Colour Bomb!!!

With the delivery of my fab new POP micas (from TKB Trading), I have been wondering how I could incorporate all the colours together in one soap... and I did it this weekend! I haven't tackled stripes in the past and this was fun to do, if not a little scary!!!

Colour Bomb is another luxury handcrafted pure glycerine soap which is perfect for all skin types, especially those suffering from dry skin conditions.

To the naturally moisturising soap, I have added pure Coconut Oil, which has been called the healthiest oil on earth - it has incredible abilities to moisturise your skin and is particularly good with dry or mature ...skin. Along with that, I've added a skin hydrating Ecocert additive that increases the level of moisturisation in your skin.

Colour Bomb is fragranced with a soft aldehydic scent with citrus top notes, a floral heart with base notes of musk—a really soft & clean perfume.

I used six different natural micas to create our Colour Bomb; from the top - Lemon Drop Yellow, Tangerine Orange, Apple Green, Raspberry Pink, Blueberry & Grape! These micas glisten brightly in this softly perfumed soap which will gently scent your skin throughout the day.

I really love this soap and I'm hoping that you do too!!! If you're interested in purchasing, don't forget to check out our Soaperstar Online Store today.

Everyone needs a holiday!

Sorry I've been so quiet this last week - I had some time off and my hubby and I decided to take a min-break to a place we love dearly with all our hearts.  West Cork is in the very South West tip of Ireland and it is an utterly magical place - right by the sea, you can go for miles without meeting another soul.  It's so beautiful, peaceful and quiet and the people are really lovely.  We've been travelling down there there for the last 8 years - in fact, it's where we went for our first holiday together (when we only knew each other for a month!) and it was absolutely the first choice for our honeymoon too! Our long term plan is to move there at some point - we can't at the moment due to family committments but moving there is absolutely our biggest life plan.  Below are some of the pictures from our trip ... I hope you enjoy them!!

Inchydoney Beach. Clonakilty on a quiet February Tuesday afternoon

A tired me, by the fire, in the local - hubby's pint of Murphy's can also be seen!

A secret place just beyond Mizen Head, West Cork - we've spent a lot of time here, the sound is magical as the waves crash against the rocks

Proof that the sun does shine in February in West Cork!

Crookhaven, West Cork - a perfect day out!

It looked warm enough to paddle but look at his face! He was shouting "It's soooooooo coooooolllllllllllddddddd"

Gorse burning, Crookhaven

Well, that's all the photos - hope you enjoyed them... it was such a fantastic trip and one sorely needed too.  Sometimes it's important for us to remember what's important in this life - for me, it's family, my lovely hubby and spending quality time together.  With the hustle and bustle of life, a new business and other issues, it can be hard to get time out to just breathe the air and remember what's important in life. 

A Facebook and Twitter Tip for businesses

Firstly, can I say a quick "sorry" for not having posted in a while? I've been under the weather and, in the main, under the radar.  I''ve been working away quietly and slowly making some soaps and experimenting with lip balms and bath bombs too.  I'll post about this tomorrow as I've to work on some photos beforehand.

 

So... the real point of this blog post to give you a tip about Facebook and Twitter.  Lots of small businesses are focusing on social media to get their message out - it's a hugely powerful tool and it's free! You can reach millions of people via what is called "viral marketing".  What is that I hear you say? Basically, it's marketing through networks.  Let me give you a scenario - before I started Soaperstar I knew that I had to get a presence online and build up interest for the product and company before I could start selling.. otherwise who will buy something they don't know exists? Ok. So what did I do? I set up a blog firstly (you're reading it!) that just told of what I was doing - plain and simple English, just to say "hey folks, this is my stuff and this is what I'm working on now".  Then I decided to set up a Facebook Fan Page.  Lots of people already have personal pages on Facebook but you can also set up a business page too to promote your products to your network... who are they? Your friends and family that you've sent a link to and said "come and join us on our new business page". 

