Labels

FDA labeling requirements have my head spinning. Apparently I have to give more than just the “common” name for certain ingredients, I have to also give the scientific name. For example, I use grape seed oil in my bath salts and sugar scrubs. I can’t just put grape seed oil, I have to put Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Oil in the ingredients list. :/

Now I am completely confused, as the colorants and fragrance oils I have do not have anything to indicate what they are – I’ve just been putting color and fragrance on the ingredients list because that’s what they are. I have no idea what I am going to do if anyone ever comes to me and says that I have to tell what kind of color (Red 40, Blue 5, etc) because I literally can’t. The companies I get my colorants from don’t list what they are other than red, blue, yellow, orange, green, purple, peach, lilac, turquoise, wine, and gold. None of my fragrance oils, not even the ones from Bramble Berry say what is in them, just that they are fragrance oil.

Hopefully I will get all this down. I think I have a pretty good handle on it right now – if it is a wax, butter, or oil, I need to tell what it is in both common and scientific language. (I’d love to know why though – most people don’t know the scientific names for things and don’t care!)

More Products Available

We now have 18 listings in our Etsy shop! :) I added the following listings today:

Peppermint Bath Salts

Cucumber Melon Bath Salts

Red Rose & Thyme Bath Salts

Vanilla Bath Salts

Pastel Rainbow Facial Scrubbies

Summer Flecks Facial Scrubbies

All in all a rather productive listing day for us. :)  I also started a Google AdWords campaign (gotta love getting free AdWords credits from hosting companies and domain registrars) for Candlelight Boutique as well as Etsy Search Ads. 

The Search Ads I only allowed one week at $5.00 total for the week to see what kind of statistics we got from the ads. I've  heard some bad things about the results for the search ads, mainly that views and favorites went up but sales did not. So far we've only gotten 9 views in 24 hours, no favorites or sales from those views. A friend of ours did a search for bath salts and found that the ads tend to repeat certain shops/products and that she went through the entire search results for bath salts and never once found an ad for our shop. :( She did however find an ad for one of our sugar scrubs? LOL

I realize that the people who keep coming up over and over in the search ads probably paid a higher amount for more impressions.You only get 5,000 impressions for $5.00. If I had paid $10.00 I'd have gotten 10,000 impressions and if I'd paid $25.00 I'd have gotten 25,000 impressions. Basically you pay $1.00 for every 1,000 ad impressions you receive through the system. I'm not really thinking so far that it is anything more than a money waster for Etsy shop owners because I'm just not seeing the love. 1,487 impressions with only 9 views, no favorites, and no sales? I'm pretty glad I set the ads to stop after one week. :P

Products Available!

We have actually opened our shop a little over a week ahead of schedule! We weren't originally going to be open for business until 11/1/2011, but since we created a few products already we decided to go ahead and get them listed.

So far we have four bath salts, four sugar scrubs, 2 different wash cloths (one of them has 3 available), and 2 different sets of facial scrubbies (3 sets of one, 2 of the other).

Here are some photos of the products currently available in our shop:

Apple Pie alá Mode Bath Salts

Apple Pie alá Mode Sugar Scrub

Country Stripes Facial Scrubbies

Patriotic Wash Cloth

Pearberry Mint Bath Salts

Pearberry Mint Sugar Scrub

Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon Bath Salts

Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon Sugar Scrub

Strawberry Wash Cloth

Violet Veil Facial Scrubbies

Wild Berry Vanilla Bath Salts

Wild Berry Vanilla Sugar Scrub

We've also made Vanilla Bath Salts, Peppermint Bath Salts, Cucumber Melon Bath Salts, and Red Rose & Thyme Bath Salts. We're also awaiting the shipment of 2lbs of Shea Butter for making whipped body butter.  We've already had a request for a lemon scented body butter, so lemon scented fragrance oil is our next purchase. :)

If you have any scent ideas, please let us know! :)