FIRST BLOG GIVEAWAY - KARESS KRAFTERS

****WELCOME****


Hello Blog World and welcome to our FIRST bi-monthly giveaway. We are too excited about our new journey and hope that you’re just as happy.

Karess Krafters will be offering a blog giveaway every two months as a way of giving back as well as spreading the word about our wonderful handmade skin goodies. Our giveaways are a wonderful opportunity to get pampered or shower that special someone with quality handmade products inspired by nature with ingredients found around the globe.

****GIVEAWAY****

This month’s giveaway is a chance for one winner to win one full size bar of Fabulous Handmade Soap, a 2 oz jar of Luscious Whipped Cocoa Butter and a Moisturizing Hemp Lip Balm. This contest will end on July 28th, 2010 at midnight EST and is open to US residents only (don’t worry we will be expanding our giveaways internationally soon). Winner must be at least 18 years of age to participate and will be notified by email (please leave your email address in ALL comment entries). The winner, who is selected via random.org, will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.



MANDATORY ENTRIES:

1) YOU MUST FOLLOW OUR BLOG VIA GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT (right side bar) TO ENTER THIS CONTEST **be sure to leave a comment

2) Visit Karess Krafters and then tell us in a comment your favorite product from Karess Krafters

BONUS ENTRIES:

1) Heart CCrafter's Etsy shop, leave a comment with your Etsy name, telling us that you did so.

1 entry

2) Follow Karess Krafters on Twitter, leave a comment with your Twitter name, telling us that you did so.

1 entry

3) Fan Karess Krafters Facebook page, leave a comment with your FB name, telling us did so.

1 entry

4) E-Blast (email) your contact list informing them of this giveaway and cc karessrafters@yahoo.com. Leave a comment saying you did so.

3 entries (note you must leave 3 comments to count for 3 entries)

5) Subscribe to Karess Krafters newsletter (left side bar), leave a comment telling us you did so

2 entries (note you must leave 2 comments to count for 2 entries)

6) Blog about this giveaway with a link to this post. Leave comment with link to your blog post.

5 entries (note you must leave 5 comments to count for 5 entries)

7) Purchase from Karess Krafters, leave a comment telling us you did so.

10 entries (note you must leave 10 comments to count for 10 entries)


This giveaway will end July 28th with the lucky winner selected on July 29th and notified shortly thereafter. Please be sure your email address is valid. If the lucky winner does not respond within 48 hours, a new winner will be selected.

Whipped Cocoa Butter

Cocoa Butter - The Ultimate Moisturizer!

Cocoa Butter has been used for centuries to hydrate and tone the skin, diminish scars, heal wounds and keep the skin supple while giving it a healthy glow. Our Whipped Cocoa Butter is sure to supply your skin with the nutrients it deserves.

Whipped to a creamy perfection is quality cocoa butter with nourishing oils that will lock in moisture and soothe your skin from the harsh environmental elements. Our Whipped Cocoa Butter

• softens and lubricates skin
• protects dry, chapped, sensitive skin
• soothes irritated skin
• treats rough, dry skin
• smooths marks and scars (excellent for expecting mommies)
• evens tone and moisturizes

This luxury whipped butter begins with prime-pressed cocoa butter with drizzles of Coconut, Avocado, Jojoba and Rice Bran oils along with a dab of Mango Butter and Vitamin E. The silky smooth texture melts upon skin contact and protects the skin from environmental elements while keeping your skin soft and supple. Great for FEET and HAIR too!

For the month of June, we are offering FREE shipping on all orders. You must enter the code Hydrate in the voucher section on our webstore and in the comments section in our Etsy shop. Etsy shoppers will receive a refund for the shipping amount. Happy Saving.

Memorial Day Sale

SAVE!!!!

In honor of Memorial Day we are offering 20% off ALL products in our stores. You must enter code MEMWK10 to receive the savings.

To ALL of our Etsy shoppers, please enter the code in the message box at check out and we will refund the discounted amount to you. For those who shop on our site, you may enter the code in the Voucher field, click recalculate and the discount amount will populate.

Be sure to check out our Bargain Bin, we have slashed prices on many soaps, lip balms and perfume oils to make room for the new. With the discounted prices and additional 20% off, the savings is GREAT!

Ingredient of the Day: Dea Sea Mud

Ingredient of the Day: Dead Sea Mud

What is the big deal with putting mud all over your body?

Applying ordinary, yet extraordinary Dead Sea Mud on your body has many skin loving benefits.

The mud comes from the Dead Sea based in Jordan and Israel. It has attracted many visitors from around the world for thousands of years and is known as the world’s first health resort according to Wikipedia. Due to the layout of the Dead Sea, high concentrations of salts and minerals are produced that are excellent for the skin. Its most precious resource is the Dead Sea Mud.

