Soap with an aloe lotion base can soothe and cool the skin as it cleans. Adding some cream cheese frosting fragrance can only add to the appeal for your skin. Learn how to make your own within an hour here:: 12 Days of Christmas: Lotion Melt and Pour Cubes
Number of Soap Sales Does Not Equal Success
Sadly, too many people believe that the number of sales you have made determines the success of your online soap or craft shop. It seems like the simple metric to follow, but many who don’t get giant sales numbers feel like failures when that is not the case. So what should a person do to accurately calculate their success in craft sales?
First, try not to let go of the personal accomplishment. Every sale you do make, no matter if it’s a giant number or not, validates you. Keep the thrill that someone enjoys your work. Secondly, it’s not the number of units sold, it’s the amount of revenue and profit the business is making. Someone with a larger sales number could be selling the product at a lower price. In fact, you could be actually making more money selling less goods than your competition due to the price difference. For more on this topic, click here:: Stop Focusing on the Number of Sales You’ve Made & Start Focusing on What Actually Matters
Scrub Away and Exfoliate with Chickpea Almond Sugar Scrub
For generations, chickpea flour was an ingredient in traditional Indian skin care. Mixed with sugar and some light almond oil for moisture, it can make a fine scrub for just about anyone. Learn how to make your own for yourself or your soap store here:: Chickpea Almond Sugar Scrub
A lil peppermint bubble cake bath…
…to exfoliate those worries right out of your skin.
Here’s a great recipe we are excited to try ourselves and then share with everybody around us. This is sure to be a DIY gift-pleaser this year. In fact, you may love this yourself so much that you’ll have a hard time parting with it.
But share the wealth and let others enjoy, just as much as you do, this wonderfully vibrant and refreshing bubble bath soap.
Read the full article here: Peppermint Bubble Cakes
Stocking Taped On the Chimney With Care
When you’re busy making other crafts and soap, you don’t have time to sew stockings for the holidays. Good ol’ duct tape is there for the rescue. With some tape and a pair of scissors, you can make fun decorative Christmas stockings in less than 15 minutes. Read the tutorial here:: Simple Duck Tape Stocking
One to Keep an Eye On
A new craft show is coming our way to give us a whole new avenue of crafting and how to’s before our eyes. It’s about paying it forward and blessing the lives of others. Enjoy!
This will be a great show from two ladies that I have learned a lot from. The great thing about it is that you will be able to see them work the crafts right in front of you, rather than just reading and looking at pictures on a blog. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine those in between steps on blogs…but with this new program you’ll see it all before your very eyes.
Read here for the full announcement: Craft If Forward With U Create
Take a look at the promotional video…
From DIY to Thriving Business
Are you the type of craft person who has all your ideas piled up on their desk, strewn about on the floor, and tacked to the wall (or ceiling) around them? Or are you the type of person who has everything neatly organized by category in neat little boxes in the corner of your craft room?
I’m going to raise my hand and say I have a bit of the first in me, though I would much rather see all of the second in my craft room.
Let me make an argument for organization today. Organization and categorization are two very important ideas, especially if you want to take your crafting from hobby to business.
Why are they so important? The difference between your hobby and your business are one of time and precision. Your hobby you do in your spare time. Your business you work at, daily, in order to grow and thrive.
Your hobby you do when the moment, the thought, strikes you. Your business you set about with intentionality, working daily on the various aspects or threads of it, so you can weave together a collective whole and present it to a customer.
For this hobby to become a business you surely will need organization and categorization. There is no if, when, or but about it.
Read today’s article about becoming a bit more organized in the intentionality of your crafting, and continue to press on in the development of your business.
Read the full article here: My Antique Drawer Craft Storage System
A Little Extract For You Today
A little vanilla bean extract does everybody a lot of good! Vanilla bean extract is so easy to make, and it’s incredibly tasty when made at home.
Here’s a simple recipe to use to always have it on hand. Transform any of your baked goods with this sweet goodness. A great taste from a simple formula. Doesn’t get better than that.
Read the full article here: Homemade Vanilla Extract
Fall Guy
I used to love the old TV show, The Fall Guy, with Lee Majors. He played a stunt man who was a part time bounty hunter. It was a lot of fun because he was always grabbing whatever was around him and using it to fight. It could be a chair, a pool stick, a pan, a cup…didn’t matter. If it wasn’t bolted down it was gonna be flying across the room and no time.
Fall is a great time for transitions…colors are changing, leaves are falling, nuts are dropping.
All of these things can be picked up an repurposed…there are so many little (and big! if you want) craft ideas you can do this year.
Take a look today at a few ideas we found for you.
Read the full article here: 21 Fall Crafts
Alright, Stop! Collaborate and Listen!
That’s right…Vanilla Ice knew what he was talking about…
Crafting and creating is a great outlet for stress and energy. It is wonderful to see people utilize this outlet for a healthy lifestyle and a positive outlook.
Such positivity is oftentimes shared, or desired to be shared, with those around you. As you spend time at craft shows or online at various art and craft websites, I’m sure you have come across other artisans who not only share you same fervor for all things “glue-gun-glueable,” but who also share a positive outlook on life.
What’s the natural step in this? Oftentimes people desire to meld their great ideas together and work on a new project that will be equally times thrilling and hopefully lucrative.
But when this happens a new level of crafting may come into play…what was once fun, vibrant, and enjoyable can suddenly turn stressful and even worrisome?
Why? Well, with that collaborative effort comes…well, collaboration. Collaboration with another person can be hard. We all have our own ideas as to how something should be done, and we oftentimes want to utilize those ideas for what we believe is the common good. But if we’re not careful, we may end up pushing those ideas upon somebody a little more forcefully than we should.
What we need for a great collaboration is a spirit of mutuality and respect. Think about this…when you come to the table to discuss your collaboration, don’t come to be heard but rather to hear.
Need some more suggestions on collaboration? We have them right here in today’s article. Take a look.
Read the full article here: How to pull off a stress-free collaboration