Nope! When Chrome first came to popularity, people switched over to it cause it was “faster” (turns out, it just eats through your device’s CPU) but since then Firefox has upped its game in a major way. Chrome just doesn’t measure up anymore. Plus, nowadays Chrome is just a data harvester designed to show hyper targeted ads - so even if Firefox ain’t for you, it’s still worth ditching Google for a different browser.
I would love some help finding some alternatives! My favorite was your Brittle Hollow soap. Though knowing the fragrance oil would be pretty awesome too, I've been thinking about getting into soap or even perfume making for a few years now
The fragrance oil for Brittle Hollow was Wholesale Supplies Plus's Peppermint Macaron! It's not a dupe so I can't give you a 1:1 recommendation, but I believe that Katie over at Royalty Soaps has used it or similar scents in the past!
I strongly recommend Nurture Handmade (previously Nurture Soaps) and their Melt and Pour starter kit!
That 2lb soap mold is the exact same one that I started out with, and the kit comes with enough variety that you have some chances to mess around! Their site also has a wonderful soap calculator (and so does WSP's) that helps you add enough fragrance oil to have a scent, while keeping you from adding so much that you end up hurting yourself or ruining your soap.
I've never made perfume so I can't give you any tips there, but I'm more than happy to help you get started with soap making!
So sad to see your shop go, my favorite go-to soap was from you. I went to go order some more today and saw it was gone, but I'm so glad at least your shop was open for a while. Hopefully I can find similar scents to some of your soaps eventually. You're so awesome, I'm so sorry the shop didn't end up working out. Thank you for all you did!!
Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm happy to help you find alternates - some of my soaps were actually dupe fragrances of big brand soaps - or even help you make your own if you want a new hobby!
Just right now this second realized that even though I'm shutting down my store, nothing is stopping me from moving forward with my BoP project and also photographing all my fragrance discoloration samples and just putting the results here, where I don't have to worry about paying for website hosting.
Also, re: the BoP project - I've identified a grand total of one (1) fragrance oil that I can confidently say does not contain anything that would trigger an allergy. Every single other fragrance I've looked at contains varying degrees of a compound that may or may not trigger a reaction.
Well... I didn't think I'd ever have to make this post, but here we are. Long story short, I've made the decision that I'm going to be sunsetting Space Ace Soaps.
What this means is that I'll still post here if I run sales, I'll post anything interesting and occasional reminders of my products, but I won't be making anything new and I won't be remaking products that sell out.
More details and thoughts below the cut.
I started making soaps at the tail end of 2021, and I had so much fun that I figured out fast that I'd need to sell them in order to make space for ones I wanted to make in the future. I was very lucky in having a lot of support from family and friends, and I was really hopeful.
I knew I was going to be running the business at a loss for a few years - it's very rare for a business to immediately make a profit, especially a small business selling to a niche category. That was fine, I had the time and energy and as long as I made some sales, I could slowly defray the costs of materials.
At the end of 2022, I had a collaboration I'd put a lot of effort into making work fall through (no one's fault, it just didn't work out), and then my dad died, which meant that I had to put other plans on hold while I dealt with his shit. I made efforts to get my name out there, and had no success.
At the end of 2023, I teamed up with a small marketing business who did a great job setting me up to get started on Instagram, and I had a few sales come through there.
At the start of 2024, I had a different crisis each month, practically. I had several health issues, found out I was losing the job that paid my bills, and then started the process of going back to college to try and get more options to keep going. I was in survival mode and between that and the start of the hot weather, I had no time or energy to keep making products to try and get my name out there.
I had other collaborations fall through, and the move away from Etsy meant that while I was getting more traffic to my site, I wasn't getting the sales I needed to justify spending money on the move.
We've now reached the point where I have steady employment again and the weather's cooled down, but I've had to figure out my priorities, and I can't make running the business an option anymore. I could pay people to do marketing, I could run ads, I could do a lot of things, but that takes more energy than I have these days, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to pick this up again.
So here we are. I don't regret trying this out, and I've been truly lucky to have had so many people supporting me, but I just can't handle everything needed to run a business by myself. What it ends up coming down to is marketing, and that's going to take more time than I have right now.
Maybe someday, I'll be able to take up the business again and start making soaps and actually make a profit, but for now... this is just a sad and unsatisfying goodbye.
Thank you to everyone who's been with me on this journey. Your support has truly helped.