Dead Sea Mud contains a large range of minerals that
• improves circulation and natural skin generation
• cleanses the skin and removes any residue, impurities and toxins
• provides effective relief for skin disorders such as psoriasis, eczema and acne
• moisturizes the skin and keeps it hydrated
• gently removes dead skin cells to reveal more youthful, healthier skin

Dead Sea Mud exfoliates, cleanses and hydrates the skin all while infusing it with minerals. In addition, it helps improve the skin quality of various skin conditions thus making it a staple product for your household.

Check out our Spa Bar with Dead Sea Mud, it exfoliates, cleanses and hydrates.

New Look

What's New?!

We have been really busy in the Karess Krafters shop with creating new soaps and a new look for all of our products.

New soaps such as Avocado Mint with real avocados, Sandalwood & Vetiver with Coconut & Beer and Whipped Cream Lemon-Almond with Heavy Cream will impart extra moisture on your skin with its luxurious creamy lather. And the new packaging adds great eye appeal.

Our appearance has taken a 360 degree turn. You will find as you browse our site a more uniformed look through out. Our new labels were professionally designed and printed to give each of our products a vibrant and cohesive appeal through out our entire catalog. In addition, our soap packaging has gone GREEN. We now wrap all of our soaps with eco-friendly fiber paper with a recycled paper band and seal it with our NEW soap label. Our change in packaging took much consideration and we hope you like our changes as much as we do. **Please note, we are still working through some of our old inventory. Therefore any soaps that are clearance will be packaged in the old packaging.

Keep up with what is going on with Karess Krafters by becoming a fan of our fan page on Facebook. We advertise sales, promotions, new products, where we will be, etc. on our fan page and we want you to stay in the KNOW.

Be sure to check out our Bargain Bin. We have slashed prices on many of our soaps and lip balms to make room for the new. Once these products are gone they will not return. A few products that will be leaving are our Coconut & Lime, Patchouli and Sugar Cookie soaps along with Cappuccino, Caramel Crunch and Honey Bee lip balms.

Check us out on Etsy or at our webstore

Home Party

What’s up Blog World,

I am still in prep mode as I prepare to do my first home party this weekend. I think I am over my fear of speaking in front of folks and am ready to take this home party thing to another level. I have some plans in the works but need to confirm with a few friends/business partners before going forward. Anyway, here is what I plan to do on Saturday.

1. Inform the guest that I am a fast talker, so if I start to VRRROOOOOM!, to please ask me to slow it down
2. Introduce myself and thank the host for the opportunity
3. Give a brief history on how we got started and talk about the main ingredients we use.
4. Talk about our soaps what is in them and why
5. Elaborate on our moisturizers with the emphasis on Shea Monoi and the benefits of Shea
6. Share about our Hemp Lip Balms and why we use hemp for the main ingredient
7. Mention that we have a Foot Care Line, Sugar Scrubs and Shampoo Bars
8. Will inform guest about our deep hair conditioner coming out in the Fall
9. Have guest sample sugar scrubs and Shea Monoi
10. Hopefully take orders and schedule new parties
11. Mingle, thank the guest, pack up and go

Plan to do everything in an hour and half to two hours.

I plan to bring along the following items
• Of course a gift for the hostess
• Soaps
• Moisturizers (Shea Monoi and Whipped Cocoa Butter)
• Lip Balms (Top Sellers: Coconut Lemongrass, Mango and Raspberry Lemonade)
• Sugar Scrubs

Hopefully everything will go well and it will be a taste of all the good things to come with having home parties.

What is NEW with Karess Krafters

Good Day Everyone,

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been home nursing two broken toes. I went to the chiropractor on Friday and they put me in an aircast (thank goodness), a tight sock that looks like a stocking and said I needed to keep my feet elevated to get rid of the swelling. They also released me to go back to work on tomorrow, Monday, May 3rd.

Things are a lot better than I thought they would be. I am able to move about without the assistance of the crutches. Well let me say from time-to-time I do need the extra support from them, but not all the time. I am not fully back to myself and will not be until this aircast is GONE, but am to the point where I can do some work in the shop.

I spent all day yesterday in the shop. The new labels arrived for our Shea Monoi, Lemon-Mint Foot Balm, Soaps and Hemp Lip Balms. So of course I had to play to see how everything would look on the jars, tubes and the wrap for the soaps. The jars for our moisturizers and scrubs are the same, however the new label really makes them pop in my opinion and it does the same for the lip balms. The only packaging we changed completely was our soap packaging.

Our handmade soap is the staple for our business. It is the product that we sell the most of and generally sell 6 or more bars at a time. Therefore, we spent a great deal of time researching and asking questions about what GREEN packaging would be best for our soaps. We wanted the packaging to be eco-friendly, easy to package as sales rise and BEAUTIFUL. Therefore, we are wrapping each bar of soap like a present with 100% recyclable Forest Green Mulberry paper with a 100% recyclable chocolate brown wrap and sealing the packaging with our new oval shape labels. We hope our changes are received well as we begin to give our company a more cohesive look. In addition, in the coming weeks you will see new photos on our site with our new packaging, so bare with us as we move forward.

Til next time, stay FOCUSED on your GOALS.

