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Archive for the ‘manufacturing’ Category

Vendor Review : Columbus/Soaper’s Choice

August 6th, 2008 SpiderFarmer No comments

When you first get introduced to the addiction that is making soap, it’s easy to buy your materials at the grocery store. But as your addiction grows, or you find that people are throwing money at you to buy your creations, or you suddenly feel a burning desire to do an arts and crafts show, you quickly find that paying retail isn’t cost efficient when you’re making 30 pounds of soap.

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How To: Make a small batch of traditional soap

July 25th, 2008 SpiderFarmer No comments

bundt_soap 025

Working with small batches is often trickier than doing the huge batches I often do. But doing small batches lets you get all kinds of creative. Best of all, if you make a mistake, you’re not tossing out hundreds of dollars in materials. It’s fairly easy to “rebatch” a mistake batch when it’s a small batch, where as when you’re staring at 50 pounds of ruined soap…well, let’s just say it gets daunting.

This recipe I designed to fit some groovy little bundt cake molds that I found. Each one holds about 1/4 of cup, and there’s 12 of them. This batch size will also work well in silicon muffin tins, or a small silicon bread pan. (I despise lining boxes, so I use silicon whenever possible.)

Let’s get started!
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How To: Make a Bath Bomb

July 18th, 2008 SpiderFarmer No comments

Everybody loves bath bombs. It’s like taking a bath in champagne, only without the show tunes and chorus boys. They are fairly simple to make, keeping in mind that the strangest things can make a batch go weird; humidity, room temperature, oil viscosity, the moon rising in the seventh house of Aquarius…they are a mysterious wonder.

4 ounce bath bomb (fizzy)

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Public Meeting on BioPreferred Voluntary Labeling Program

July 16th, 2008 SpiderFarmer No comments

The Department of Agriculture (USDA) will hold a public meeting on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, starting at 1 p.m. EST for interested stakeholders to provide an open forum to solicit feedback on the establishment of the BioPreferred voluntary labeling program.  This program will allow USDA to authorize manufacturers and vendors of qualifying biobased products to use a “USDA Certified Biobased Product” label.

For those of us who make our soap using primarily biobased products, and who would prefer to be able to easily source our organic and sustainable growth oils, and who would benefit from being able to use both the label and the preferred procurement channels, this may be worth spending an hour or two on the phone.

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