Letter
from the Editor

In preparing
for the holiday season reader's may want to see one of my oldest, but most
informative newsletters. I wrote this last year and it discusses How
to Recycle Old Christmas Decorations, what tree to pick, how to care for
a real tree and so on. My final newsletter for this year will most likely be
a repeat of last years, but cleaned up with other new information. Click here to see Christmas of 2002.
On another
note, many school teachers and other non-profit groups have been
placing large orders at Mabel. If we are aware of the customer status,
and what is going on, we will make sure they get extra items to play
with. One example is a school in California placed an order for a ton
of flavors. After making sure they were legit--we were able to give
them some great flavors as extra's that are fine, but no longer being sold by
Mabel because maybe the name was too long to even make a label. Like
White Chocolate Macadamia Nut. This lucky group got lots of that great
flavor. It was just long a name for a flavor to make a clear label, as
one example. So basically, if you are ordering for a large group, it
is always best to talk with us first via e-mail.
Saving
Serious Money on Bath Salts: So many non-profit organizations are
making bath salts to sell as holiday gifts that I get to hear the real
scoop. Many of us know that bath salts are one of the highest profit
items to make for sale. This is only second to the high mark up on
perfume. Leave it to the Girl Scouts, a local troop, to be more than
clever! Apparently a 50 pound bag of water softener salts can be
purchased from Wal-Mart for under $5! These kind of large salts are
designed for water softener units. This one troop decided salt is
still salt, and they are correct. I could not even believe this angle,
so they gave me a 50 pound bag as a gift and I went nuts. I used a
whole pound in my bath to make sure it was skin safe and it was. The
only thing I did notice, was the salt crystals were so large, they do not
all melt in one bath and this did cause a broken glass look when I was done
with my bath. I could see where people could cut themselves very
easy. So, it was clear if I use the cheapest salts on the planet, then
I MUST find a way to smash the salt down into smaller pieces. Visions
of driving an SUV over the bag came to mind. Whatever you do, you must
break the large salt rocks down before scenting and selling. Kids love
to smash stuff, so hey, what a perfect project! These clever little
girls also came up with other great ideas that I will discuss in this
newsletter later which is cakes baked in a mug. See "Fizzy
Bath Salts"
to bring a new twist to this remarkable idea.
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Water Based vs Oil Based Fragrance
This is
Mabel's first real season dealing with a holiday and it has been a serious challenge.
I am also getting five more e-mails than normal per day asking all kinds of
questions and I have not had serious time to give people a good answers to
good questions. I have mainly been busy in the shipping department,
and experiencing great learning curves on what carrier to use and so on as
the holiday approaches. We have also been getting tons of fake orders we
never experience in slow times, including huge ones from Nigeria that I had
to pull off the shipping line, phone calls to a from competitor's
warning each other on what people are putting in fake orders, and so many
unexpected distractive issues that I could never even dream. I noticed
some of my competitors who I dearly love and have been around many more
years than Mabel, have closed their sites at the last minute due to
"end of year inventory." That may be a good idea to spare a
company a holiday mess, but I just do not see Mabel has to do that at this
point. One reason I started Mabel is because vendors were
actually out of vanilla fragrance oil one year. I was like, "How
can anyone be out of the most popular fragrance oil there is?" Next year we
will be much better prepared and with any luck I will not have to roll up my
sleeves and deal with just shipping. I have noticed that my writing
has also suffered and I have not written any newsletter in weeks. This
is what I am best at, so here it goes.
Number one, salt
is a natural preservative and you do not need to add any preservatives to
salt. This is a common question I have been getting. Vitamin
e oil is great, if you want to get fancy and add a few drops of that to your
creation. Number two, using petroleum jelly in your lip balm
recipe is just flat out gross. More so when people subconsciously
eat their lip balm. It is a short lasting moisturizer and I do not
even want to think about that man made gunk being digested. Better off
to lick a oil well if you want to use Vaseline. (Now I am sure what
company would never hire me.)
The third major question is people who are trying to start their own kitchen table
business and they are confused as to just how many types of fragrances they
must have. They see "water based" fragrances on some sites
and "oil based" fragrances on many other sites. Some sites
offering both. I understand fragrance is usually paramount to any
craft making, including candles. When I got started I did not have an
unlimited budget to buy all the scents I like, (I still don't) and
then double that by having to have oil and water based. Very few
crafts call for water based fragrances, so lets start with that.
Bath salts, bath bombs, lotions and many other toiletries call for oil based
fragrance. Bath bombs for sure because any water based dye or
fragrance is going to cause the product to fizz before it can even be shaped
into a ball. This can be essential oil (very pricey for candles) or
any other fragrance based oil. Some oils, such as Tangerine, offer a
natural pale orange color, which may also solve the coloration issue.
