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What’s the Point of GMP?
You might wonder what’s the point of going to all the trouble of following good manufacturing practices. After all, your products are great, right? The whole reason for implementing good manufacturing practices is to ensure that your great product is great: every batch, every bar, every time. GMP is there to address and control every […]
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Five Most Common Labeling Errors
The errors are all simple to fix. It’s just a matter of putting the right information in the right place, and making sure that it’s the correct information.
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Cosmetic Legislative Update
Three bills have been introduced this session that affect cosmetics–especially small soap and cosmetic manufacturers. They are: HR 2359 – Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 HR 4262 – Cosmetics Safety Enhancement Act of 2012 HR 4395 – Cosmetic Safety Amendments Act of 2012 All are trying to address “cosmetic safety” in different ways. There are […]
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Making a Difference with Soap
Soap: At one end of the spectrum it’s a luxury item, at the other end soap saves lives. Did you know that more than 5 million lives are lost each year (the majority of whom are children) to diseases such as acute respiratory infection and diarrheal disease caused by improper hygiene and lack of soap? […]
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Amazing and Unique Soaps
We’ve all seen bar soap (which can be stunningly beautiful with swirls, embeds, and colors), and liquid soap, and even soap that looks like food. But how about soap that looks completely like something else? Check out these amazing soaps!
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Banning Anti-Bacterial Soap?
Students at the University of Texas voted last week to ban anti-bacterial soap and other products containing triclosan from the university entirely. The bill was authored by five UT students and unanimously approved by the students. Now, of course, it will be up to the university administration (and their purchasing department) to decide if they […]
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Giant Soap Bubbles
Did you know there are huge soap bubble artists? They make AMAZING bubbles – some are 15 feet (yes, FEET) high!
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“Soap Bubble” at Milky Way Center
Scientists have discovered gigantic bubble-like structures 25,000 light-years tall ballooning above and below the Milky Way. Within each curved “bubble”, extremely energetic electrons of unknown origin interact with lower-energy light to generate the gamma rays that define these bubbles.
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ForSoapmakers sold, not closed!
In my last post I mentioned that I would be closing www.forsoapmakers.com. I’m really, really pleased to say that the business was purchased by Kevin Growns, from Star City, Arkansas! The business will continue, and all the existing products will continue to be offered. So far, Kevin is doing a great job filling orders and […]
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ForSoapmakers.com Closing December 31
After much thought and internal debate, I have decided to close down ForSoapmakers.com as of December 31, 2011. It was a hard decision, but having made it, I must admit somewhat of a sense of relief. ForSoapmakers had gotten to the point that it had to grow to the next level (or not). I chose […]
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Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011
The Safe Cosmetics Act of 2011 was introduced in June. I’ve reviewed the bill and have been following all the discussions. Unfortunately, it seems to have somewhat polarized the handcrafted soap community, which is surprising since we all want essentially the same things: to be able to run our businesses, to make safe soaps and […]
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Good Manufacturing Practices – Part 3
In this 3rd installment, we’ll take a look at the records required to meet the standards required in the Good Manufacturing Practices Guidelines/Inspection Checklist. Like I say about labeling, “It isn’t COMPLICATED, but it is DETAILED.” If you have your raw materials correctly logged and labeled, and your recipe/formulation with the procedures written out (see […]
Helping you undersand soap and cosmetic regulations — in plain English.