link up to your Facebook fan page by placing a shop tab on your Facebook page. However, once the item is clicked on, your customer will be redirected to your Miiduu store, so I cannot consider this much of a bonus.

And the winner is....

Overall, when you consider the set up time and ease of use for the customer, I have to say that Square Market wins for me. I need the most of my time for hand making my soaps and bath bombs. I don't have time to play around with shopping cart that will not draw any more traffic even with the little seo it offers. Also with my business being so mobile, Square kills two birds with one stone when I attend vender events. Square is proving to be the well rounded payment processor I hoped it would be.

If you know of other shopping cart options that is this easy to use?  Please let me know in the comments below.

No Lye is a Lie

Welcome to the new world of naturalism. There seems a to be a new aged movement of converting from chemical based products to natural organic handmade products. I myself have been making this transition. The sad part is, because of misinformation being given out over the internet, many are going about this the wrong way.

I started my transition many years ago when I decided not to use chemical based products in my hair. After doing extensive research, I decided the best route for me was to make my own products. The commercial world wants us as consumers to believe that their chemical based products are what's best. However, with most commercial products you are being deceived by what is listed on the ingredients label.

While many commercial products start off with great ingredients, hence what you see on the label, they are keeping information from you. What you don't know is that they take these great ingredients and break them down chemically. By the time the finish product hits the shelf at your local market, there's nothing nutritious or organic about the product. I could give many examples, but that's the point here.

Knowing this, I made my transition in hair care, which lead me to making handmade soap.  I came to the conclusion that it was better for me know what was in my product opposed to trusting commercial companies. Why, you ask? Well, the best way to ensure that the product I use is natural and organic, was to make it myself.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who has come this conclusion. However, I am learning from networking and building relationship with others who make their own handmade soap are being deceived. The deception is that there is a such thing as no lye soap.

Prior to making my first batch of soap, I did extensive research for over a year before I took the plunge to make my first soap. I, like many others, was so terrified of using lye, or sodium hydroxide, to make soap. So I found myself searching and searching for soap recipes that did not require me to use lye.



 



I did find a solution to this matter, it is called melt and pour soap. Melt and pour is a glycerin soap that can be purchased as a base ingredient to customize your own creations. It comes in many variations from clear to opaque. It appears to be a simple ingredient to work with, however for more creative outcomes requires great skill and practice.

Here's my issue. Many people view using this product as a quick and easy way to make beautiful soaps for profit and advertise these soaps as a lye free product. What these people don't understand is that you can not make any type of soap without the use of lye. In order to understand, you have to first understand the soap making process. I'll explain quickly and simply.

All soap products begin with sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide (lye), a liquid such as water, milk, juice, or tea/coffee and oils. We all know oils and liquids don't mix, enter here your lye. The lye creates the bonds that holds the two together, which also creates a reaction called saponification. So the lye is mixed with the liquid of choice and then mixed with oils of choice to start saponification. Once the saponification process is complete, if done properly, the lye is no longer active and has created a byproduct in the soap called glycerin.







In cold process soaps, saponification takes 24-48 hours to complete. In hot process soap, such as melt and pour soap bases, the process can take as little as 30 minutes. Once the soap batter has completed the saponification process you now have soap, whether it be a bar soap, liquid soap or melt and pour.

This is just a simple explanation of the process. Of course there is so much more to know about making soap. However, my point is, there no such thing as lye free soap. You cannot make soap of any kind without the use of a lye.

To those who are against using handmade soaps because they were made with lye, I urge you to do some research. You will not find lye listed as an ingredient on a commercial based soap, as shown above, and this is why.