For now we will discuss oil based fragrances.
To add to the
confusion, some sites are offering fragrance oils that are "Candle
Only" or "Bath Only." I think it is just another way to
get a customer to feel they have to buy more. Most sites sell
fragrance safe enough for candle and bath. I opt for a great
fragrance oil that is as safe on skin as it is powerful on fragrance throw--if
it were to be used in a candle. It took me years to find a true
quality manufacturer as many sites will claim to be a manufacturer that are
not. I found almost all sites cut their fragrance oils with DEP or
other cheap agents that I consider to be flat out poison. It is hard
to tell at first, a fragrance oil may smell great upon first whiff.
But after it is put into an aroma warmer, only then can the truth be known.
The more a fragrance oil is cut with cheap agents, the faster you get this
totally stinky smell. I have tested these more times than I care to
count, and I feel after all these years we do carry the best un-cut
fragrance oils available on the market. We do not cut any fragrance
oil, period. Our fragrances are so strong many people e-mail me asking
how to "tone it down" because they have small rooms and our
fragrances do over power a small room. I tell them to just add a few
drops instead of the 1/2 ounce they are pouring into an aroma warmer, for
example. One site says to just add water and that will cause allot of
popping and the dish to actually break. I am not sure what Rocket
Scientist is telling people to do that. So that is
the scoop on water based fragrance oils versus oil based. If you plan
to try to re-sell such products, the most popular fragrance oils are:
Vanilla, Lavender, Patchouli, Sandalwood, and Apple. Natural
coloration can be achieved with dill powder (green), nothing (vanilla), or
cinnamon (off white) as just a few examples.
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Fizzy Bath Salts
This troop
also used the bath salts to make gifts for the school gift exchange.
The one requirement the school made clear was that the gift must be
homemade. Their professional looking final product caused much a stir
and they were accused of buying the bath salts from a store! Bath
salts are so great to soften hard water as well as skin. These salts
can be found even in the most remote towns for residents who really need
water softener units and do not live in a major city where water is already
treated.
Now that you
have your salt purchase down to just pennies, I would suggest enhancements
such as making bath fizzy salts would go over like nothing else on the
market. I do not think you can typically get bath fizzy salts locally,
so this makes the gift even more of a real treat.
To Make
Bath Fizzy Salts
To make bath
fizzy salts, you would use just 1/4 cup of citric acid along with 1/4 cup of
baking soda (both make a fizz when they are mixed together an hit water) to
1 or 2 cups of salts, depending on how much fizz you want. The
important thing is that you use no water based oils or dyes. If you
do, this creation start will fizzing right away. I would place my salts in a
zip lock bag, sprinkle a little oil based fragrance on them and shake the
bag very well. I would then add some citric and baking soda and shake
again. Color can be achieved by using any oil based color, preferably
a natural color such as dried cinnamon. Most oil based colors will
stick to the person after a bath.
Packaging
Salts
I like the test tube things here, as they say everything is in the
packaging, but people are also using plain brown lunch bags with a twist, Chinese
take out containers which are very economical, and anything but a zip lock
bag. Our new Bathroom Chemist DVD will be out soon and
shows exactly how to make lotions, bath bombs, bath salts and much
more. Out of ten topics that by far was the most fun to film and to
watch.
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New "How To" Make a Gift Basket DVD
As we finish up on our new DVD's we
ran a poll to some 10,000 people on the subject of VHS vs. DVD an overwhelming
response to DVD only. It appears VHS only users were not more than 3%
of the survey. Many of our customers live in one red light towns and
even they no longer use VHS or so it seems. As a result our first completed
filming will be offered in DVD format only. Price was also a heavily
debated issue and many people made it clear that $19.95 would be much more
realistic than the $39.95 we felt they were worth. There is nothing
else like our instructional tapes on the market and they do cost quite a bit
to create when aiming for a great production as we sure have achieved. So, as far as
price, we agreed on $29.95 for existing reader's and a much higher price for
non-Mabel reader's who are serious about getting into a certain craft business,
spontaneous and only interested in one focus area. Basically our DVDs
will be offered in platforms such as Amazon at a much higher price.
Subscriber's to Mabel that pay via the old Pay Pal system will get these
DVD's at no charge. This would be any member prior to November 1,
2003.