P.S. Here is a picture of our new packaging, tell us what you think

The Broken Toes

Good Day Blog World,

I have been home the last past two days with my foot propped up. Why? Because I slipped and fell at work and landed flat on the floor. How did this happen? I really don’t know because it happened so quickly, but what I do know is this.

I was walking from my boss’ office back to my desk. I was about 10 feet from reaching my destination when all of a sudden my upper body was moving but my feet were not. Now here is what I call a freak accident, my sneakers became stuck to the carpet. More like when you wear a new pair of sneakers (mine are really old by the way) and the friction from the sole of the shoe comes in contact with a clean surface and become stuck to the surface. Well my experience was much like this but my sneakers are very worn and the carpet is extremely worn.

Was there a lesson to be learned from it? Seems to me there is always a message in everything that happens, it is up to the individual to see it for what it is. This experience opened my eyes to a few things
(1) To avoid putting anyone on blasts, I will say this, you really see people for who they are in a time of need.
(2) I really needed the rest as I have been in overdrive for the last month and a half getting Karess Krafters new look on the rise.
(3) To always rebuke the enemy in Jesus Name (I already knew this). I say this because I am prepping to do my first house party on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. When the call came in to do the party I was very reluctant. Not because of the person who asked that I do it, but because of my fear of public speaking. I can sit and chat with someone one on one all day about nearly anything. But to stand before someone and have all eyes and attention on me is another story. This is an area I had been asking God to help me with and when the opportunity came I agreed to it and of course I am continuing to ask God for his strength.

Now my fall in my opinion was suppose the be the golden opportunity for me to back out of doing the party, but I refuse to let my broken toes hold me back. I will execute what I have been asking for and my Lord will see me through. Till next time, stay prayerful, strong and faithful. God Bless

Etsy Milestone

We have hit a milestone with our shop on Etsy and are proud to say that we have reached our goal of 500 sales by 12/31/10 in April. We’re not even half way into the year and we are celebrating our victory. We are too excited about this and would like to share with you the DO NOTs about Etsy.

First, don’t make the mistake we made. We opened our Etsy shop in 2006 and did noting and I do mean nothing with it. It just sat there hoping to be recognized. Unfortunately, the same ole same ole NOTHING happen in 2007 and part of 2008. It was not until late 2008 when we finally decided to do something with our Etsy shop after being asked countless times “Are you on Etsy?”.

Second, don’t just promote one avenue of shopping for your items online. We were extremely focused on promoting our webstore to the point that we ignored venues like Etsy. We have learned the more places such as Facebook you promote your products/services, the more likely you’ll be seen in Cyber world. .

Third, don’t forget to add your Etsy url to all your marketing items, brochures, catalogs, business cards, etc. Etsy is extremely popular and is becoming more recognized with each day. Therefore, you may have customers who shop Etsy exclusively and if you’re not informing your customers of all the avenues they can find your products then you may be missing out on sales, relationships, networking opportunities, etc. You never know who your customer(s) may refer your product to.

Fourth, don’t be intimidated by the Etsy forums. Get in there and make yourself known, join groups, street teams, network, work out trades, promote, have specials, etc. Remember I said Etsy is getting more and more popular by the day so you never know who is lurking around, it could be your lucky day.

Finally, don’t forget to have fun and to be respectful while doing so. Your business is a reflection of you and in today’s world we can find a great deal of information about a person with the click of a button. So please remember while taking part in online discussions not to forget you are representing your business.

I hope these don’ts will help someone in one way or another. It took us a while to catch on, but once we did we saw light at the end of the tunnel.

Happy Earth Day

What is Earth Day?

Earth Day according to Wikipedia is a day designed to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment and this year marks its 40th Anniversary.

In honor of Earth Day, we have decided to promote 3 items that were inspired by nature from the creation to the final packaging.

First up is our Cucumber & Aloe Soap by CCrafters





Soothe and heal your skin from the harsh environmental elements with our pure Cucumber & Aloe handmade soap. This 100% natural soap is true to the plant. It is made with organic cucumber puree grown here in the fertile soil of North Carolina, Organic Aloe Vera Juice, quality vegetable oils, exotic butters and premium plant-based essential oils. This bar is sure to give your skin all the attention it deserves and will do the body good! This bar is packaged in deli paper with a label made from recycled material.


Second Up Ginger Juice & Berries Hairdress by Lavida Given by Nature

This hair care product is defintely true to nature. It is formulated with many hair loving herbs, such as Alma and Brahmi along with vegetabls oils and waxes and plant-based essential oils. It is designed to coat and protect the hair all while nourishing and strenghting at the same time, now who doesn't need that. It is not heavy, doesn’t leave build-up and it smells nice and earthy. It comes packaged in a recyclabel clear jar with a nice silver label and matching lid.


