New Items!!!

These are not yet in the Etsy shop as I need to ensure that I am not raising the Etsy bill so high that I can't afford to pay it, but these new items have been added to the Made It Myself shop! :)

Last night LaShawn and I went into the kitchen and started playing with our shea butter! :) We haven't played with it yet because we weren't sure exactly what we wanted to do. I knew I wanted to make a whipped body butter using it, but I didn't know exactly how I wanted to do it. I put some coconut oil and some shea butter in a bowl, microwaved it for a few seconds so the mixer would actually do its job, and after about 8 minutes, we had an awesome whipped body butter!

Our whipped shea body butter in the package.

Buttercream Cupcake scented body butter

Lavender scented body butter

Lemon scented body butter

Lemon Sugar Cookie scented body butter

Peppermint scented body butter (great for the holidays!)

Sugar Cookie scented body butter (great for the holidays!)

I have to admit, my favorite so far is the  Buttercream Cupcake. It smells so good, I want to eat it! I keep having to remind myself that I can't! :)

Check out our shop on Made It Myself to purchase it - $5.00 per jar + $8.00 shipping and handling (combined shipping discount available)!

More Treasury Love

We told you about a few treasuries a couple of weeks ago in which we had our products featured. Well tonight we got double treasury love. We were featured twice in the same treasury! :)

Hostess gifts from local artisans features our Sweet Pea-Cucumber Melon bath salts & our Wild Berry-Vanilla sugar scrub.

Speaking of sugar scrubs, I'm planning on making some more tonight - most likely in Lemon and Sugar Cookie scents. I am also considering trying to make a whipped shea body butter, but I haven't decided if I'm up for that task tonight or not. ;)

Another Sold Post

We have sold another item - this time we got our first Etsy sale! Woo Hoo! :) A great lady from Iowa (our home state no less) bought our Sugar Cookie bath salts. That makes our grand total of sold bath salts up to five. :)

The breakdown on our sales so far is:

• 2 Sugar Cookie bath salts
• 1 Buttercream Cupcake bath salts
• 1 Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon bath salts
• 1 Wild Berry Vanilla bath salts.

It would seem so far that our most popular bath salts are Sugar Cookie. :) We're working on a sugar scrub that is sugar cookie scented as well, so be on the lookout for that to show up in the shop soon!

Don't forget today is Black Friday and you can use BLACKFRIDAY11 to get 15% off in the shop! :)

Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, & Cyber Monday

While Eternal Stardust shops are not going to be having any sales for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, or  Cyber Monday, Candlelight Boutique is having a sale for all three!

Beginning at 12:00 A.M. CST on Friday, November 25, enter coupon code BLACKFRIDAY11 to receive 15% off your entire order!

Beginning at 12:00 A.M. CST on Saturday, November 26, enter coupon code SMALLSATURDAY11 to receive 20% off your entire order!

Beginning at 12:00 A.M. CST on Monday, November 28, enter coupon code CYBERMONDAY11 to receive 25% off your entire order!

Please be advised that these codes will not be made active until the above mentioned times and dates and will be deactivated 24 hours after they are activated.

While items such as bath salts are listed mostly as only one being available, we will re-list items as necessary to ensure that the scent you want is available. If you find the scent you wanted is no longer listed as available, simply send us a conversation and let us know what scent we want. If the scent you want is out of stock, we will let you know and let you know when you can expect the scent to be back in stock.

Happy Shopping!

SOLD!

We had our first official online sale today! Our first total sale came a couple of weeks ago when a friend from church purchased a Lavender bath salts from us. But tonight on eBay a lovely lady from California purchased four of our bath salts! She also received, although she won't know it until she opens the package, a free jar of the Pumpkin Spice bath salts and a free set of 5 cotton facial scrubbies. :) We love to pamper our customers!

 The scents purchased were Sweet Pea Cucumber Melon, Wild Berry-Vanilla, Sugar Cookie, and Buttercream Cupcake. I noticed that the Sugar Cookie and Buttercream Cupcake scents had a lot of views on eBay - the next in line was Apple Pie alá Mode. I think people tend to like food-related scents. :)

 We have six more auctions that are running - for Apple Pie alá Mode, Pearberry Mint, Vanilla, Red Rose & Thyme, Cucumber Melon, and Peppermint. Of course, all of the aforementioned scents plus Lemon Lavender, Baby Powder, Pomegranate Vanilla, and Pumpkin Spice are available for purchase in our Etsy shop! :)

New Sizes Coming Soon and Treasuries

Recently a potential customer contacted us to ask if we offered larger sizes of our bath salts. I answered that yes we did offer them in larger sizes - this particular person wanted to know if we could do 16 or 32 oz sizes. I said sure.

We procured a box of 12 canning jars in 32 oz (quart) size, as well as a box of 12 canning jars in 16 oz (pint) size. We plan to make a few batches of our current scents in these sizes - although I have to say that one bucket of salt will only make 7 of the 12 pint jars or 3.5 of the 12 quart jars before we need to buy more salt. :P Those jars a bit more expensive as you can imagine because we use a lot more salt than we would if we were just doing 4 or 8 oz jars. :)

Plus we've been featured in several treasuries over the weekend - at least three that we are aware of.

Easy Like Sunday Morning features our Sugar Cookie Bath Salts
Berry Fusion features our Wild Berry-Vanilla Sugar Scrub
Sneaky Treasury Challenge 11/12/11 features our Buttercream Cupcake Bath Salts

We've also had several of our items added to people's favorites, as well as a couple of "shop favorites" so far. I think the search ads may finally be working as far as getting views to our shops, but I'll have to stop them until we either get some sales or I get some extra revenue coming in somewhere to be able to pay for those ads. Even $5 a week adds up fast! :)

We also have a few possible new items coming soon, so stay tuned for those! :)

eBay May Drive Me Insane

One of the places I chose to attempt to sell our products is eBay. I've used eBay to sell other things, mostly some of my jewelry that I was having a hard time selling anyways. So I went ahead and used the eBay account I have for my jewelry business for this business because I didn't feel like dealing with two different eBay accounts.

