• Tell me a bit about yourself

My name is Melanie, and I’m from Ontario Canada. I have been a full time soap and candle maker for the past 4 years. It allows me to be a full time mom to my 2 (soon to be 3) kids Ethan, age 5 and Jessica age 2. I’ve been happily married to my husband Mike for 6 years.

• What is the name of your Shop?

The name of my Shop is Greenfield Essentials.

• Please describe your creative process

I love to spend hours dreaming up new soap and bath bomb designs. I’ve been known to keep myself awake at night thinking about soap. Usually the colour and design of the soap comes together when I first smell the fragrance. I can usually tell from there if the soap is going to be swirled or solid, and what colours I’m going to use.

For my soaps I use several different types of oil, mainly Olive, Coconut, Palm, Palm Kernal and Soy. This creates a bar that lathers wonderfully and leaves your skin feeling soft and clean.

I try to do most of my soap making when my kids are in bed, or on the weekends when they are at grandma’s house. My bath bombs I like to make during the day while my oldest is at school.

• Where do your ideas come from?

Usually I’m inspired by the fragrance I’m working with. A lot of times I go to my hubby for ideas too. He’s usually to look at a soap after it’s been cut and tell me if anything needs to be changed, and he’s honest when a batch goes badly.

I’m working now on expanding my line to keep my Etsy shop fresh and full of product. I’m having a lot of fun working not only with swirled soaps, but layered and chunky soaps too. Watch for them to appear in my shop in the next several weeks. We have about 10 new scents of bath bombs coming too!

• How did you get into your craft?

I started making candles about 8 years ago. The candles in the store were so pricy and I was never happy with the way they smelled or burned. I was pretty sure I could do a better job. So, I started to research candle making, and joined several helpful forums. Many of the candle makers created soap as well and it caught my interest. I made my first batch with ingredients I had bought at the grocery store and poured the batch into a baby wipe container. From there I was hooked. I pretty much over ran our house with soap. Friends and relatives had more then enough as well, So I decided it was time to start selling.

• Apart from creating things, what do you do?

Apart from creating, Im a wife and a mother. I love taking my kids to the park, out for walks and to play dates. I also enjoy blogging, and spending a little time on World of Warcraft.

• How do you promote your work?

Etsy is new to me, and I am still learning which promotion techniques work best for me. Right now I spend a lot of time blogging (http://everythingetsy.blogspot.com) and I seem to be having pretty good results from twitter (http://www.twitter.com/greenfieldsoaps). I promote locally by selling at our farmers market and handing out business cards to everyone I meet. I tell people about my business whenever possible.

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