Smelly Jellies Now 20% Larger!

You Scent Me's smelly jellies (reusable air fresheners) are now 20% larger! They're great to use in places where candles aren't allowed like dorm rooms and hospital rooms. Smelly jellies are available in all your favorite You Scent Me fragrances.

Wasabi Becomes #1 Selling Fragrance!

You Scent Me has a new #1 selling fragrance -- Wasabi! Wasabi is composed of refreshing top notes of eucalyptus, ginger and peppermint, grounded with thyme and the faintest touch of amber and musk. You can order bath and body products in Wasabi, as well as 51 other scrumptious scents at You Scent Me .

How's Everybody Doing?

Hope everyone had a great holiday season and that the new year brings you and your loved ones health and prosperity. Blogging time was put on hold in order to fill orders and work on some soapy holiday projects.

Of course it also didn't help that our computer was also infected by a nasty trojan.dropper virus. This nasty bugger found its way past our firewall, anti-virus software, and anti-malware software. We went on computer forums and followed all the steps to clean an infected computer. While all our diagnostic software scans came up clean, we kept getting popups about this nasty worm. It got so bad that Windows wasn't able to boot up. Our computer came pre-installed with Windows XP, so we did not have a Windows disk. Still, we were luckier than most. Steve happened to be at a meeting of our computer user group when they handed out CDs with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a free operating system. It allowed us to boot up our computer and allowed us to get any files that hadn't already been backed up, off the system. (You can also do the same thing if you make yourself a rescue disk.) Good thing too, as we had taken our computer to one of our computer guru friends. After valiantly working on our computer for five hours, our hard drive was pronounced dead. We have a new hard drive, but our computer is still acting strange, like today, it lost its internet connection three times. Right now we're so fed up that both of us want to throw the computer out the window (pun intended). If my husband's livelihood didn't depend on a PC environment, I'd switch to a Mac in a heartbeat.

Giving thanks to all of our customers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog subscribers and readers, family and friends. You're the best! Thank you for your support, friendship, comments and suggestions.

This is a very exciting time at You Scent Me. Our blog is steadily gaining new followers. At one point the view rate was up by as much as 200%! In other exciting news, we received our first recommendation at LinkedIn.

We now have over 600 followers on Twitter! We've received a few Follow Friday recommendations. According to WeFollow, we are ranked #15 as the most influential soapmaker on Twitter!

As you can see, there's so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Wishing you all a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

Glad I Didn't Throw Out My Old Thermometer

Yesterday I made a batch of CPHP (crock pot hot process) soap. The flashpoint of the fragrance I was going to scent the batch with was 200ºF. I pointed my laser thermometer at the soap as soon as it had finished cooking. It gave a reading of 160º. That didn't look right. I wondered how soap that hadn't had a chance to cool, already be below the fragrance flashpoint? I took out my old thermometer which has a probe, stuck it into the soap, and sure enough, it gave me a reading of over 200º!

Another soaping lesson learned. What has been your biggest lesson learned?

Soapmaking Timesavers

I’m a klutz. No matter how hard I try to line a soap mold, I can never get it right. I watched the videos on You Tube. I read the tutorials. I was still mold lining challenged. That’s why I was thrilled when Wholesale Supplies Plus came out with their silicone loaf mold. No more lining molds! I tend to make small batches (2 lbs; this way if a batch doesn’t come out right, I haven’t wasted too much precious soapmaking and fragrance oils), so this loaf is a perfect size for me. Best of all, it’s affordable -- $13.95.

My newest soapmaking timesaving gadget is one I learned from watching Anne-Marie Faiola’s Learn to Make Cold Process Soap DVD. In the DVD, Anne-Marie uses a laser thermometer to measure the temperatures of her oils and lye solution. The laser thermometer is a great soapmaking tool on so many levels. It’s a great timesaver in that since you don’t put the thermometer in either the soap pot or the lye solution, that’s one less item that needs cleaning! It’s great for those of us with vision problems who have a hard time reading those tiny lines & teeny numbers on traditional thermometers. (In the past, I got around that by using digital thermometers.) With the laser thermometer I like that I no longer have to put my thermometer in the soap pot or lye solution and wait for my digital thermometer to get a reading. As I said before, I’m a klutz. With my new "toy" I no longer have to worry about dropping the thermometer into the soap pot or lye solution. Laser thermometers can be quite expensive. eBay often has good deals. I got mine there for under $20, including shipping.

Got a soapmaking timesaver tip you'd like to share? Click on the word "comments" underneath this post.

What's Your Soap?

The laws surrounding soap labeling can be confusing. Soap can fall into three catagories 1) soap 2) cosmetic 3) drug

The United States Food and Drug Administration defines soap as
• The bulk of the nonvolatile matter in the product consists of an alkali salt of fatty acids and the product's detergent properties are due to the alkali-fatty acid compounds, and
• The product is labeled, sold, and represented solely as soap [21 CFR 701.20].
(Source: US Food and Drug Administration)

If a soap makes no other claims than its intended purpose, as a cleanser, then the soap is not a cosmetic under FDA guidelines and is not subject to cosmetic labeling laws.

Let’s say a manufacturer makes claims that a soap is moisturizing. Then the soap is regulated as a cosmetic and is subject to cosmetic labeling laws. It would have to be labeled with ingredients listed in International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients format (aka INCI). INCI is a system of naming cosmetic ingredients based on scientific names and other Latin and English words.

If a manufacturer makes claims that their soap will cure, prevent or treat disease (e.g. a soap that claims it treats eczema), then that soap is regulated as a drug.

If a soap is made of detergent(s), the FDA no longer classifies the product as soap, but rather as a cosmetic. Most “melt and pour” soaps would fall into this category. Cosmetic labeling laws would apply.

To avoid confusion, many handmade soapmakers list the ingredients in their soaps. It allows consumers to know exactly what is in their soap.