How to
Make a Gift Basket DVD
Can now be
purchased here for $29.95 and includes detailed instructions on how to make beautiful
small as well as large gift baskets, how to make a small basket look full,
anchoring items, building the creation upwards, removing prices with ease,
how to make a bow, along with pricing your
basket, as well as how to make and even save money in doing so. The many
concepts and ideas presented in the film are fun and many things you learn
can be used in basic gift gifting and other areas of our your day to day
life as well. For our 55 Minute DVD and manual please order
below.
How to Make
Gift Baskets 55 Minute Home Instructional DVD and Manual! |
 |
29.95 |
|
Coming
Soon!
The next DVD
to be offered is The Bathroom Chemist: How to make Balms, Lotions,
Bath Bombs Bath Salts, and more. We expect that to be offered for sale in
the next two weeks. Future DVD's on the editing block include How to Make Heavily Scented Candles, Floral Design,
Making Melt and Pour Soaps, How to Make Gel Candles, and How
to Make Cold/Hot Process Old Fashioned Soap. We expect all video's
edited and available by the start of next season 2004, if not sooner. We will be
sure to announce them in this newsletter when they are
completed.
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Scents and Flavors of the Season
I
couldn't help but notice what scents really worked well over the
Thanksgiving holiday. I actually picked fruits, such as Pear and
McIntosh Apple, instead of the normal scents associated with
fall/winter such as Apple Pie or Autumn Walk. These clear and concise
fruit aromas caused many compliments and interest. I found it very
refreshing and good to keep my head clear.
In our flavor
department we just added Margarita, a refreshing lime taste, along with
wintergreen, and lemon drops. The aspiring lip balm chemist can
consider making "double mint" which would be 1/2 peppermint oil to
1/2 wintergreen or spearmint oil. Experimenting is lots of fun!
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The Dollar Stretcher
Recently
I was picked up as a syndicated columnist for one of the largest, if not THE
largest, on line newsletters known as The Dollar Stretcher.
I submitted an article almost a year ago and forgot all about it.
After almost a year, I was picked up, article published and did not even
know it until I saw my mail box. That first article alone caused a few
thousand e-mails a day to pour in to my mailbox for at least ten days. I
never thought it would end. I did call the Dollar Stretcher to thank
them.
Making lip
balm, lotions and other things to save money and provide a family a higher
quality product seems new to the Dollar crowd and has caused allot of reborn
interest in homemade goods. Mabel also likes the Dollar Stretcher for
what they represent and its focus on how to save money in almost every area
of our lives. Mabel has a big following and would like to invite our
readers to subscribe to this free and great on line newsletter full of
ingenious ways to save money and other valuable information on how to make a
penny go farther. Click here to see the first article I wrote in
the Dollar Stretcher about making your own balm, and click here to look at the free Dollar Stretcher subscription
program. Any comments to Gary, the Editor, making it clear you are a Mabel fan
would be greatly appreciated. I know we can impress his paper as much
as he has impressed our company and I hope to write for them for years to
come.
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Cakes Baked in Mugs to Give as a Gift
As a child I
just loved my Easy Bake Oven and tested it to its utmost limits. This
gift seems to have that appeal and the recipient gets to bake their own
ready made treat, without using light bulbs for heat, but a microwave
instead! Submitted by a troop leader, here it goes!
Apparently this is an easy gift to make,
the kids in the troop only needing a nice coffee mug and a
basket. The contents of the cake is just cake mix and
pudding.
To
Make:
1 cake mix - any flavor
1 (4-serving size) instant pudding mix (not sugar-free), any flavor
1 coffee cup without metallic paint that holds at least 12 oz.
Good combos include lemon cake mix and pudding, yellow cake mix +
chocolate pudding, confetti cake + vanilla, etc. Glaze
mix consists of 1/3 cup powdered sugar + 1 1/2 tsp dry
flavoring such as powdered lemonade mix (not sugar free), or orange
powdered breakfast drink, or cocoa powder, etc.
1. Blend dry cake mix and dry pudding mix
into a large bowl and blend well. This will make 4 to 4 1/2
cups dry mix and will make 8 to 9 coffee cup cake mixes.
2.Place 1/2 cup dry mix into a sandwich
bag. Place mix into a corner of the bag and tie it with a twist tie.
Continue making packets until all of the dry mix is used up.
3. Use glaze mix to make appropriate
flavor glaze mix and place into a sandwich bag and tie into the
corner of the bag. Label this "glaze mix" and attach
it to the other bag with a twist tie or ribbon.
4. Place one mix into a coffee cup and wrap
cup with cellophane and tie with a bow. Place wrapped cup and
several mixes of different flavors into a basket.