Now the first thing that is driving me insane is the fact that at some point, eBay got a bee in their bonnet and set limits on my account. I am only permitted to sell 10 items per month or $500 worth of items, whichever comes first. I'm not sure how eBay expects me to make a successful business via eBay when I can only sell 10 items per month - but according to them, my customer service did not meet their standards. I'm not sure how that is, because I have nothing but positive feedback as both a seller and a buyer, but whatever. So until they decide my customer service meets their standards, the limits remain and there is nothing I can do about them except hope that someone will buy from me so I can prove myself and get those stupid limits raised.

The next thing that is driving me insane is this idiotic limitation they have on my PayPal account. eBay owns PayPal, so of course, they can do whatever they want with your PayPal account if they choose to and they do. You have to "prove yourself" on eBay before they will stop messing with your PayPal account.

Basically the limitation works like this - Jack buys a jar of bath salts from me on eBay. He pays me via PayPal. When I log into PayPal, I see that Jack paid me, but the money is "pending." I have to purchase shipping (conveniently I must print the label through eBay or else I can't use the money Jack paid me for shipping), ship the item, mark it shipped, and wait until delivery has been confirmed before I am allowed to have my money. Even then, it will take three days for PayPal to fully release the funds into my account once delivery is confirmed.

I understand this is to "protect the buyer" from eBay sellers who do not have a good reputation - those sellers who will take your money but never send you the item. However, if I can prove that I sent the item out via Delivery Confirmation and it never reaches the intended recipient, that is not my fault and I should not be punished for it. Alas, eBay doesn't see it that way, so if the item doesn't get to Jack, even if it is not my fault, then I have to give Jack's money back. This puts me as taking a loss because I am out both my product & the money paid to me for the product & shipping.

This is why I am making it a point, if I do sell anything via eBay, that delivery confirmation will be added to every single package. This way I have proof that yes, the package did go out in the mail, and yes the package was delivered to the customer. Because without that delivery confirmation - what would stop a person from buying something, claiming it was never delivered, and then getting their money back? Nothing.

eBay isn't my favorite way to sell and I'm not having much luck with it, but I'll give it a go for a while longer. You never know, business may pick up soon! :)

Remakes

So we have discovered that the metal tins we are using to store our bath salts are not doing a very good job of keeping them nice. Seriously - the salts have lost their color and scent both - the salts literally smell like the metal tins. 

We have two variables that we think might have had a hand in this - the first variable, of course, was the metal tin, as the salts now smell like the metal tins! The other variable we have thought of was the Grape Seed Oil we used in the salts. We are making the salts without the Grape Seed Oil for the time being and we have started packing the salts into glass Ball jars - adorable/pretty quilted "jelly jars" that look amazing with the salts in them!

We are going to see how the salts keep their color/scent with the glass jars & no Grape Seed Oil. We did make a batch of Lavender salts for a custom order that had the Grape Seed Oil in them, so we will ask the friend who ordered them a couple of weeks if the salts have lost color or scent. If they have, it is the Grape Seed Oil that is the culprit, as her salts were packed in a glass jar. 

A quick search for Grape Seed Oil in bath salts has turned up a number of recipes using Grape Seed Oil, so I have a hard time believing that the discoloration/loss of scent is due to the oil. I am more inclined to believe that it is the metal tins - as all the recipes including Grape Seed Oil have said to put the salts into a glass or PET container. 

Oh well, this is going to be trial and error - all we have to do is remake the salts, put them in the glass containers (the lids are metal, but have a lining on them because they are canning lids), and see how that fairs.

In other news a few new scents to add to the shop soon include:

Baby Powder

Lavender

Lavender Vanilla

Lemon Cupcake

Lemon Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

Peppermint Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

Peppermint Vanilla

Pumpkin Spice Cupcake

Sugar Cookie (as soon as the fragrance oil arrives for this one)

The Baby Powder comes in either pink (although it's a bit more red than I wanted LOL) or blue - and can even be made in baggies for Baby Shower favors! :) 

The available scents/colors page has been updated as well, so be sure to check that out! :)

More Advertising

Most people will probably find this interesting, but I have actually done more to advertise Candlelight Boutique than I have for Eternal Stardust Designs. Sure, I used an AdWords credit to make an AdWords account for Eternal Stardust Baby, but I have never used any other means of advertising for ESD. However, I have used an AdWords credit to advertise Candlelight Boutique and I have done two weeks worth of Search Ads on Etsy. I think the problem with Etsy's search ads is more related to my not being willing to try more than $5 per week as a budget than anything. Then again, with my not having a steady day job to help pay for advertising, I'd rather play it safe for the time being. According to Google I still have about $47 of my credit remaining, but it says I can't use it because my campaign is limited by the budget. I am not yet sure if I am going to try and add more money to AdWords or not. It really depends on whether or not I am able to get more freelance work and whether or not the Holiday season brings me some sales. :P In other news, I have completed a custom order for 100 facial scrubbies. I am simply awaiting the customer's approval before I set up the listing for them. :) I also completed a request for 80 samples of bath salts. I chose a new scent - Lemon Cupcake - to send samples of. Now all the samples are bagged and labeled, I just have to get the address and mail them off. :) All in all, between advertising and working, I've been busy!