The Scent Lady

Closing February 4-19

2012-01-26T23:48:00.002-05:00

You Scent Me will be closed February 4-19.

Happy New Year

2012-01-01T18:34:00.001-05:00

Thank you everyone for all your support over the last year. I never cease to be amazed by the fact that we have fans all over the world -- India, South Korea, Brazil.

2012 already promises to be a very exciting year at You Scent Me. A new shopping cart system has been installed on our website which will make shopping an easier & more pleasurable experience.

Facebook fans can now shop directly from our Facebook page by clicking on the "shop now" tab. Facebook fans receive a 10% discount.

What do you think of our new shopping cart? Let us know by clicking in the box that says "post a comment."

Wishing you all a very happy, healthy & prosperous 2012!

-- Sue

2011-11-23T17:24:00.005-05:00

As our way of saying "thank you," like our store and save 10% on all of our products. (Discount does not apply to tax & shipping.)

How Fragrances Are Created

2011-06-15T22:05:00.002-04:00

Ever wonder how fragrances are created? This cute animated video from The International Fragrance Association North America explains how.

New Uses for a Bar Of Soap

2011-05-22T22:58:00.008-04:00

Thanks to Clean the World for alerting us to this article on the new uses for a bar of soap.

We Have the BEST Customers!

2011-05-19T16:52:00.001-04:00

The gift basket in the photo was a special order for Kathryn J. Just got the sweetest email from her -- "Sue recently spent about twenty-five minutes on the phone with me, helping to choose four fragrances to send to a dear relative. Her knowledge of all the "notes" in her perfumes, and additionally, which fragrance would be appropriate for the recipient's age and location (in this case, Texas) was invaluable. Where else would you get such customer service? Saks Fifth Avenue? I think not. Sue is the best!"

New Fragrances

2011-03-27T02:13:00.003-04:00

Thanks to customer request, we're delighted to add the following new fragrances to the You Scent Me line:

Allure (Chanel Type)
Amarige (Givency Type)
Angel for Men (Thierry Mugler Type)
Delices de Cartier (Type)
DKNY Pure (Type)
Grass (Gap Type)
Happy (Clinique Type)
J'Adore (Christian Dior Type)
Pink Sugar Sensual (Type)
Spring Flowers (Creed Type)

NYC Soap Swap & Field Trip

2011-03-02T17:46:00.035-05:00

Soapmakers came from as far away as Massachusetts to network, talk soap, and exchange their wares at the NYC Soap Swap & Field Trip this past Sunday.

The event was organized by Melissa Rivera of Naturally Good Soaps, Angela Carillo of Alegna Soap, and Erin Calig of Soapsmiths.

Melissa Angela Erin

After lunch, it was time for our field trip to The Little Soap Shop in Astoria, NY and to meet owner Vivian Dritsas.

Vivian poses with one of her soaps.

Goodie bags courtesy of Motivators

Rosie Carbajal of Brooklyn Bath came all the way from Massachusetts!

Gorgeous handmade soaps from talented attendees.

Thanks to our generous sponsors Motivators, Garden State Naturals, Peterman Brook Herb Farm, the Indie Beauty Network, and Citrus and Allied Essences Ltd.

Are You on Facebook?

2011-02-15T00:04:00.004-05:00

Joining us on Facebook is easier than ever with our new easy to remember URL -- facebook.com/youscentme. Swing on by & say hi!

Liquid Soapmaking

2011-01-31T22:17:00.024-05:00

Some photos from this weekend's Liquid Soapmaking class with industry veteran Marla Bosworth of Back Porch Soap Company

Marla

Cooking the soap in a crock pot.

Blending the soap with the stick blender & checking the soap's temperature. You want it to be around 160°F.

Diluting the cooked soap paste and getting out all the lumps.

Checking the pH. You want the pH to be 9 or under.

Thanksgiving Song

2010-11-25T00:42:00.003-05:00

Was looking for a funny alternative to Adam Sandler's Turkey Song to post on my Facebook page, and came across this beautiful song.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Stock Up on Black Orchid!

2010-09-24T23:55:00.000-04:00

Our perfumer has informed us they have discontinued Black Orchid (Tom Ford Type). Our supply is limited, and once it is gone, it is gone forever. Be sure to stock up now!

Shana Tova!