Third Up Recycled Envelope Paper Necklace by Hippie Kingdom

According to Hippie Kingdom, the Eco Friendly necklace made of paper beads from Colorful Telephone Bill Envelopes was carefully handcrafted. The paper beads are strung on natural hemp and are connected in an interesting pattern to form a rectangular pendant. It will even arrive at your front door packaged in recycable mailing material. Now this is certainly a nice upcycled item. Very creative

Facebook Fans

We have become addicted to FACEBOOK. The more we chat, post, network, etc. on FACEBOOK the more addicted we become. We are so addicted to it that we have ordered new business cards with our FACEBOOK link on them.

Anyway, we are looking for more FACEBOOK fans and would like your help. Help spread the word about our fan page. We have a goal of getting 250 fans by mid-May and the 250th person will receive a FREE bar of our Pink Ginger Milk soap. We will also send our Hello Sunshine soap to the person who informs the most people about our FACEBOOK fan page. So start spreading the word. Happy Facebooking.

Revamp in progress......

Hello Blog World!

It has been a whirl wind at the Karess Krafters shop. We have been working hard to revamp our image (new website look, new catalogs, new label design, etc.) and we are sure you’ll like the new look.

Our first order of business was to streamline our product line to offer the goodies that ALL of you have come to love. This was a hard decision since we LOVE all of our products. We will only carry Handmade Soaps, Herbal Salve, Shea Monoi, Whipped Cocoa Butter, Hemp Lip Balms, Shampoo Bars and our Foot Care Line. We will be adding once ALL testing and FEEDBACK is taken into consideration our Honey-Hemp Deep Hair Conditioner.

Prices have been slashed on our Perfume Oils and many of our fragrant soaps. We will soon be adding more essential oil scented soaps once they leave the curing rack. We will be back tomorrow to show off our new catalog that was designed by RAS Artworks on Etsy.

Soap Packing dilemma again.....

Well we are still at a cross road with selecting the perfect “eco-friendly” soap packaging. Right now we use a band much like the Dan’s bands for our soaps with a recycled cigar band style label. This packaging has worked well for us. It allows the customer to see the beauty of the bar, breathe in its captivating aroma, protect the bar without slippage or getting soap residue on the packaging and we’re able to give details about the bar and how to get more on the label. In addition we can fit up to 8 bars in a flat rate envelope which saves on shipping.

Since we are trying to be as “green” as possible we have been experimenting with different ways to package our soaps. We did the wrapping with tissue paper and affixing a label and ribbon, but as the demand for our soaps go up this can be too time consuming. We even tried the corrugated wrap with band and weren’t pleased with this style either. We’ve also tried the small flat merchandise Kraft bags with label but it just didn’t cut it for us…too much wiggle room as was the same case with boxes. We also cut strips of card stock paper that coordinated in color with the soap and printed a cigar style band on clear vellum paper. This look was nice and certainly eco-friendly but we were still not satisfied. So at the present time we are back to our Dan’s style bands with recycled label. The only thing we’ve done differently is we had a graphic designer on Etsy design a label for us that we will use for all of our products. This way all of our labels are consistent and the branding process will begin.

Here is a picture of the way we packaged the soaps with the card stock and vellum label and a picture of how we packaged our soaps with the Dan’s band sans the new label.

March 30 Promo Item

The promo item in our Etsy shop today is our Pink Ginger Milk handmade soap. We bathed with this bar the other day and the bubbles are fabulous. It left my skin feeling so soft that hubby was oohing and aahing. The softness it added to my skin is derived from the loads of coconut milk in this bar. We even added a little Pink Kaolin clay to give the bar a little slip and let us not forget the beautiful aroma derived from plant-based essential oils. This bar will be a pleaser for males and females and it has been added to my favorite soap bar list.

Pink Ginger Milk is on sale in our Etsy shop today for just $2.75. Get your bar while supplies last

Zibbet Store Front

There has been a lot of talk on Etsy about Zibbet on whether or not to sell strictly on Zibbet or Etsy. The census was to have both which I feel is the best way to go. You know how the saying goes “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” and with the way the world wide web is the more places you have your products/services the merrier in my opinion.

We have been trying for nearly 3 days now to set up a Zibbet account, but due to the overwhelming response to their $7/month fee their servers got overloaded. Well all is well now their servers were back up and running earlier today and it took us about 30 minutes to set up our Zibbet site. Of course we did a lot of copying and pasting. Instead of paying $7/month well now it is $8/month for the premium account we opted for the FREE listing which allows you to list up to 25 items. We chose this route because with all the fees we pay per month from other venues we thought it would be best to do a FREE trial run before committing to an additional fee per month. So if you get a chance check out our Zibbet store. We hope you like it as much as we do.

