One Week Till  Christmas! We hope this season is treating you as well as it is us :D

Soap Making & History Inographic

Slow Is Lasting - Slow Fashion Movement by The Valente

We are so very please to have been included in The Valente's Slow Fashion Movement!

Taken Directly from their website, they describe Slow Fashion ..."Our economy is running on a fast fashion treadmill. Goods are being produced at a rapid rate, sold for as much as a cup of coffee, and disposed of quickly and carelessly. Here at The Valente we know we can do better, not only for ourselves, but for the consumer, the industry's workers, and the environment. Slow Fashion products are created in an ethically sound way and with quality materials. The artisans behind this movement put time and thought into the construction and design of their products, letting us assure you that your purchases won't be unutilized with the tags still attached. Slow Fashion items are investments that impact not only your wardrobe, but the world around you."

The Velente provides a transparent buying experience, letting you know exactly what you are buying, what it is made of, who made it- and also where it was made. 

The Valente boasts all American Made products, supporting small designers right here in the U.S.

We have been working with The Valente for months in order to bring you our products, as well as products made by other amazing artists. 

Please, please, please go support our partners over at www.thevalente.com !!

 

Formally Introducing: Country Cotton

Our NEW fragrance, Country Cotton, has been around for a few weeks. It's about time I formally introduced it to you all!
We are extremely excited about this fragrance, mostly because it is our favorite by far! We initially were not going to include this fragrance in our final product line, until a customer threatened me, saying that I NEEDED to. That was all the push I need. So, here it is.

"This is our cleanest, most refreshing fragrance; A scent that evokes thoughts of open windows, clotheslines, and green pastures. Cotton is known for being soft, flexible, and comfortable. We did our best to accentuate these features in our Country Cotton line of products. Our signature Country Cotton fragrance is versatile- adds the perfect touch for a relaxing shower, and our Luxe Soy Candle perfectly fills your home with the comforts of cotton." 

Enjoy!

Joining the Fair Goods Family

We are so pleased to have joined Fair Goods, over at www.fairgoods.com. The staff is wonderful, and extremely helpful! We couldn't have asked for a more welcoming community.

What Fair Goods is all about:

"Our favorite, most-loved items are often the ones with a story behind them. But really, every product has a story. Someone had an idea and it evolved into a finished, lovely thing. That's what Fairgoods is about: putting the maker at the forefront. And documenting the process of how things are made, from an idea in a sketchbook to the finished product. It’s about letting you into the process, into the work itself — and celebrating it.

We sell a curated selection of accessories, housewares, apparel, and decor, as well as digital goods like type. Some of our products are things we’ve created with makers, some are things we’ve made ourselves, and some of them are existing products we love."

You can visit our Maker Profile here! And while you are there, check out some of the other awesome items they have available!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, We are thankful for all our customers, who have made running this small business not only possible, but Enjoyable! THANK YOU!

New! Introducing our Sugar Scrubs

We have finally rolled out our Sugar & Oil Skin Treatment products, as well as a new fragrance, which I will post about next.
Our products can be found on our website, and our OpenSky

Enjoy!

Happy Halloween

Owners Briana & Dominic Petruzzi were featured contractors on the Travel Channel's Hotel Impossible!

Scum Soap owners Briana and Dominic Petruzzi had the amazing opportunity to help restore Baby Beach in Seaside Heights, NJ for a Hurricane Sandy episode of Hotel Impossible.

As our NJ customers know, Seaside was hit pretty bad by the storm. This past June, Nighthawk Contracting & Mold Remediation was asked to restore a beach in just 4 days, while being filmed! Scum Soaps drove up from Virginia to help be part of the action (as Nighthawk Contracting & Mold Remediation is owned by a close relative!).

Check out the episode on their front page :D
Watch the Episode Here

The Art of Soap Making

Here is a short summery taken from our promotional hand-outs. We just updated some of the information, and thought it would be a good idea to share it with you all!

Well, soap making wasn’t always an art. In fact, for most of history it was a household chore. One that took all day. Typically our ancestors used olive oil, but where there were no olives, such as in colonial America, animal fats sufficed. In the Philippines and Caribbean Islands they used mostly coconut oil. For early soap making, there were no recipes or measurements to follow, they just kind of guessed. Early soaps were also not quite solid, not quite liquid– but had properties of both. It had a consistency similar to a slush that you scooped with your hands or a ladle. It was greasy, unpleasant, and people preferred to wash without it. Early soaps also had no fragrances or colors. That didn’t come till the 19th century, the Victorian era.

During this time woman wore less make up, and put a strong emphasis on scented oils and natural beauty. The industrial revolution brought new technologies: assembly lines and steam power. This streamlined the manufacturing of goods, including bars of soap. They were scented with herbs like lavender and rose, and used “new” ingredients such as palm and coconut oils, and glycerin. For the first time, recipes were constructed, documented, and are now available for people like us. These soaps were considered a luxury item– affordable to only the wealthy. One company still known today, Unilever, had their start during that time.

But as the need for good hygiene increased, so did the availability of specialty soap. It was realized by Dr. Lister (Listerine anyone?) that washing your hands with running water decreased the instances of disease, a revolutionary discovery that changed the medical universe forever. Previously– they believed the exact opposite, that washing your body exposed you to harmful diseases. While soap is not antibacterial, it does do a great job at washing away excess oils containing harmful bacteria– while simultaneously leaving good bacteria behind.  It is no wonder why soap has become a staple to nearly every home around the world.

