New Creation Space

Isn't it lovely. I finally have a dedicated space to work on/at. A space with space. A space without a chair, but I'm working on it. Mind you this is taking up roughly 1/3 of my room and most of that was the only remaining free space I had. So alas, no dancing about. But this does mean I can finally, finally roll out the book board and specialty papers can come out of their portfolios. That's right, books can now be made!!

It might seem like nothing but I have wanted to include handmade books for various purposes in my product selection since the beginning of this business. So much so that I considered making a separate Etsy shop just for them but I don't think I'm ready for that yet. This decision also affected my business name.

More on that in another post. My space is my old kitchen table and also a "portable" picnic table (it folds just weighs a ton). In my old kitchen there was no counter and no table so I got this to do both jobs. It of course also served as my main creation space. I plan to continue that tradition by using it to mix and match ingredients, fabric and papers for all my Scarlet Moon Creations. So look forward to future sightings of my creation space here on the blog.

hmm, I may have to make a special Pinterest board for such sightings. What do you think?

New for Winter

I was up in New Paltz this week for work and I got the opportunity to visit The Awareness Shop; Its a great place. I got two items that I had been looking to use in my winter products; pine resin and vanilla bean.

They smell amazing. Both will into my Yule oil and incense mixtures but I definitely want a vanilla only scented product and possibly a pine one as well. I already have other products with cinnamon and peppermint in mind as well. I hope you all are looking forward to the scents of the winter season.

NaBloWrimo- National Blog Writing Month

I want to do this. Lets see if I can. I am a few days behind but I have already posted three times this month, so those could count towards this endeavor. Or I can start the clock, as it were, now and just finish up in 31 days. The challenge would be towards the end of the month with Halloween/Samhain and my birthday to distract me.

But maybe I can do it with some careful planning. I saw on the website some theme suggestions, which is a good idea. Most of them won't work for this blog but I can make my own to fit.

The Great Pumpkin Issue

This title makes me think of the Charlie Brown movie. I decided awhile ago that for the fall I would introduce new body scrubs. New to me and to my shop. I picked three ideas after much research and thought and came up with pumpkin, pomegranate and apple. The initial issue with all three is that there are no natural scents I can add to them so it would be mostly about the ingredients rather then the scent of each. I could add fragrance oils but that's for another post.

Sample pumpkin scrub for testers.

Ingredient-wise pumpkin was/is the easiest or so I thought. There are quite few combinations of pumpkinparts, base oils and exfoliant that I can do  so I am basically having a hard time deciding which mixture to go with. With at least one I am still unsure of its shelf life. I know it will be shorter than any of my other scrubs but I'm not sure by how much. On the other hand that mixture guarantees a pumpkin smell which I'm sure potential buyers will like more, which may in turn make them use it more often. It is also making me consider adding more honey to help as a natural preservative. All of my scrubs with honey last longer.

But this is what I have my testers for. So for the first time they will be getting multiple batches to pick between. Their feedback will hopefully give me a definitive pumpkin scrub by the end of the month. This also means I will be adjusting my fall scrub release schedule. It actually occurred to me while grocery shopping and a worker at Trader Joe's said that all pumpkin items are seasonal and won't be available until around Thanksgiving. So pumpkin will be the last of my fall scrubs to come out this season. Apple and then pomegranate first.
Random thought: hmm, I post wonder how a wine scrub would come out?

Pinterest - Scarletmcreates

This post is just to pimp my Pinterest boards. I've had it set up for Scarlet Moon Creations, the Etsy business, for awhile but I recently added more boards. I started it to get more inspiration and ideas for mixes, ingredients and packaging. I would have a new idea for a bath salt or body scrub but was not sure what herbs, flowers or essential oils I wanted to use. This in particular applies to the Sabbat mixes. I say in past tense since that is how I decided to create a Pinterest account, not because I don't still get stumped every once in awhile. Sometimes the ingredients come to me first and other times the overall product idea.
If you visit or follow my page you will see inspiration boards, but also the creation process and of course the finished product with links to my Etsy shop. So  please do stop in and tell me what you think.
http://pinterest.com/scarletmcreates

Blogging Woes

Blogger app on my tablet

 It seems that some of my older posts never got published so there will be a few more posts this week and next. Things that I reference in the posts I am currently writing should have been covered in detail already, weeks ago. How odd that these did not publish. This however leaves me open to posting about posting, lol. First, do not think you will be bombarded there are only two posts that did not get published so this week will have three posts published (including this one) and next week will have two published posts.

All posts listed including some still saving from July
and the first draft date of this post from Sept.4th

But I have been playing with how I write and post and publish posts. I am trying to follow a schedule of publish a post once a week on Saturdays. But publishing these posts is just the last minor detail of getting them out to you.  I try to keep a going list of topics so I am always ahead of schedule. From there I take time while on the way to and from work (1.5 hrs each way at least) to write out my thoughts and research on each topic. I do this on my tablet, using the Blogger app (or now ColorNote).

From there when I get to a desktop computer I can edit and add pictures and set up the publish date. The reason I have to wait for that sort of thing is because my tablet uses a mobile OS which unfortunately means pictures will not be in the right places and I cannot be sure that  cannot be sure that any formatting I make will be saved. Plus, lately, the blogger app I use wont save drafts or update to the latest edits. I cannot tell you how much I hate repeating myself, even in the written word. So when lose stuff I get so upset and don't want to work on it anymore, which is good because all that frustration and anger wouldn't help anyway (for example I've written this post three times now. Its holding up other posts I have written to come after it).

My last post, Posting Update, in ColorNote

Which is why I was so happy to recently discover that my ColorNote app will share with blogger and keep all my formatting. I also found out that this note taking/checklist app will also post to Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. It will be much easier to cross-post and cross-promote stuff now. That was a blessed day. But I've found I must make sure that when I switch to the web version of blogger that it has the most updated version from the mobile app on my tablet, otherwise I'll lose even more time.
So there, that is my excuse for missing another month of posting (with drafts just sitting there waiting), my fussing over blogger and its android app, and my singing the praises of my saving grace ColorNote all in one post. Look for more business and product related posts to come this week.

Yay, for moving forward!