Wedding Favors

My sister’s wedding is this Saturday, March 27 and hubby and I took the liberty to make the wedding favors. We had labels printed by SitckerDiva on Etsy with their name and wedding date on it. We originally were going to use Kraft pillow boxes, but when the labels arrived the Kraft boxes would not have done them any justice. So I spent the better part of the evening shopping for the perfect color pillow box. My intention was to go with white pillow boxes but the craft store only had black and after visiting several other stores, I was tired so black pillow boxes it was. I still had to do even more shopping for the perfect blue ribbon to tie into the label and the perfect color card stock to make round circles to affix the labels to. Now this wasn’t suppose to take much of my time but whew it took partially half of the rest of my evening. The black pillow boxes were slightly smaller than our Kraft boxes, therefore the soaps had to be cut down even more. Then I thought affixing the ribbon to the boxes would be a breeze but that took a deal of time because we had to use double side tape and had to be sure that where we placed the tape was the right place. We didn’t want to run the risk of having to peel the tape off and ruining the boxes. Then we had to cut the cardstock circles to affix the label to, this was easy since I brought one of those circle punch tools. Now the biggest challenge was affixing the circle cardstock to the box. The circle was partially on the box and we didn’t want to run the risk of it falling off. So hubby applied glue with a Q-tip to each one and held each for a few minutes so that the glue would hold. We both were glad when this job was over. The good thing is we had a lot of fun doing it and it was definitely for a worthy person, my baby sis. Here are pix of the favors, we still have to do the Lucky Bamboo favors, just waiting on one more thing to come in the mail for them, should be here today.

Things in the works

I know it has been a while since I last blogged. I have been really busy getting ready for my sister’s wedding on 3.27.10. I am doing favors for her wedding and I am also participating in the I Do Brunch swag bag giveaway. So it has been a little hectic around here. Then on top of all of this I have an infant, orders to fill, promoting and two kids in school and into sports. There sometimes seem to not be enough hours in the day.

Today I have multiple things going on. I am working on orders so I had to make up more whipped cocoa butter and salve. I had to steep my herbs in the crocket pot overnight last night for my salve. This herbal infusion is with olive oil along with herbs of St. John’s Wort, Calendula, Chickweed and Plantain. We use this infusion in our Salve that is good for itchy scalp, small cuts, dry patches and many other uses.




Here are some pix of our soap favors in the making with labels printed by StickerDiva on Etsy. We have put a couple of the boxes together for the I Do Brunch giveaway. We have not started my sister’s favors yet because I need to go and get some white pillow boxes. I thought the Kraft boxes would look nice but with the label I had printed for her, white boxes would look much better. Thank goodness it is a small ceremony.

Cranberry Spice Handmade Soap Etsy Feature

Guys I am too excited, I just got out of a meeting and had a post to my FB FanPage (www.facebook.com/kkfans) and discovered that my Cranberry Spice soap (http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=38780031) was featured on the frontpage. Came to the front page and it had already disappeared so I went to http://www.craftcult.com/etsyfeatured.php to verify it and sure enough it is true. This was a first for me YEAH!

Thoughts on Almond-Crusted Tilapia

Okay, as promised. I said I would come back and give my thoughts on the Almond-Crusted Tilapia recipe that I posted yesterday from allrecipes.com. It is delicious. I finished dinner right before 6 so I didn’t feel guilty sampling the fish since I am suppose to stop eating at 6. Anyway, I made a few changes. Instead of using Parmasean (which I thought I had in the fridge) I used low fat cheddar cheese. Since I cooked 8 fillets I ran out of the almond cheese mixture, so I used Italian seasoned bread crumbs for the last 3 or so fillets. Also after sautéing the first 4 fillets in the pan, the butter disappeared. So for the rest of the fillets I used 3 tablespoons of olive oil. The next time I make this I will either crush the almonds to a fine powder or save time and use the bread crumbs. I loved the almonds however my youngest son didn’t care for it. I will also use either all egg whites or one egg and one egg white. In addition, I will use whole wheat flour instead of white flour. For my side dishes I prepared brown rice and a medley of vegetables (zucchini, squash, carrots and cauliflower). Tonight I plan to prepare a low-fat chicken lasagna recipe and I hope I can locate a good recipe.

Almond-Crusted Tilapia

Okay, many of you know that I had a bundle of joy on 1/4/10. Prior to her arrival I was on a serious healthy living kick (which is probably how I got pregnant, eggs that where dormant came to life…lol). I was working out and eating right. Well now that little Ms. Wynter is here I am trying to pick up where I left off. I have eliminated red meat from my diet (the Baconator from Wendy’s was my best friend during pregnancy). I only eat fish, chicken and turkey that is broiled, grilled or baked. I double and often times triple my vegetable servings and aim for much smaller portions all while eating frequently. In addition I am exercising at least 45 minutes 3 days a week (my favorite exercise right now is walking on the treadmill because I can hold my baby while I walk). Anyway back to my eating habits. Instead of having a good portion for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I break my meals up to the point that I am eating 5 small meals a day and 2 snacks. You know how the saying goes, eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince(ss) and dinner like you’re deprived. I also make my own snacks instead of buying things like cereal bars, trail mixes, etc. This to me is just like making soap I can control what I put in it, which I love.