Ok, so now my friends and family have joined but I'm not going to take over the soaping universe through them am I? Well, yes in a way.  You ask your friends and family to send an invite to your Facebook Fan Page to their friends and family.  So .. how you've reached two layers of people.  Then on your Facebook Page, say to everyone please feel free to invite your network to join.. so now how many people can you reach? Plenty! Loads more than the number of people you ever know.  They invite their network, who invites their network, who invites their network.. see how it works? Ok, not everyone is going to be interested or join or even click the link - but imagine if even 10% do!

I've just done a forum post on some tips arising from the use of Facebook and Twitter and thought I'd do a blog post on it also; it may be of some interest to people so I thought I'd share it. 

 

Vanity URL's with Facebook:  When you've built up at least 25 fans, you can change your facebook fan page to what they call a "Vanity URL". When you first create your Facebook fan page, pretty much just a string of letters and numbers and long and not very attractive.  To make it more like your own site link, that contains the name of your company this is what you should do:

Click http://facebook.com/username.  At the bottom of the page, you'll see a link called "set a username for your pages".  Click on it and then you'll see a drop down - click on this and you should see your "business fan page".  At that point, you should put in the name of your company/fan page, ie Soaperstar.  Word of warning, at this stage you have to make committment to using that name - you can't go back and change it later so make sure you've clicked the right thing!!!

After doing all this, you'll have a nice simple Facebook Fan Page address ... example http://www.facebook.com/soaperstar - instead of a mass of jumbled up letters and numbers after the dot com.  This is handy to quote on your business cards, the end of your emails, on Twitter, your blog, the end of forum signatures etc.  

Twitter and how to manage your messages:  If you're using Twitter regularly, download Tweetdeck, click http://www.tweetdeck.com; it's free and it manages the process far easier.  You can set up columns for your friends or for specific people you want to keep a track on.  If you want to use hastags (which are used for subjects of interest to people - if lots of people use it for the same subject, it's called trending) then add the hashtags #soap and/or #handmade to your Tweet.  Then people can search for all the #soap tweets if they want.  Also it makes it a more trending topic. 

I hope this information proves useful to someone - I am a big fan of social media and I think, for small businesses who don't have marketing budgets the size of the big guys (or any marketing budget at all!), then the social media route is so important to check out.  Don't underestimate the power of a network!!!

Soaperstar gets a mention!

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Babs at http://www.soapstuffdaily.com/ for featuring Soaperstar soaps on her wonderful blog.  It's great to get a mention from anyone but from a fellow soaper, it's great to be recognised for my work.  She featured my two new Valentine Limited Edition soaps - Velvet Heart and Midas Touch.. I'm so delighted. 

You can read her post here - thank you again Babs, I really appreciate it!

Happy New Year!

I just want to say Happy New Year to all my blog followers and readers - I really hope that 2010 brings us all joy, happiness, health and, who knows, maybe a bit of wealth too?

I hope Soaperstar goes from strength to strength - I am planning on introducing several new products in the coming months, things I'm working on at present - I like to fully test all my recipes and send out samples for people to use; there's nothing like honest feedback on performance from your human guinea pigs!

And don't forget that all Soaperstar products are suitable for use by vegetarians, nothing at all is tested on animals (other than the human kind!), all products are fully safety assessed and I ensure that all my raw ingredients are purchased from the highest quality suppliers ... this is how I can ensure that all Soaperstar products are the very best I can supply!

Have a great New Year everyone - I honestly hope that this year will bring us all our dreams come true!

Don't forget to check out our website at http://www.soaperstar.com/ for info on all our products!

Random Acts of Kindness already at work!

Just a quick note about my post yesterday - it seems to have started other people's RAK's ... check out my friend Lois' blog here where she shows the lovely handcrafted products she's purchased for friends and family for Christmas - by doing this, she's raised the crafters/producers profiles and helped to advertise their incredible talents.  Excellent work Lois, I'm just loving that!!! And thanks for the link back too!