Copy and attach the following recipe:
Bake a Cake in a Coffee Cup! 1. Generously spray inside of a
coffee cup with cooking spray. 2. Empty contents of large
packet into cup. Add 1 egg white, 1 Tb. oil, and 1 Tb. water
to dry mix. Mix for 15 seconds, carefully mixing in all the
dry mix. 3. Microwave on full power 2 minutes. ( a low wattage
small microwave may give less than optimal results.) 4. While cake
is cooking, place ingredients from glaze mix into a very small
container and add 1 1/2 tsp. water. Mix well. 5. When cake is
done, pour glaze over cake in cup. Enjoy while warm. Most
of this is taken from a small booklet by Jackie Gannaway entitled
"Gift Mixes". I don't see any copyrights. I got this book,
as well as several others from Current ( available at www.CurrentCatalog.com
). She also mentions that you can buy plain cups from places such as
Wal-Mart or craft stores and decorate them with acrylic enamel
paint. Author Julie
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Liquid Soaps Revisited
I am going to be writing an article about how to make
lotion in a blender as soon as I have time to make sure the theory
works. I have making lotion down pat now, I just have not
thought about doing it in a blender until recently. Until
then, I am once again discussing the making of liquid soaps, perhaps
one of the hardest of all toiletries to make because the base of
liquid soap is not a simple ingredient that can be found around the
home as with our other projects.
As
you can see in the photo on the right (click thumbnail to see a
better photo) I simply took basic liquid soaps and added in my own
fragrance oils or alcohol, for example, if I wanted to make an antibacterial
soap for the kitchen dispenser. For the antibacterial soap I
just picked a bright pink soap base from Sam's Club or Cosco and
added 1/2 alcohol to it along with a few drops of peppermint oil.
That came out great. Orange oil is in the smallest bottle and
can actually be looked at as soap. All soap and shampoos are
made from oil. I know that is hard to believe, but it is
true. "Murphy's Oil Soap" is one good example.
It is basically the lemon oil that does clean wood and keep it
protected. The real extracts are great and it is a shame that commercial
carriers now put as little of the real thing as possible in their
solutions. Like "Powered with Orange Oil." I
would just forget all that and use real orange oil. It
is cheap enough to have the real thing than some high priced
solution that contains just enough to aggravate you. I have
noticed even the cleaners that claim to have orange oil in them
still do not clean up wax and gum as straight orange oil
will.
The
green bottle is Fresh Cut Grass dish soap, I simply added a
few drops of fresh cut grass fragrance oil to a green soap
base. Purple is lavender I offer in the guest bathroom as hand
soap, once again just adding a few drops of lavender essential oil
to the purple hand soap.
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Gift's
for Our Troops
Yes, I am staying out of politics
altogether, but recently got a great letter from one of our
readers. She had found specific and approved web sites that
really are focused on supporting families out there with
loved ones overseas or just coming back. We feel these
sites are safe, but cannot guarantee we know them. And
this is what Mary Kathryn wrote:
O.K.
everybody, here are some places to go and purchase the
BEST holiday present ever!!!! These websites are geared
toward helping our troops and their families. My wish is
to eliminate the overwhelming amount of helplessness
felt by myself, my family, and my friends!! Thanks for
your time- I love you! MK
|
|
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Did You
Know?
The Way
To Keep A Healthy Level Of Insanity
1. At lunch time, sit in your parked car with sunglasses on and
point a hair dryer at passing cars. See if they
slow down.
2. Page yourself over the intercom. Don't disguise your voice.
3. Every time someone asks you to do something, ask if they
want fries with that.
4. Put your garbage can on your desk and label it "Inbox"
5. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 Weeks. Once everyone has
gotten over their caffeine addictions, switch to
Espresso.
6. In the memo field of all your checks, write "For a Bribe to a Public
Official"
7. Finish all your sentences with "In Accordance With The
Prophecy."
8. Don't use any punctuation
9. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
10. Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.
11. Specify that your drive-through order is "To Go."
12. Sing along at the opera.
13. Go to a poetry recital and ask why the poems don't rhyme
14. Put mosquito netting around your work area and play tropical
sounds all day.
15. Five days in advance, tell your friends you can't attend their
party because you're not in the mood.
16. Have your co-workers address you by your wrestling name,
Tarzan.
17. When the money comes out the ATM, scream "I Won!, I Won!"
18. When leaving the Zoo, start running towards the parking lot,
yelling "Run For Your Lives,
They're Loose!!"
19. Tell your children over dinner. "Due to the economy, we are
going to have to let one of you
go."
And the final way to keep a healthy level of insanity.......
20. Send this URL to someone or copy and paste into an e-mail to make them
smile..
Its called therapy...
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