Eating just fish, chicken and turkey can become real boring very fast for some people and I happen to be part of the some. Therefore I am always on a quest to find different things to do with my meats of choice. So today I found a recipe that sounded wonderful on allrecipes.com (submitted by Michelle Woolf) called Almond-Crusted Tilapia. I am preparing this for dinner, which my family will eat but I will take it for lunch tomorrow…forgot to mention that I cut my eating off at 6:00. I will hopefully post tomorrow my thoughts on this recipe that received great reviews. Here it is

Ingredients
2 eggs
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
1 teaspoon garlic pepper
1 cup ground almonds
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
8 (6 ounce) tilapia fillets
1/4 cup all-purpose flour for dusting
6 tablespoons butter
salt to taste
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
8 sprigs parsley
8 lemon wedges

Directions
1. Beat the eggs with the lemon pepper and garlic pepper until blended; set aside. Stir together ground almonds with 1 cup of Parmesan cheese in a shallow dish until combined; set aside. Dust the tilapia fillets with flour, and shake off excess. Dip the tilapia in egg, then press into the almond mixture.
2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Cook tilapia in melted butter until golden brown on both sides, 2 to 3 minutes per side. Reduce heat to medium, and season fillets with salt if desired. Sprinkle the tilapia with the remaining Parmesan cheese, cover, and continue cooking until the Parmesan cheese has melted, about 5 minutes.
3. Transfer the tilapia to a serving dish, and garnish with parsley springs and lemon wedges to serve.

Back to work cont'd

Today was my first day back to work from maternity leave. I must say the day went a lot better than I thought it would. Even though I did some work from home while on maternity leave it was much better doing it from my desk at work. I had very little distraction and it felt good to be able to get out of the house and interact with some adults even though I was working.

I did not do much business related stuff today however I did manage to unpack an order that had been sitting in my foyer since Saturday. I got a load of fragrances in some old and some new. The two new ones that I think will be favorites are Honeysuckle Grapefruit and Stress Relief. Honeysuckle Grapefruit is very nice and the grapefruit has a very strong presence. The honeysuckle doesn’t come through as much however it does mellow the grapefruit out so that it is not as tart, kind of hard to explain this complex fragrance that would be very nice for the summer. Stress Relief in my opinion doesn’t really live up to its name. When I think of a stress reliever I think of something that would have me melting at the moment I smell it. Even though this is a very nice fragrance it is just not the wow I was looking for. It is a balanced soft floral scent.

Facebook Fan Page

Okay, my day started early as usual. Binka, which is the nickname for my darling baby girl Wynter, woke up around 5 am to eat. Feed her, gave her to daddy, and I went to do my work out. Did Walk Away the Pounds one mile walk this morning. Nothing to strenuous, but enough to get me pumped. After that I made my grocery list, then an avocado shake. I got this recipe from the Dr. Oz show. It is one ripe avocado, 2 cups of low fat milk (I use skim) and 2 tablespoons of honey. Mix in the blender and enjoy. It was right tasty too and had a beautiful pale green color. As I was peeling the avocado I couldn’t help but say to myself, boy I bet this would be nice in soap. We do use avocado oil in some of our soaps but we have never soaped real avocado. So of course it is now on my to-do list. After the shake I hit the Internet in search of how to change my landing page on my facebook fan page. Of course it was a very simple task, just needed to take the time to sit down and do it. For those who would like to know you go to your fanpage, click edit, then wall settings and there is a drop down box to change your landing page. Anyway take a look at our fan page and become a fan.

Back to work....

Well my maternity leave time is just about over. I return back to work on Monday, March 8th. I am having mixed feelings about it. One part of me is ready to go back since I had what I considered too much time on my hands. Not sure how other people operate, but I am at my best when my plate is running over with things to do. I know…I am just weird. Another part of me was getting use to being home and I am going to miss the opportunity to make soap on a whim through out the day. The last thing that I have mixed feelings about is taking my precious daughter to day care. My goodness Monday is going to be a hard day for both me and dad, which is why dad is the one dropping her off…go figure. So have us in prayer. Anyway on with my day….

Today was more of a tidy the house up day. Since I am returning back to work it was time to get some things in order since I had been overlooking a few home chores while I relished in soap making. I did take the time to make up more sample bags. My hubby and I (mainly hubby) give out sample bags while we are out and about. He generally give out about 10 or so a day. Since we have to hit the mall tomorrow for a few things, I thought it would be a good idea to have plenty available. Each flat style Kraft bag comes with our information printed on it along with a discount code to use for future purchases. We fill each of these little guys with a sample of soap, moisturizer and lip balm. Every now and then we will include a sugar scrub. Here is how they look.

Citrus Blossom Soap in the Making

Today is PRODUCTION day again. We are running low on a few soaps so of course we had to get more in the molds. We make some of our soaps 3#s at a time and really need to up the number of pounds to at least 9#s. This way we will not make some of our soaps as frequently. Now we will say that we do have quite a few soap fragrances that we make 9#s at a time and those are the ones we sell the most of. Anyway, here are a few pictures along with the process.

1. Decide what ingredients you want to use and then use soapcalc.com to calculate the lye and water amount as well as the possible finished quality of the bar. Soapcalc.com has a wealth of information about oil qualities.



