Farewell gifts

I have a wall where I hang family photos so I am always
on the lookout for nice frames, preferably old.  The
three children are my grandmother and her siblings and
I think she also owned the pearl necklace. 

In a recent post I mentioned that I was making soaps as farewell gifts for a group of people that I have been meeting a few times a year.  I made a soap with Patchouli EO and decided to make a pink one for the women in the group.  I used Geranium and Lemongrass with Rumex oil to make it pink.  This one I used 15 g. to 500 g. of oil and I put the oil in at trace.  It still turned out a very light pink.  And the center, which gelled is a lot darker than the outside.  I don't mind that, but some may do.  The solution is to either wrap the soap to have it all gelled or put it in the fridge.  But anyway, I am pretty certain now that putting the Rumex oil in with all the others will produce a stronger pink colour than putting it in a trace.

I haven't been particularly involved in thinking about packaging and labels, although I've thought about it a lot.   Mostly I'm still thinking about some sort of stamp of a logo.  I have it in my head, waiting to jump out on a pice of paper.  I realize that to sell soap they must be packaged and that is also true for when they are given as gifts.  From what I see from others, they put as much effort (and money) into packaging as they do into the soaps.  I am in awe.

But I had to do something so I got some cellophane bags.  They were way to big (couldn't find small ones) but I solved that by cutting in half and using the bottom for the girl's and the top for they guy's.  So different soaps and different packages.  To make this a bit simple for myself I had cut little pieces of soap and made o hole in the corner, through which I tied a piece of raffia.  I then used the raffia on the outside as well.

Not terribly original, but fast and easy.  I did intended to photograph the packages, but I was finishing them at the last minute.  I made a few extra and figured that I would bring some back and snap a photo of those, but I ended up giving the staff all the extras for husbands or wives.  They were all delighted with their soaps and everyone of them put their gift up to their nose to have a sniff (and we are talking about a few very middle aged men here).  And even if I put all the ingredients on a label on front, the ones they were most interested in were the scents.  So much for unscented soaps!  

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