Greetings from The Handcrafted Soapmaker’s Guild annual conference in Portland, Oregon! Myself (Kat), along with Anne-Marie, Amber (Bramble Berry marketing leader and display designer extraordinaire),  and the voice behind the phone from Bramble Berry’s amazing customer service, Courtney, all traveled the five-hour drive from Bellingham in a 15 passenger van. We set up on Tuesday morning and began seeing some familiar faces, particularly from Facebook. Let me just say, it is so wonderful meeting everyone in person and seeing just how friendly you all are and how passionate you are about your craft.

This is our display set up in the vendor hall, all designed by Amber and custom made for us at our mold making company with their giant CNC machine. We have a selection of fragrances by category for your sniffing pleasure, and some of our favorite projects and tools with instruction handouts and samples. We aren’t selling anything, but we are giving everything away in raffle drawings at the end of the event.

The talks so far have been nothing short of amazing. I really enjoyed Ruth Esteves‘ presentation on using alternative liquids for the lye solution in cold process soapmaking. Did you know it takes 2 hours to simmer off 90% of alcohol in beer or wine? And if you leave it uncapped overnight, you lose 30% just be evaporation! Also, the stench of using pretty much anything other than water in your soap is really bad, but if you freeze the liquid, it considerably reduces the smell. Fascinating!

Wednesday evening was Casino Night and everyone gambled for raffle tickets. It was SO much fun! Prizes for winning raffle numbers were from Bramble Berry and Wholesale Supplies Plus. Thursday evening was the Essential Wholesale special event with a live performance from March Fourth Marching Band that blew us all away. The high energy performance included dancers on stilts and outrageous outfits. I do believe I saw a pretty fantastic mustache as well.

Anne-Marie and I teach in a few hours and then tonight is the awards dinner. After that, we say our goodbyes to another amazing conference and head back up to Bellingham. It has flown by! Thanks to everyone who has made this a very successful and memorable event.