2. Gather everything you will need, stick blenders, mixing spoons, colorants, fragrance, etc.


3. Weigh liquid (water, milk, aloe, etc.) add lye to it and mix thoroughly. For this batch we used ½ coconut milk and ½ water, we mix the lye with the water and added the coconut milk at trace


4. Weigh oils, butters and fragrance


5. We do the RTCP method, which means we don’t wait for the lye to cool to a certain temperature. Once we have weighed our oils and butters, we then add the lye water. The lye water melts the solid oils/butters (palm, coconut, shea, mango, etc.) Please note when we add cocoa butter to a batch, we melt it in our chocolate melter and then add to the oils/butters.


6. Mix until trace, which is a thick pudding type consistency
   Add colorant and fragrance. We did a two color swirl so we had our bowls ready with the colorants and just added traced soap to each color and swirled in the bowl. We are a bit swirl challenged.


7. Pour in mold


8. Unmold after 24 hours


9. Cut and Cure for a minimum of 4 weeks

Pictures of New Soaps

I have been home since late December on maternity leave and have my days when I am bored out of my mind. Since I have the time I have taken the opportunity, while the little Misses is asleep, to make up new batches of soaps, which I discussed in a previous post. Well today, I had the opportunity to take photos of the cut soaps and to learn many features in Gimp. Gimp is a really cool photo editing, enhancement, creation, etc. software that is FREE and from what I have read on various forums it is much like Photoshop. Here are the pictures that I took using my new Sunpak light box that I got for Christmas and my overdue for replacement Sony Cybershot Digital Camera. By the way my 11 year old who is home due to Track Out stamped each soap for me. He has been a great help these past 3 weeks. From top to bottom, Herb & Sprice, Cucumber & Aloe and Brighter Days. Thanks for looking

Soaps in the making

Today is production day, which is the day we set aside time to restock products and formulate new ones. We made four new batches of soap which are scented with only premium essential oils and colored with either clays and/or herbs. These soaps will not have any fancy look to them like you can achieve using cosmetic coloring however they will have an eco-friendly appeal. Here is a brief look into what we have in the making:

Brighter Days will do just that brighten your day with its inclusion of Aloe Vera Juice, Kaolin Clay, Paprika and essential oils of Pink Grapefruit, Lemon, Sweet Orange and Litsea Cuebeba

Herbal Spice has an herbal water infusion of Hisbiscus, Marshmellow Root, Nettle and Burdock Root and an Essential oil blend of Cinnamon, Rosemary, Black Pepper and Clove

Pink Ginger has coconut milk, orange peel powder and essentials oils of Clove, Ginger, Sweet Orange and Pink Grapefruit

reneU has coconut milk and rice powder with pink grapefruit, peppermint, rosemary and spearmint essential oils.

We used a variety of different vegetable oils and exotic butters in each batch. Each batch contains Olive, Rice Bran, Palm, Coconut, Castor, Sunflower/Safflower and/or shea, cocoa and mango butters.

Here is a picture of Herbal Spice in the making

And a picture of all the logs (don’t laugh we still use garbage bags to line our molds that Hubby took time to make from his busy schedule) From Left to Right: Brighter Days, reneU, Herbal Spice and Pink Ginger

Lip Balm Flavors

Our lip balms have been receiving a lot of rave around the Net. They are made with wholesome ingredients that will moisturize dry lips with just the right amount of glide. Each tube comes
choked full of hempseed, sweet almond, palm and castor oils, beeswax, vitamin E and irresistible flavor. This is a wonderful way to pamper and nourish your puckers with the finest oils and flavors nature can provide.

- New Flavors -

• Berryliscious


• Cappuccino


• Caramel Crunch


• Cotton Candy


• Cucumber Melon


• Orange Sorbet


• Pineapple & Tangerine


• Smackin' Strawberry

Here is what others are saying:

Review 1

Review 2

Sugar Scrubs

Sugar Scrub, what is it? And why bother to use it?

A Sugar Scrub is a body treatment designed to slough away dry, dead skin. Our sugar scrub is comprised of sugar, vegetable oils, exotic butters and vitamin E and come in an array of fragrances. We even offer our sugar scrubs in a sampler size.

How to use it?
Sugar scrubs are used on thoroughly wet skin and when used properly the skin’s appearance and texture is improved. To use simply rub the scrub on wet skin, particularly dry skin and apply a little pressure then rinse off.

Why bother to use it?
The sugar granules peel away dry, dead skin cells to reveal healthy skin with a glistening glow. The moisturizing ingredients found in our scrubs help retain moisture, thus keeping skin soft, hydrated and supple. This process will help retain the skin’s healthy appearance and texture. It is important to exfoliate the skin, especially during/ in dry and cold weather when the body easily loses moisture.

Why do you use sugar instead of sea salt?
Our main reason for using sugar is because of the size of the granules. Sea salt granules are larger than sugar granules, which makes a salt scrub much rougher on the skin than sugar. In addition sugar is gentler on the skin particularly if you have a small abrasion. Just imagine how it would feel if salt comes into contact with an open cut, it doesn’t leave a good feeling.

