Hi! And welcome to Caffeinated Suds'n'Such - so glad you decided to stop by...I am out starting out slowly and will have more offerings as time goes on, but I wanted to get this up and going on this day - April 3rd (2022). The reason this is so important is because I wanted to launch on a day with significance to me. I am dedicating this site to, first, my Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ - and secondly, to my dad who knew how to do EVERYTHING and was a great example of an entrepreneur in his own right - TODAY it is the seventh anniversary of his death. (In the Bible, the number seven is the number of completeness & perfection). Therefore making today launch day is one way I am choosing to honor his memory.....I love you, Dad.
Now onto to the story behind the soapmaking. Let's start with - I have four kids. I was a stay-at-home mom with those four kids. (And I was VERY involved with those "said" kids...). I got involved with soap making in a round about way by getting involved with naturopathy - herbs and aromatherapy. This happened because my oldest developed a skin condition in the second grade which the pediatrician could not solve for over a year. So I took her to a naturopathic doctor & it was healed in a week and a half. (I will be sharing info, stories and helps on a separate page "Did you Know?" as time goes on).
What did that have to do with soap, you ask? Well, I told you it was a round about way....what got me involved with soap was when I started thinking about my own skin issues, not serious ones - I just noticed that my skin was annoyed by commercial soap. It either got super dried out or it would actually feel like it was burning after using some brands. So I started to buy glycerin soap which was a more natural product because I had read that it was very moisturizing for the skin - and my skin felt so much better.
It was then that I started looking into making my own. I started out with herbals since I had a yard full of homegrown herbs at my access. I found it to be a lot of fun and happily settled into my new hobby while still tending to the four kids and all their activities. (At one point I was driving and doing pick-up at four different schools!)
So now I have a lot of soap and ran out of relatives and friends to share the mountains of soap with. The next thing to do? Start a business of course, originally named "Soap Scentsations!" which I did through home parties like Pampered Chef, through craft fairs and wholesale sales to salons and crafting store venues. My soap had graduated from just herbals at this point to a whole array of soap fragrance combinations mainly due to requests from customers. I had even made a pet soap as well. I had over 160 different unique soaps which covered many different categories. I had even attracted the attention of the local newspaper who did a write-up on me.
My business name changed when I decided to create an Etsy shop because there was already a shop with that name. So my soap business morphed into "Sonata Soap" - makes your heart sing! The craft shows and venues still absorbed most of my time but I added in school fundraisers. Massive amounts needed at a time caused me to simplify & down-size to producing one size only - hand sliced 6.5 oz bars made with bread loaf molds. And so it went as the years went by until a point where I decided to close my Etsy shop. Another shop had opened with a similar name "Sonata Soaps" with an "s" at the end - and business was drawn away. Etsy's policy sustained the other business.
By this time, kids had graduated "left and right", even from college and I decided I needed to get back into the work field. I had two daughters getting married within three months of each other...and there is where my soap business took a big backseat - way back - like a seat in the back of the bus.
Marching forward, recently I just retired after twelve years in the healthcare industry working as a medical secretary. And guess where one of my first thoughts turned to when I was asked, so what are you going to do with yourself now????? So here we are - at the present - where I felt I needed to re-brand myself. Now, as opposed to my early beginnings, there are even more sites out there selling soap products so I felt I needed a special niche within the soap offerings out there. I am going back to my beginnings in that I want to use only all natural materials in my products. I use essential oils & natural resins for the "fragrance" - nothing artificial or synthetic. The coloring is also of a natural origin, either herbal, tea or coffee infused or vegetable, spice or floral powders among other natural colorings. This is why they may not be as colorful and pretty as other artisan soaps you may have seen. I am trying to keep the product as "clean" as possible. The soap base is deemed "vegan" by the source I purchase it from and contains no SLS present in most soaps which is a sudsing agent many are sensitive to. Other exciting additives are added for fun. Most importantly, my niche is adding a little bit of tea or coffee to each bar for its antioxident qualities and just to be deemed "different" - affectionately labeled as "a sip". As you already know from visiting this site, my new re-brand name is - "Caffeinated Suds'n'Such - a 'sip' of tea or coffee in every bar!" And there you have it, new beginnings!
Special heartfelt thanks to Pietro, my sweet husband of forty years who took the wonderful photographs. (He actually has been a professional photographer for over 36 years - check him out at artphotobypietro.com - a shameless plug, I know.)
Hope you enjoy browsing what I have to offer so far. Thanks so much for stopping by, really, and have a wonderfully blessed day!