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Check out this gorgeous bar of Almond Biscotti soap! It hasn’t even hit the website yet, but you can be the first to have one of these deliciously-scented, generously-sized soaps if you enter the Catie Beth Bath and Body Almond Biscotti Soap Giveaway! 
Here are the ways you can enter the contest:
1. Blog about Catie Beth Bath and Body. Provide a link on your blog and then post a comment on here, along with a link to your blog post, to let me know you entered the contest. Every time you blog about Catie Beth and let me know about it, you receive another entry in the contest.
2. If you follow Catie Beth Bath and Body on Facebook, suggest to all of your friends that they like Catie Beth, too! Then post a comment on this blog to let me know you suggested that your friends like Catie Beth.
3. Twitter about Catie Beth Bath and Body. Post a comment on here to let me know you Twittered about us! Include #catiebethbath in your Twitter so I receive it.
4.Visit www.catiebeth.com and sign the guestbook. Suggest to your friends that they do the same and to tell me that YOU sent them. For every friend who mentions you in my guestbook, you’ll be entered in the giveaway.
The Giveaway ends Sunday, October 17th! Good luck!
*Squeal!* I’m so excited about these cute basket boxes that I ordered. They’ll be perfect for holding a bar of soap, a jar of lotion and a small votive candle. Look for a variety of gift sets and a “make your own” gift set to be available starting November 1.
Currently, I’ve got three wonderfully-smelling soaps on the curing rack. They are
Pumpkin Spice,
Wintergreen,
and Almond Biscotti.
I let all of my soaps cure for at least 4 weeks before putting them up for sale. There are a couple of reasons for allowing them time to cure:
1. They need to complete the saponification process. This is the chemical reaction that occurs when the oils (fatty acids) combine with the lye (a base). The results are soap and glycerin.
2. Curing the soap gives it time for the water to evaporate; resulting in a harder bar of soap. A hard bar of soap will last longer and produce more bubbles.
The curing time explains why I’m making Christmas soaps in September and October. Still to be made for Christmas: Cocoa Mint, Gingerbread, Christmas Spice, and Oatmeal, Milk and Honey.
‘Round and ‘round I go with the whole packaging dilemma. BUT, I might be on to something…FINALLY! You see, I love to make beautiful soaps. My favorite technique is to swirl several colors together. I don’t have the art perfected, but I’m working on it. I do, however, like most of the soaps I’ve swirled and want to show them off. I realize packaging is part of marketing and selling the soap, but I want the SOAP to market and sell itself and that won’t happen if it’s covered up inside a box. My most recent packaging has been to use a white box with an oval window. This allowed the soap to be both seen and smelled, but the WHITE is grating on my nerves. Even though you get a glimpse of the soap through the window, I’ve struggled with what to do with all that white space around the soap. I’ve made colorful labels and used ribbon bows on the front, but that becomes time consuming and costly. And t
here’s still a lot of white.
The solution? Vellum! It’s transparent, inexpensive and allows me to label my soap while still letting the soap b
e the focal point. So, what do you think?
At least in my house it is because I’ve started making my holiday soaps! I love Christmas and making these great smelling soaps has me singing Christmas carols. My first batch of holiday soap is called Wintergreen. It smells like apples, oranges, peppermint and a hint of cinnamon. Mmmmm. It’s a crisp, winter scent. The soaps are a swirl of white and spearmint colors with sparkles on top; reminds me of glistening snow on evergreen trees.