Two new places to purchase our goods!

We have been diligently building our online presence these past few weeks, and I am excited to inform you all about these new additions, and others.

First off, thank you to all of you who joined OpenSky in support of opening our shop. Thanks to all of you, or store opened last Friday. We are excited to be a part of OpenSky. I have found a great community there, and enjoy shopping myself.

You can visit our store, or just browse around at other neat shops.

We have also opened a Facebook Shop, which is powered through our website. This is such a neat feature, but it may be confusing- we have our facebook fanpage, and then a separate page for our shop.
Unfortunately that was the only way it will work, and we will eventually be abandoning our fan page and move over to using only the Shop page.

We are still working on getting our webstore open on www.scumsoaps.com, but that will be next!

Our New Scents

Over the past few months, we have been working hard choosing the best possible scents to represent our line of products. We went from over 100 fragrances and narrowed it down to just 5. We couldn't have done it alone, though. With the help of our fans- new customers, old customers, and long time friends, we narrowed our line down to the best-loved 5 and even gave a few of them new names: Forest Floor, Dusk, Lavendula, Wild Berry, and Honey Almond.

We are proud to announce our scents:

FOREST FLOOR:

The inspiration for this scent came from deep within the Appalachian Mountains. Nothing is more beautiful than moistened earth, green trees, and miles upon miles of untouched land. Bring yourself back to the goodness of the outdoors with our Forest Floor products.

DUSK:

Dusk- the moment when daylight turns to night, and the world seems to change in ways we can only feel. The mystery of darkness is the primary inspiration for this classy fragrance. Indulge your body and home in deep masculine notes such as patchouli, amber, and musk. You will never be the same.

LAVENDULA:

Lavender is such a classic in the industry of bath and body, and something we could not complete our product line without. The use of lavender in soaps dates back farther than we can know for certain and is still in popular demand today. We use a unique hybrid blend of two Lavendula species, which provides the best blend of bitter and sweet.

WILD BERRY:

What better joy than coming across a beautifully untouched raspberry bush growing unrestrained. The love and appreciation for fresh ripened fruit brought about this wonderfully sweet fragrance. Hints of vanilla add to the already indulgent notes of berries to complete this fragrance.

HONEY ALMOND:

Instantly brighten your senses and your home with our Honey Almond line of products. There is something wonderfully refreshing about the scent of roasting almonds, warm honey, and heavy cream. Loved by men and women alike- the overcoming power of this fragrance is undeniably comforting. 

We Need Your Support on OpenSky

Happy August!
We are in the process of opening our web store on Open Sky, an online market place that integrates the ideas of social media. For example, when you 'Like' a product, it will show it to your friends on Open Sky- and vice vesa.

It is free to join, which you can do by going here. By joining through that link, you are bringing us one step closer to the opening of our store. We need a total of 20 joins- but we don't plan to stop there! The more fans we get to join, the bigger our community will grow.

Here are some examples of the products we are now offering on Open Sky, which will soon be available through our website and Etsy!

Lavender

I am going to have to admit, I always hated lavender. I made products with it because my customers love it, and it consistently sells throughout the year. But I couldn't stand it until recently.
As you may know, I have been taking a lot of time lately to clean up my line of products. One of the first things that needed to be done was selecting which scents I was going to keep. With the help of my customers, friends, family, and coworkers, we narrowed it down to 5 scents. One of those scents, which was ranked highly by most, was of course lavender. I had no intentions of including lavender in the beginning, but in the end I am in the business if making people happy.
At the same time, we were formulating a new soap recipe that we were excited to try. We included two new ingredients one that has not traditionally (or ever) been used in soap before. So I decided to test the soap in a scent I know I could sell or at least give away, if it worked. I used lavender.
That night, I was so excited to use the new soap that I didn't even wait for it to cure. And, it was spectacular! I loved the pure, raw smell of lavender in the shower, and the new formula couldn't have been more perfect. It was almost an 'ah-ha!' Moment- this is why people love it!
This was about a week ago, and I now have this lavender soap in both of my showers, and at every sink.

New soap sizes

Good morning! This is much earlier on a Saturday than I planned to be awake, but being the morning person that I am, here I sit smiling with my cup of coffee (Thank you HSCG for the mug!).

Now on to business... While I know people loved the idea of our smaller soaps for gifts, bathroom displays and for personal use- we are going to be abandoning that idea for now.
We are switching to newer, more efficient soap molds, which requires us to change the size of our soaps. The new soaps are easier to hold, and are larger than our previous 'large' bars.
We would like to include the guest size again in the future, but right now we're taking this one step at a time. Being a full time graduate student, mother of two puppies, and a wife has left me less time than I would like to play around with my products, so I do what I can!

Hello Again

So, as it seems, I have been too pathetically busy to keep up with blogging. It also doesn't help that this was placed st the bottom of my to-do list.
Fortunately now though, I have plenty to update you all on! You can expect a whole lit of updates in the near future.
And for convenience's sake, I am currently writing this on my phone, using the blogger app :)

Oh, and I've included a picture of my two new family members, both under a year old. That is probably why I have had no time!