A diversion - The Columbia River

Went out to the Columbia to reset my brain. My sample bottles are late again, which is causing a total mess in the shop. And when people's orders are late, I stress to the point of being sick to my stomach. *sigh* Anyway, I took some photos - they're from my cell phone, so the quality is kind of yucky, but here they are nonetheless.

Wow- where is my brain?

I forgot to post pictures of a couple soaps that are on the rack right now. Sheesh. The first is a wasabi mint, the second (not photogenic at all) is a raspberry cake with crushed oatmeal, and the third is a strawberry-musk-type. Better descriptions coming soon. Ha ha

Latest

Life just isn't the same without Bella here. :-(

Portland has been hot and beautiful. Lots of sunshine. My plants and flowers are lovely. Normally I don't like the heat at all, but right now it's such a welcome relief from the rain!!

GEIST is getting closer. I'm looking at a release date of around July 15th. I'm really excited.

I'm having to go back to 5ml amber bottles in the shop. I've gotten so many complaints about the roller bottles, and I can't afford to keep replacing product. The amber euro-droppers are just so foolproof. Although from a design aspect, I'm not thrilled, it will be nice to hear fewer complaints. As of now, the roller bottles I have in inventory are it. Once they're gone, they're gone. 

So yeah, everything's been a bit up in the air - business is dreadfully slow, I miss Bella. I'm trying to use this time to put finishing touches on labeling for GEIST and re-working all my perfume labels to accommodate the new bottles.

Oh, and almost forgot -- vegan lip balm starts hitting the shop tomorrow or the next day.

Have a great weekend.

New Smell-Goods

Hi, hi, hi. What a *gorgeous* day in Portland. Wow - no rain or anything!!! I'm going to go play, but I wanted to blog about a couple of new soaps I just added to the shop.

LYLA - a mild, sweet citrus (and slightly herbaceous) blend. Not overly powerful smelling. Really fresh and clean. I added green tea extract and green tea leaves to this one.

BARTOLA - Sweet almond cake with a ribbon of cocoa, dusted with powdered sugar, grounded by incense and wood. This one has almond milk, cocoa AND shea butter, and hibiscus extract, which has anti-aging properties (uhhhh - yes, please). I was only able to list 4 of these. The others are gone already.

I also got the Harlot Caramel Apple lip balm in the shop, which for some reason I thought had always been in there. I was wondering why it wasn't selling. Ha ha.

On the racks right now I have a wasabi soap that's PHENOMENAL, and a pumpkin caramel goat's milk soap -- these are both part of the Halloween line that's coming out next month. I made soap today, and I will list the scents as soon as I see that the batches came out okay.  

My baby leaves for California on Wednesday. I'm freaking out BAD, you guys. I only have a few more days with her and then she's gone for far too long. :-(

That's all.

CRAP

The supplier of my tester vials has STILL not sent them, and I literally have about 8 left. I ordered with plenty of time to recieve them before running out, then found out 2 days later they're out of stock. I keep hearing they'll be in *anytime* and will ship the same day, but it's been far too long now. When I called, the girl I spoke to was really rude and basically gave me "Don't call us, we'll call you." So now I'm sitting on orders for samples that are already 2 days out. At this point if I order from someone else, they still won't be here in time for me to get my orders out.

Nice.

Just had to vent. I'm REALLY angry.

A question about The Devil and a sneak preview of Halloween

Okay, so this is *literally* my favorite possession. When my grandfather died, I "inherited" it. Problem is, it's always bothered me that I know nothing about it, especially as serious as I am about collecting things.

heh heh.

So here are photos - if anyone can give me an opinion as to where it's from, approximate year, etc, I would be thrilled. I found something similar online, with no picture, and they dated it around 1930. What do you think??

So on to Halloween.......

I was going to wait until next month to give a peek, but I'm excited and don't want to wait. I'm not giving too much away, though. *wink*

This is my new Halloween-only line - GEIST. I will be offering all lip balms in the Geist labeling, as well as many perfumes (most completely new to the shop), solid perfumes, bath salts, dry oil spray, and --ta da! -- bath bombs and lotion. Here are photos of one of the lip balms and one of the perfumes:

And here's something I'm really excited about, too. I know this will be a great shock to you, but I'm a pretty serious horror fan. I thought I would do some tribute perfumes to some of my favorite films and/or notorious people. The first here is Saucy Jack, in honor of Jack the Ripper, and the second is The Saw is Family, in honor of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I've even included quotes on the labels. :-)

Have a great rest of the weekend everyone!!