Feature Friday: All-natural Peppermint Lip Balm

My peppermint lip balm has always been a huge hit at craft shows and it is growing in popularity online! The balm is completely natural, made with waxes, butters, oils, and real peppermint oil for a delicious bite of mint!

The balm's base is made of the perfect combination of beeswax, unscented cocoa butter, and coconut oil. The three work together to make a firm balm with smooth glide, which protects and soften your lips as you use it.

The balm is flavored with peppermint essential oil, which is distilled from the herb to create this natural flavoring. As you use the balm, you will smell the peppermint and taste it, too! It even gives your lips a bit of a tingle!

Interested in this lip balm? Head over to my Etsy shop now and grab a tube or five! CLICK HERE!

Thursday Inspiration: Sunset Soap in White Tea and Ginger

I've come up with a new Thursday column that will both inspire me to make soap and will indulge all of us in our love for "soap porn"... For Thursday Inspiration, I will be making a soap inspired by a picture, song, video, or what have you!

I figured that I would start off this series with an inspiration that came from both a gorgeous wallpaper and the mold itself. My new mold hails from Wal-Mart and makes my inner hippie giddy with glee! I love the peace signs and the L<3VE embed... They are perfect! This mold, paired with the sunset below, gave me the greatest inspiration for a fun, bright new soap.

Sunset from motaen.com 

I started off with some bright orange mica and a blend of yellow oxide+titanium dioxide to achieve a bright yellow. I filled the raised portions with the colors, then swirled them together. The bulk of the soap was colored with ultramarine blue. The soap is scented with White Tea and Ginger, a fresh, clean scent, slightly foral but very light.

Here are the finished bars, three days old:

I love how they turned out! Almost exactly how I imagined them... They smell incredible! The orange is a bit muted, but I am still in love! I will need a steadier hand the next time I use the mold, though.
These soaps will be available in 4 weeks. I will have two peace signs and two L<3VE soaps available when they have cured!

Twitter Tuesday: #Zibbet

It's time for my Twitter Tuesday roundup, where I search Twitter for amazing handmade finds featuring the hashtag #Zibbet. Want a chance to be featured? Make sure to tweet your handmade goodies with #Zibbet for a chance to be featured! You can also tweet me at @SSpringDesigns!

First up is Sarawen's perfume, 10:

Next is TouchingThePast's hand painted plate:

and last is rickderwitsch's painting, "Haying":

Thank you so much! Come back next Tuesday when I will be featuring more goodies 
from Twitter featuring the hashtag #Etsy!

Bath Bomb News

With the start of the new year, my bath bombs got a new look, new ingredients, and new fragrances!

Instead of the old, usual ball-shaped bath bomb fizzies, I have transitioned over to thick circle-shaped bath bombs! They're almost as big as a bar of soap! On the inside of the fizzies, I have ditched my shea butter additive for a combination of epsom salt and almond oil. Sometimes, I noticed that my shea butter would not melt in the tub if the water wasnt warm enough, so the switch to almond oil was a perfect one. The added epsom salts also brought some body to the bath bombs, and I really love the salts in the bath.

The colors now have more pop and pizzazz to them, too! Since I've brought my focus around to bright, fun products with loads of color, I quickly realized that my pastel bath bombs were not going to cut it. So, with a little research, I've been able to start coloring them brightly! I'm so pleased with these colors!

New Orange!

Old Orange...

Keep an eye on my Zibbet shop for new fragrances coming soon! I've kept the old favorites, like Green Apple, Eucalyptus, and Sweet Pea. New bath bombs to look for include Cherry Almond, Nectarine, Chocolate Brownie, and Sandalwood!

Got a scent that you are dying to see in a bath bomb? Comment below and let me k

now!

Feature Friday: Salted Caramel Soap

Now that I am finally crawling out of my Winter break laziness, it is time to start up my Feature Friday segment again! So, let's get started with my Salted Caramel soap!

I love the rich, gooey, caramel scent of this soap! I modeled the soap after a piece of salted caramel candy, using a nice tan-caramel color for the base. I topped the soap off with a nice layer of real sea salt to help exfoliate the skin as you wash!

The soap itself is made with my classic recipe of olive oil, coconut oil, and castor oil and tinted with cocoa powder for a natural colorant. The scent is a warm caramel scent with just a hint of sea salt to round out the blend.

Wanna snatch up a bar of this soap? Follow THIS LINK to my Zibbet shop and check it out!

New Logo Goodness!

I've been in business for almost 2 and a half years and, I am horrible ashamed to admit this, I've never had a real logo. Seriously! It's one of the first things you need, one of the most essential things to building a brand, and I've never had one!

I've tried to circumvent this by staying consistent with my packaging and labeling. I've only ever used 2 fonts, I designed packaging that I could print from home and slightly change for each product, and I've kept the same green color scheme for some time now.

But, now is the time for a nice, neat, logo to represent what Second Spring Soaps is all about! 

I've noodled on a logo for longer than I have been in business! I've always known that I wanted it to be bright and colorful, just like my products. I've always wanted bubbles. I've played around with the idea of flowers and bath tubs and bars of soap... But yesterday, it just came to me out of nowhere. And my logo idea was born!

My only problem was how to do it...

So, I started researching online. I am no graphic design artist by any means, but I knew that my logo was fairly simple and I should be able to make it myself. So, after a few hours of playing around with GIMP (my open-source image manipulator of choice!) and watching some tutorials on YouTube, and after loads of trial and error, my very first logo was born!

I love it! I could not be happier with how it turned out! I even sat down and made a banner to go along with my Zibbet shop! 

It is exactly how I imagined it, down to the shades of colors I used! It really represents my business, fun and colorful and bright, as well as soapy! I cannot wait to see this on business cards, on my banner at shows, on t-shirts... AHH! I am so excited!

2014

Hello, my wonderful readers!

Before I get into the amazing things that I am thinking about for 2014, I want to extend an apology for my absence at the tail end of 2013.

My blog and twitter really took hits at the end of the year. Between final exams, sickness (both allergies and colds), keeping up with orders, and my family holiday madness, my social media seemed to have gotten away from me. I'm so sorry that I slacked like that!

With my winter break almost over (classes start up again on the 15th), I am looking forward to relaxing for the next week and a half before the crazy starts up all over again. I am taking 6 classes this Spring, my biggest load so far, and I am a little overwhelmed just thinking about the class load. I've also started signing up for craft shows for the coming year, as well as working on my show display, so things are moving along there.

I've made a few soaps over my break which will be ready to list this coming week. They'll all be up in my Zibbet shop soon, so keep an eye out! Make sure you are a fan on Facebook and following me on Twitter to keep an eye on when they will pop.

I've got a few new products in mind for this coming year. Lots of experimenting coming soon!

Happy 2014, everyone!