I've had the time/energy to start looking into the whole Balsam of Peru thing again, and the stumbling block I keep running up against is that none of my allergen sheets actually list BoP, but a fair chunk of them list Benzyl Benzoate, which is a component in BoP.
Even putting aside the issue of 'how much is too much' (which honestly, I'd err on the side of caution and say anything at all is too much), I genuinely don't know if it'd trigger a reaction in someone with a BoP allergy. I don't want to say 'Everything is BoP free' on a technicality. Short of recruiting people to be guinea pigs with a sample bar, I'm not sure how to move forward with this project.
That said, if anyone with a Balsam of Peru allergy is willing to let me mail you a few sample soaps, hit me up.
Slowly going feral over my inability to craft during the summer. I know that if I try I'll end up miserable but I have so many ideas I want to dooooooooooo.
Realized I haven't posted anything here in a while, and thought I should give an update about what's going on and what's to come!
Back in April, I found out that my day job was outsourcing my entire department, and since then, all of my free time has been devoted to finding a new job and dealing with the physical limitations of my mortal form when exposed to high stress.
So while I still have plans to finish up the FF7 collection, beef up my Pride collection, and make a minimum of 20 more wax melt fragrances, I simply do not have the time or energy right now. I'm still posting 3x weekly on Instagram (featuring an older soap, a podcast rec, and a peek behind the scenes), and I still have plans for my big discoloration database project and my quest for BOP free soaps.
In the meantime, keep spreading the word! I'll be back someday, bigger and better than ever, and I'll have a backlog of creativity to pour out when that happens!
i just found your site and i got SO excited about the outer wilds soap i got a headache about how excited I was!! I just ordered and am so looking forward to getting it! Hopefully about to become one of my favorite soap shops! :-)
I hope your headache has gone away, but I'm really glad to have gotten you so excited! I should be packing up your order tonight and sending it off to you soon!
Would it help you to have soaps with Balsam of Peru marked on my site?
Yes
No
I don't know what that is?
Voting ended onApr 27, 2024
Had a conversation on my main blog that got me thinking about what allergens I can easily mark and while fragrance allergens are trickier due to how they're labeled and formulation changes, I do want as wide an audience as possible to be able to safely use my soaps.
And for those who don't know - Balsam of Peru is an ingredient commonly used to replace cinnamon or some other fragrances.
I went ahead and started looking at the allergen data for my soaps to get a head start on this, and... not a single oil I've looked at so far has been completely free of one of the components. Some of them have less than a percent of Benzyl Benzoate, but that still is too much for me to say it's BOP free. I'm going to keep looking, but this might take some time...
If it isn't too personal a question, do you know/are you willing to share what your allergy is to? I make soap and I'm always trying to make sure my stuff is as allergy-friendly as possible.
So it is called Balsam of Peru and it is in a LOT of things, but it's listed under 'natural flavors' or 'natural fragrances.'
Primarily, it's in things that are cinnamon-scented. Like the pine cones at Christmas time. But it is also used in pine-scents, some citrus, some floral.
I can usually tell if something uses BOP on first whiff because it's sharper than a natural cinnamon scent.
It's in a lot of perfumes because cinnamon itself doesn't infuse easily, so to get a spiced scent they use BOP.
Okay, this is actually really good to know because it's listed on my fragrance allergy sheets, but not as BOP - it's listed as Benzyl whatever, in all its forms, which means that I can now treasure hunt the *shit* out of my 300+ fragrances to start making notes about what scents don't have BOP in them!
Thanks for taking the time to answer, this has been educational!
Oh yeah for sure! It's definitely one of those allergies that's common enough to consider, but I'd be willing to bet most people who have it don't know they have it, or know what it is.
it has a lot of names and the fact that the manufacturers can just list it as 'fragrance' is awful.
link has list of names and what chemicals are present in it.
Balsam of Peru - Wikipedia
I struggle with being sensitive to chemical fragrances and am screaming that they changed something in the conditioner I use and it leaves a smell on my hair/scalp for days that I can't get rid of. I can't figure out what it is cause the company changed the order of the ingredients list and my squirrel brain won't let me read through and compare the list on each bottle and retain it to figure out which ingredient it is that is so awful.
have to convince myself to take pic and copy the text and put it in a doc and alphabetize it so I can compare the list more easily.
thankfully managed to find a conditioner bar that is unscented (and the small bit of fragrance it has is from the ingredients not added chemical odors and isn't a bother for me).
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