So start caring for your skin naturally and properly

Out Of The Box Sampler

We have wanted to participate in the Out Of The Box Sampler for a while now. Due to family, work, business and just day-to-day activities the time just did not permit us to do so. Finally, once things died down after the Christmas rush, we set one of our marketing goals for 2010 to participate in the Out Of The Box Sampler.

We are officially one of the participants for the month of April. Our deadline to submit our samples is March 20th, but we have already sent our box off with over 60 samples for April’s sampler. That is over a month early…now talk about getting things done!

Since we make every effort to reuse, replenish, and refurbish as much as possible, we wanted to do something that was eco-friendly and presentable. We had bags printed that are made from 80% recycled paper that we filled with product samples of our Sugar Scrub, Soap, Body Oil, Herbal Salve and Lip Balm along with a card with a secret discount code and % off for all orders received from the sampler. Once all bags were filled we tied each one with natural colored raffia ribbon, which was a blast to do, yet time consuming. Due to the nature of the packaging we had to use a fairly nice size box to send the sample bags off. Since the box was rather large, we have decided to keep using the printed eco-friendly sampler bags; however instead of sealing the bags with a ribbon we will now seal it with a label that will have our logo printed on recycled labels. Sealing the bag this way will allow for better shipping options.

Facial Care

Today we will share tips on how to care for your skin and introduce our facial care line that will help you achieve your facial skincare goals.

Your skin is the largest organ of your body that can be damaged by what it is exposed to and is closely dependent on what you eat. Before deciding on what to do with your skin, you will need to find out what skin type you have, which may be sensitive, oily, normal, combination or has been damaged due to the sun and the heat. The basic facial care regimen should contain: cleaning, toning and moisturizing.

Karess-My-Face Product Line
Step 1: Cleanse

Cleaning the skin is one the easiest things you can do. You’ll need to find a cleanser that will give you good results without causing your skin to become irritated. Our Karess-My-Face facial bar gently cleans and exfoliates all at the same time. The addition of rosehip powder deeply removes dead skin cells, while leaving the complexion clean, refreshed and best of all healthy looking. For an even deeper radiant glow, the use of a complexion brush with boars bristles will stimulate lathering action from our facial bar, ensuring a deep, thorough cleansing.

Tip: If you wear makeup, you should carry out the routine of cleaning, toning and moisturizing each evening, as well as washing the face in the morning.

Step 2: Tone

Toners main power lies in their ability to wipe away any traces of dirt, make-up or cleanser that remain after cleansing. Of course, the majority of residue are removed during washing, but following up with a toner finishes the job. It balances skin pH, and tones your complexion while maximizing your skin’s capacity to absorb your favorite moisturizer. Our Lavender & Chamomile Facial Toner brings Organic Aloe Vera juice together with an array of extracts and glycerin to soothe and balance the skin. Cucumber extract moisturizes and restores radiance, while organic black willowbark extract aids in skin renewal.

Tip: Use morning and evening after cleansing to refresh, tone and deep-clean pores

Sept 3: Moisturize

Without moisture, the skin will not remain smooth and supple. The face is exposed to the drying effect of the weather, so moisturizers - which form a film over the skin - contain and augment the natural moisture. Our Karess-My-Face Orchid Facial Serum is an amazing cocktail of natural oils and emollients working in perfect harmony to add moisture to your skin and regenerate new cells, while improving skins elasticity, hydration and smoothness.

Tip: Apply to damp skin (face and neck) immediately after toning

$3.00 Flat Rate Shipping Sale

We are having a $3.00 Flat Rate Shipping sale at our web store and Etsy Shop. No need to wait for a revised invoice, both shops are configured to automatically charge only $3.00 for shipping irregardless to how many items are purchased. Therefore if you need to restock on 10 or more soaps, you only pay $3.00 for shipping. See our shops www.karesskrafters.com and www.ccrafters.etsy.com. Happy Shopping

New Item - Tropical Fusion Hair & Body Oil

Have you been on the hunt for that perfect oil that absorbs quickly without leaving a greasy after feel? If so, your search is over.

Our Tropical Fusion Hair and Body Oil is not your ordinary oil blend. It smells just like you are in the Caribbean with its fresh, fruity smell of mandarin, tangerine, lime and kumquat on a bed of watermelon and honeydew. The fruity smell alone will have you coming back for more, but let us not forget the exotic oil blend that compliments the fragrance perfectly.

Cherry Kernel Oil is light, highly penetrating and moisturizing oil that works well for all skin types. It is non-greasy and is high in vitamin A and natural tocopherols.

Peach Kernel Oil is a light, penetrating oil that is excellent for mature or sensitive skin. It absorbs easily and does not leave a greasy feeling.

Jojoba Oil is highly penetrating and resembles the natural sebum within our skin. It is incredibly moisturizing and works wonders on the hair.

You can get this item at our site or on Etsy