Another Pic of Bianca

I really like this pic with the turquoise blue plate, white soap, and black background. The pics, along with my photoshop skills, are improving but still aren't where I would like them to be. I have a vision of how I want my pics to look but I don't have the skill yet to pull it off. I'm slowly getting there. I actually would like to hire a professional photographer - and I might just do that. I would rather make soap than mess around with the pics.

Samples Sent With Each Order

Little sample bars I send with each order. These are fun and customers love love love them.

Muscle Rub and Lip Scrubbie - Testing Phase

A few days ago, I reformulated my muscle rub and lip scrubbie recipes and they are now being tested by my fabulous testers. I made three different concoctions for each product with varying strengths of ingredients.

The lip scrubbie is always lots of fun to make and to test. The purpose of a lip scrub is to gently exfoliate the dead cells from your lips, leaving them smooth and soft from the high-quality oil ingredients. The muscle rub is made with olive oil infused with arnica flowers and is said to relieve muscle aches and pains.

Testing should be done in about three weeks or so. In the meantime, I'll be developing the packaging.

Menta - Shea Butter and Goat Milk Soap

Menta - Up Close

Olive Oil, Shea Butter, and Goat Milk Soaps

Pics of my cold process soaps made with high quality ingredients such as olive oil, shea butter, goat milk, and essential oils. I'm still trying to get some good shots of them individually.

Top and Bottom: Arancia: Sweet orange, pink grapefruit, and patchouli essential oils
Second: Dolce: Luscious and sweet brown sugar fragrance oil
Third: Lavanda: Lavender and peppermint essential oils

From Ciao Bolla to Bollandi

Before we really started selling and putting our name out there, we wanted to change our company name because we discovered Ciao Bolla was similar to another company that makes similar products. We loved the name Ciao Bolla but when we found out about the other company, we had this nagging doubt that we might run into trademarking issues in the future. Obviously, we didn't want any part of that, so we changed to Bollandi.

How did we come up with Bollandi? It took weeks to decide. We literally searched for weeks for names that we liked. It seemed everything was taken. It seems nowadays the only names that aren't already taken are completely made up names. So we made up a bunch of names - didn't like them, went back to the drawing board, thought up more names, liked some, took a poll, more names, another poll, sigh, and so on. To make a long story short, Bollandi won the polls.

Bollandi is:

Bolla (Bolla di sapone, Italian for soap bubble) + Andie (my daughter) = Bollandi

Why the Italian spin? Easy, because we are a large Italian family.

Currently, I'm in the process of switching everything over to Bollandi and waiting on my labels, which should be coming any day now. Then pics, then posting back to Etsy, then open again. Folks can still email me if they want soap before I am up again.

I have three types of silk, shea butter, and goat milk soaps in the curing house - and these were made with the new molds that you see below in a previous post. That reminds me, when that mold company is open again on March 1, I need to order two more.

1. Lavanda: Lavender and Peppermint Essential Oils - Ready 2/13
2. Arancia: Sweet Orange, Pink Grapefruit, and Patchouli Essential Oils - Ready 2/25
3. Dolce: Brown Sugar Fragrance Oil - Ready 2/25

I also have ready the giant (8-9 ounce) glycerin chunks with shea butter and goat milk that you all love so much:

1. Bella - Jasmine with a hint of musk
2. Menta - Mint with a touch of rosemary
3. Oceano - Salty ocean breeze - I should have named this one Breezy...hmmm
4. Felice - Floral with undertones of musk
5. Amore - Pink cotton candy with hints of musk and citrus

Next Up: Bath Fizzies, Muscle Rubs, and Lip Balms. I dug out my old recipes from my old soaping life (The Smelly Soap Company! Good times!) and plan to rework them a little bit, then order containers, etc.

Ciao!