Wedding season and happily ever after

So the wedding season is upon us with many a couple making the final preparations of the dress, shoes and those all important wedding party gifts. In recent years has been a growing trend of giving personalised soap and candles to your friends and family instead of the little voile bags containing sugared almonds which has been a long standing tradition.

The Anniversary Gift

So the honeymoon is over and the happy couple settle into life and all to quickly it is the first anniversary. My husband and I have been married a long time but as we approached our 1st anniversary we decided to choose gifts of a traditional nature. So with the first being a gift of Paper I received a book, the second year for Cotton it was a tea towel not so romantic but practical!

Collections of Soap, Wood & Wool

As the years have passed by we have exchanged many gifts and with little expense and a lot of thought these items have become treasured memories. So here are a few suggestions for you if you are looking for new ideas that will be sure to delight and remain traditional.

4th Year – how about some handmade soap? Rose & Vanilla with rose petals is a delight.

5th Year – how about a personalised pyrography plaque with a favourite quote or time and place   – handmade makes it extra special.

7th Year – A little needle felted wool heart – this could be on a brooch or a keying?

we would love to help you find the perfect gift but whatever you choose and however you celebrate your anniversary we offer our congratulations and best wishes.

 

 

Coming Soon -Logo’s & Labels

Coming Soon

So the month of May has been very busy here in the House of Wobbly Pins with some lots of discussions about logo’s & labels . We have been thinking about redesigning our labels for a while as the business has evolved and covers a myriad of crafts.

Classic or Quirky

A few cups of tea and maybe just a few gin & tonics have been consumed whilst doodling and exploring a new label design for our soap and candle range. Should we write a classic or should we be quirky or floral or moody?.

 

So many choices  are available when trying to decide on a design that reflects your ethos and will not become outdated in this fast moving world but also catch your customers eye when you are faced with so much choice.

We have considered spots, stripes, flowers, geometrics, squares, swirls, font style (important as we get older-I have difficulty reading a lot of labels), shades of purple, & yellow……..you get the picture.

The Logo & Label winner is?

So in the end we choose a classic theme, with a classic colour combination , with a font style that you can read without recruiting an interpreter. We have retained our hand doodled birds combined with a new brand to reflect our handmade soap made in small batches and our candle range.

When you are out and about watch out for our new brand labelling arriving in late June,  wrapped around our handmade soap and candles.

We hope you like it as much as we do.

 

 

Milky Tales – Goat Style

Goats Milk Soap

The benefits of drinking goats milk are very widely publicised but have you tried it in soap? As I mentioned in my January post I wanted to experiment with some new products this year and an opportunity arose to try Goats milk soap again.

A lot of people love goats milk soaps and have had success when using it to relieve symptoms of problematic and sensitive skin.

Goats milk is a beautiful creamy shade of white – sounds like something on a paint chart!

What shall we make?

So the next part of the journey was to decide which base oils to use, everybody has favourites and preferences when it comes to the choice of hard and soft oils. Should I go Palm oil free?. Should I include extra butter to give the soap a creamy moisturizing finish? So after a lot of deliberation the base recipe would be made up of Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Sunflower Oil, and Shea butter.

Which scents to choose – fragrance or essential oils?

Not a difficult choice here – I went for essential oils, the difficult part was the selection and combinations. Weeks later and I came up with my choice, my husband has never smelt so good as he had all the oils on his socks!

A few favourites, Lavender, Lime and Patchouli but also a few different touches with Vanilla, Vettiver and Fennel. I also tried some different combinations of additives settling on turmeric for it healing properties and activated charcoal for its cleansing power.

Into the Workshop

So once I had settled on my new recipes I sent these off to be checked by a chartered chemist and get the legal cosmetic safety assessment which is required to sell soap in the EU.

So with certificate in hand it was down to the workshop and a week later I had produced the first batch of each soap.

The soaps are now having their obligatory 6 week cure so watch this space for a picture when they wake up.