2010-09-08T00:07:00.004-04:00

A very cute Rosh Hashana greeting courtesy of the Muppets. Wishing those that celebrate a very Happy, Healthy, & Sweet New Year.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

2010-07-19T21:21:00.003-04:00

Yeah, I know it's been awhile since I've blogged. Earlier this summer I underwent surgery for a twisted colon. The recovery has been slow and painful. On the plus side, I've been able to get out of doing the laundry and carrying groceries as the doctor told me not to do any heavy lifting.

How have you been spending your summer?

Soap Swirls

2010-05-28T18:32:00.004-04:00

I've always admired the beautifully colored swirls that many of my fellow soapmakers add to their soaps. After reading about how swirls are created and watching videos (Christy Rose of KBShimmer's video was especially inspirational), I finally attempted a swirl. I had some blue powder colorant (I don't know if it was a mica or oxide as there was no label on the jar), that I had received in a goodie bag. When the soap looked emulsified I took a teaspoon of the powder & mixed it with one ounce of avocado oil that was part of my soap recipe. I separated about a cup of soap from the batch, poured the colorant in, and stirred well. The soap was a beautiful shade of blue. I used the swirling method that Christy showed in her video. Everything looked great. I went to take a peak at the soap a few hours later and the color had grayed out. Even though the color didn't turn out they way I had hoped, I think the swirl came out pretty decent for a first attempt.

What do you think?

Cosmetic Colorants

2010-05-01T01:23:00.003-04:00

While doing some research on soap colorants, I came across a very interesting blog post from Kaila Westerman. (Scroll down to her post dated February 4, 2010.) Kaila is well known in the soapmaking industry as an expert on cosmetic colorants. Kaila raises some very interesting points about using fruit and vegetable pigments as colorants in cosmetics. What do you think?

Sniffapalooza!

2010-04-06T00:34:00.009-04:00

If you’re a fragrance fan, you’ll want to check out Sniffapalooza’s Spring Fling to be held this weekend, April 10-11th in New York City.

Sniffapalooza is an event-based group of fragrance aficionados that unites perfume enthusiasts from around the world. The Spring Fling is a jam packed weekend where attendees will meet perfumers, representatives from fragrance houses, fragrance journalists, authors and celebrities. Some of the new fragrance launch previews will include Atelier Cologne, Balenciaga, Voyage D'Hermes, Donna Karan Iris, Prada Tuberose, Annick Goutal Ninfeo Mio, and Henri Bendel Fine Fragrance Collection.

They don’t call this Sniffapalooza for nothing! Some of the sniffing and sampling venues include Bergdorf Goodman, Takashimaya (the legendery store will closes its doors in June), Henri Bendel, the new Krigler Perfumery at The Plaza, where Sniffapaloozites will meet Ben Krigler, sample the line, and watch the launch of Manhattan Rose 44 candle & Extraordinaire Camelia 209, Krigler's first new fragrance creation in 10 years, to celebrate their 105th anniversary. Bond No. 9 is a very hot and trendy fragrance house. While at Bond No. 9, participants will have the opportunity to sample Bond No. 9's newest scents, High Line and Montauk and try their new body line.

A master class will be conducted at the Anna Sui boutique by fragrance specialist Leah Dean. In addition to the class, attendees will also get to witness the exclusive launch of Anna Sui Rock Me Summer of Love.

Other highlights include The Fragrance Foundation presenting the FiFi Awards consumer voting & their 'One Mighty Drop’ new ad campaign, Julian Levy presenting Osmoz.com's Les Coulisses de Parfum fragrance kits, and the Sephora team with new launches.

There’s still time to register for the event via PayPal. For questions contact Karen Adams at kadams@sniffapalooza.com.

Happy sniffing!

Scent as Design

2010-03-13T01:58:00.003-05:00

If you're in New York City on Friday, March 26th, you might want to check out a daylong symposium on Scent as Design to be held at The New School's Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues), Manhattan.

You can learn more about the event here.

Special thanks to Kayla Fioravanti of Essential Wholesale for tweeting about this event.

Great Computer Diagnostic Tool

2010-03-07T01:29:00.003-05:00

I won't bore you with all the computer problems we had even after getting a new hard drive. Fortunately a guy at our computer user group told us about Hiren's Boot CD. If your computer crashes, the Hiren's disk allows you to boot up your computer. It also contains a slew of diagnostic tools like hard drive recovery, hard drive backup, RAM testing, antivirus, anti-spyware, partition tools, and a whole lot more.

Smelly Jellies Now 20% Larger!

2010-02-04T01:52:00.005-05:00

You Scent Me's smelly jellies (reusable air fresheners) are now 20% larger! They're great to use in places where candles aren't allowed like dorm rooms and hospital rooms. Smelly jellies are available in all your favorite You Scent Me fragrances.

