Decoy Duckies

I'd been wanting to try embedding ever since I first discovered "toy" sections on some of my favorite soap supply websites, so when I found this little tutorial on Otion: The Soap Bar's blog, I just knew I had to try it! I immediately conducted a squee-ful internet search for the perfect rubber duckies for this project, and found not one but three irresistable quacker designs. I especially loved these colorful versions of the classic "decoy" ducks, and figured they could really be appealing here in Sportsman's Paradise (especially considering my last small batch of hunter-themed soaps sold out almost immediately after hitting the shelf!)

What a busy week!

I have such a great schedule at my job, only three days a week! Even though I do work every weekend, it's pretty great having Tuesday through Friday off every week. It makes scheduling vacations really easy, and gives me lots of free time to catch up on laundry, movies, gaming, and soaping!

I've got a lot of plans for the next month or so to hopefully get my soap sales up and off the ground. Right now, my soaps just occupy a couple of shelves at a local department store here in town and move pretty slowly most of the time, with an impressive day here and there. There aren't any craft fairs to speak of near where I live, and the farmer's market in my small town is pretty much strictly a produce and garage sale crowd. But I do still have a couple of events planned, one being a Valentine's Day themed sidewalk sale at the department store and the other (yet to be confirmed) very casual sort of setup in the boardroom at my work. If plans go through, these will be my first public face-to-face soap sales, and naturally I am pretty nervous! I still have so much to prepare! I'm browsing blogs and forums for inspiration on some light and attractive display ideas. So far I've bought a few inexpensive and colorful baskets and soap dishes, and have notions for filler like fabrics and packaging-type materials. I want to make some information cards on ingredients and fragrances, make a cute flier for bulletin boards and social media, and not to mention beef up my soap stock!

Finally, my first soap blog post!

I'll admit I have been procrastinating to the umpteenth degree with this soap blog, which I created in---gosh, October I think! Occassionally I would log into the admin here and tweek a few small things, but never add any real content. It was always on my mind, but I didn't know quite what I wanted to do with this thing: advertise or just kind of document my adventures in soaping. The thought of this turning into a messy and pointless rambling made me nervous! (I predict nervous becoming a top tag and category here, hehe.)

I started doing some searching around the wide wide interwebs to see what other soap bloggers were talking about and realized I was really nervous for nothing. The blogs I found were warm and colorful and fun, and definitely full of some very talented crafters with a geniune love for suds! These were real people with good and bad soapin' days, and they talked about both with love and good humor! I saw that I didn't need to have some lofty goal in mind for what I wanted this blog to be---and that I'd lost a lot of time that I could have been taking part in the online soaping community!

For now I've just decided to go with it, let the posts flow how they may! Hopefully I can share all sorts of things here, from finished products to the steps it took me to get there, and maybe definitely a few mistakes along the way. I know my Facebook and Twitter friends will probably be glad to not have me clogging up their feeds anymore with endless pictures of soaps and supplies. (Can't promise anything there though!)