Christmas Shopping...Already?

Have you started? Have you finished?

I can't even bring myself to think about it yet. The temperature is still in the triple digits, and I want to give Halloween and Thanksgiving a fighting chance.

Still, many are talking about shopping for the holidays. And everywhere I go, Christmas trees and aisles of decorations are everywhere.

So, if you are in the mood for a little holiday color, maybe you might like these selections from my shop:




Until next time,

Dana @ DLPom & Soap Sense

Lavender Soap, Straight-up...or Not!

Lavender is a love me or hate me scent. Nothing is better than straight-up, lavender soap if you love the scent. If you don't, lavender is a great mixer for other essential oils, and gets tamed down just a bit when blended. I have both in my soap shop, Soap Sense on Etsy. A straight-up lavender soap bar, and another blended scent that is an orange-lavender soap. Neither of these are what grandma used to use!


Aromatherapists recommend lavender essential oil to calm anxiety, minimize depression, relieve headaches, ease the itch of insect bites, soothe muscle pain, and more! Orange essential oil has many of the same aromatherapy qualities. And while I don't tout any of these remedies, I do know that these scents calm my mind and soul at the end of a long day.

Try one...you'll never go back to store bought soap!

The Paper is Handcrafted Too?!

Many people are often surprised to find out that the paper band around my soap is also handmade. When I started selling my soap (rather than just giving it away to family and friends), I wanted to find a way to package it that was unique and professional, and a bit kinder to the environment as well. I had made paper pulp before and had used a mold, deckle, and paper press to shape and dry it. So it was a natural extension to use these handmade sheets of paper as soap bands.


These photos are from the backend of the process. The sheets have been drying in the press for about a week, layered in between sheets of absorbant (and reusable) paper towels and dish cloths. After the finished sheets are released from the paper press, they are torn into narrow strips to wrap around the soap bars as bands.

All of the paper used to make the pulp comes from clean, ink-free scraps that I save from around the house. It might be scraps of computer paper, colored paper, or tissue paper. This paper gets a second life rather than just immediately being thrown away. Collecting different papers really doesn't take up that much space, and what a great way to recycle!


I try to make colorful papers that match the scent and/or color of the soap. The first photo is my Orange Lavender essential oil soap with matching, Orange Lavender paper. Once the soap is cured, you'll find it nicely wrapped on my handcrafted soap Etsy shop, Soap Sense.

What do you do to make your craft even more handcrafted?

What is Creativity?

What has been around as long as humans? What exists in all cultures? What can be demonstrated by young and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor? What is known and recognized by most everyone, yet is so hard to define?

CREATIVITY!

This is one definition offered by E. Paul Torrence, the "father of creativity":

"Creativity is a process of becoming sensitive to problems, gaps in knowledge, missing elements, disharmonies, and so on; identifying the difficulty; searching for solutions; making guesses or formulating hypotheses about the deficiencies; testing and retesting and possibly modifying and retesting again! And finally, communicating the results."

We all have more ideas floating around in our minds than we use. Creative thinking, which is innate to some and has to be learned by others, will help us use these ideas and come up with new and better ideas. The more you practive creative thinking, the more the mind will become creative... Some people look at a different situation and say, "It cannot be done." With creative thinking, you will find very few things are impossible.

My next blog installments on creativity will review the skills needed for creative thinking: fluency, flexibility, elaboration, and evaluation.

Until next time, think about how you can become more creative with your craft!