Wasabi Becomes #1 Selling Fragrance!

2010-01-26T01:26:00.005-05:00

You Scent Me has a new #1 selling fragrance -- Wasabi! Wasabi is composed of refreshing top notes of eucalyptus, ginger and peppermint, grounded with thyme and the faintest touch of amber and musk. You can order bath and body products in Wasabi, as well as 51 other scrumptious scents at You Scent Me .

How's Everybody Doing?

2010-01-11T22:33:00.009-05:00

Hope everyone had a great holiday season and that the new year brings you and your loved ones health and prosperity. Blogging time was put on hold in order to fill orders and work on some soapy holiday projects.

Of course it also didn't help that our computer was also infected by a nasty trojan.dropper virus. This nasty bugger found its way past our firewall, anti-virus software, and anti-malware software. We went on computer forums and followed all the steps to clean an infected computer. While all our diagnostic software scans came up clean, we kept getting popups about this nasty worm. It got so bad that Windows wasn't able to boot up. Our computer came pre-installed with Windows XP, so we did not have a Windows disk. Still, we were luckier than most. Steve happened to be at a meeting of our computer user group when they handed out CDs with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a free operating system. It allowed us to boot up our computer and allowed us to get any files that hadn't already been backed up, off the system. (You can also do the same thing if you make yourself a rescue disk.) Good thing too, as we had taken our computer to one of our computer guru friends. After valiantly working on our computer for five hours, our hard drive was pronounced dead. We have a new hard drive, but our computer is still acting strange, like today, it lost its internet connection three times. Right now we're so fed up that both of us want to throw the computer out the window (pun intended). If my husband's livelihood didn't depend on a PC environment, I'd switch to a Mac in a heartbeat.

2009-11-25T03:05:00.003-05:00

Giving thanks to all of our customers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, blog subscribers and readers, family and friends. You're the best! Thank you for your support, friendship, comments and suggestions.

This is a very exciting time at You Scent Me. Our blog is steadily gaining new followers. At one point the view rate was up by as much as 200%! In other exciting news, we received our first recommendation at LinkedIn.

We now have over 600 followers on Twitter! We've received a few Follow Friday recommendations. According to WeFollow, we are ranked #15 as the most influential soapmaker on Twitter!

As you can see, there's so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Wishing you all a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

Glad I Didn't Throw Out My Old Thermometer

2009-11-20T03:32:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I made a batch of CPHP (crock pot hot process) soap. The flashpoint of the fragrance I was going to scent the batch with was 200ºF. I pointed my laser thermometer at the soap as soon as it had finished cooking. It gave a reading of 160º. That didn't look right. I wondered how soap that hadn't had a chance to cool, already be below the fragrance flashpoint? I took out my old thermometer which has a probe, stuck it into the soap, and sure enough, it gave me a reading of over 200º!

Another soaping lesson learned. What has been your biggest lesson learned?

Soapmaking Timesavers

2009-11-18T02:40:00.017-05:00

I’m a klutz. No matter how hard I try to line a soap mold, I can never get it right. I watched the videos on You Tube. I read the tutorials. I was still mold lining challenged. That’s why I was thrilled when Wholesale Supplies Plus came out with their silicone loaf mold. No more lining molds! I tend to make small batches (2 lbs; this way if a batch doesn’t come out right, I haven’t wasted too much precious soapmaking and fragrance oils), so this loaf is a perfect size for me. Best of all, it’s affordable -- $13.95.

My newest soapmaking timesaving gadget is one I learned from watching Anne-Marie Faiola’s Learn to Make Cold Process Soap DVD. In the DVD, Anne-Marie uses a laser thermometer to measure the temperatures of her oils and lye solution. The laser thermometer is a great soapmaking tool on so many levels. It’s a great timesaver in that since you don’t put the thermometer in either the soap pot or the lye solution, that’s one less item that needs cleaning! It’s great for those of us with vision problems who have a hard time reading those tiny lines & teeny numbers on traditional thermometers. (In the past, I got around that by using digital thermometers.) With the laser thermometer I like that I no longer have to put my thermometer in the soap pot or lye solution and wait for my digital thermometer to get a reading. As I said before, I’m a klutz. With my new "toy" I no longer have to worry about dropping the thermometer into the soap pot or lye solution. Laser thermometers can be quite expensive. eBay often has good deals. I got mine there for under $20, including shipping.

Got a soapmaking timesaver tip you'd like to share? Click on the word "comments" underneath this post.