Con*Tact Caffeine

I feel like we're somehow more legitimate now that we have a blog, hooray!

New soaps!  I'll be releasing at least two new soaps out into the wilds of Con*Tact's website very soon: Amethyst Dragon, which is black amber and lavender, an awesome earthy scent, and U JELLY?, which is jellybean scented.  Both soaps are totally done, labeled and everything, I just need to get photos and profile pages up for them.

Tonight we placed a huge order with one of our scent oil suppliers, we're ordering Werewolf by the pound now, it's that popular among our fans!  Absinthe is in the same category at this point, which is awesome, they're both some of my favorite scents we produce.  Buttercream Cupcake is quickly catching up, and I just finished trimming up and dusting Blue Cotton Candy tonight, so it's sugar bakery scents galore, which I'm totally okay with.

Other new scents that are in the pipeline are:
-Lilac
-Bay Rum (smells like really yummy spiced rum)
-Pumpkin Pie
-Wasteland (black licorice)
-Emerald Dragon (spearmint eucalyptus)

I picked up scent samplers of Beer, Money (supposed to smell just like cash, how weird?!), and Wild Coyote, which is "Tumble Weeds, Basil Leaves, and Tonka Beans; followed by middle notes of Brushed Suede, Earthy Patchouli, and Amber Stone; all sitting on manly base notes of Aged Saddle Leather, Red Cedar, and Full Musk."  With a description like that it sounds like it'd be our Werewolf, but like, Super Werewolf, so I hope it's good!

Also got a product that will harden our soaps a bit, which HOPEFULLY will extend their life expectancy a bit more in the shower, so you get more washes out of the same size of bar.  We'll be doing plenty of testing before we decide on changing our formulation, though, we want to make sure it's still providing the awesome lather that's so great right now.

There have been two minor product changes, the first is that our Chai Spice color has changed a bit. We were blending 3 different dyes to create it's brown color, but had problems with consistency and dye spotting.  We've moved over to a pre-made brown colorant and it seems to be yielding much nicer results, so if you've ordered before and notice it's a different shade of brown, that's why.  The second change is that Supermint is now dusted with red mica instead of opalescent green, so it looks much more like a peppermint candy than just a plain white bar.  Both of these changes are purely cosmetic, and were made to provide a better looking soap for our customers.

We're still doing research on international shipping, as we've recently had a few inquiries about shipping to some pretty exotic locations. Stay tuned for more information on that front.

Other work around here is that we're in the process of designing brochures for our soap.  Ideally, we'll have them available as promotional material for stores carrying our soaps, as well as for people interested in talking about Con*Tact at conventions and other events.  We're having our business cards redesigned, too, so they'll be similar to our new label look.

Also, we picked up a gallon of a super nice lotion base, so we get to start experimenting with caffeinated lotion production once finals week is over for Jon.  Really really excited about the prospect of caffeinated Absinthe lotion to keep with me!  Still want to develop those solid lotion bars too, but we need to find a better way to get the caffeine to behave with the oil and wax used in those. Since this liquid lotion is water based, it'll be friendlier to getting caffeine do what it's supposed to do.

And our label art contest is in full swing for our 5 labels (2 existing scents, 3 brand new ones) this round, so if you haven't checked out the art that's coming in for that, it's worth a look. There are some seriously talented people participating, it's going to be so hard to choose!