Hobby & Craft Forums

Arh, right I get you now lol! Fantastic to have you here and we've been discussing you over the last few days as you will have read in this thread lol! Ooooooooo, I'm all excited we have someone from Bomb on the forum, fab stuff! You're in for some serious interogation from me particulary over the next few weeks as I'm hoping to have a serious go at making and selling CP soaps!

Right, I just wondered because I need to get some boxes made and printed for my stuff, but had no idea how to do that. Have trawled so many box companies, but haven't found one that makes anything like suitable yet. Yours are similar-ish to what I'm looking for, different shapes and sizes also.

Well, I'll try my best to help where I can but I'm a CP novice - I can do the chemistry bit in terms of oils/lye ratios and %'s, regulatory stuff etc but I've never actually made it myself. Ours are melt and pour soaps.

It's difficult sometimes are I have to keep some of our secrets "secret" if you see what I mean. Have you tried Fresholi.co.uk - there's a lot of CP expertise on there.

Any box company will be able to make whatever you want, but if you want something individual, you need to buy thousands and thousands. I think our initial order for those boxes was something like 100,000 units!

It helps if you have a design package like Adobe Illustrator - without this you wouldn't be able to move the graphics around very well to fit. Also, the files types this produces are needed to make the printing plates. It's quite an investment though...........about £900 from memory and it's quite a learning curve to use. But that's what I used to design both the box outline and the graphics.

Sorry, that's what I meant, the regulatory side of things. I've already started looking into it but there's a whole lot more that I've got to learn so it'll be great to have someone I can ask if I hit problems or can't find the answer to something if you get my meaning. I've read that many books now on CP soap making, I don't think I'll have too many problems in making the actual soap other than the usual beginners mistakes but nothing a bit of practise won't fix I hope lol!

I don't do product design as a rule Karen but I know a fab product designer from the business forum if you ever need him! That said, I'd design my own packaging...

Scott on the fresholi.co.uk forum is a qualified safety assessor and will be able to help you with certifying your products. Give him a shout and tell him Richard passed his details on. Nice fella - very knowledgeable and helpful when it comes to CP.

I shall definitely bear that in mind Richard, thanks and I'll be sure to mention you!

Is that Scott Grainger?

I think I have adobe illustrator or something like that, I was given it for some Seo work I did for someone - I am not good with graphics programs though, rather better at an odd looking scribble on a bit of paper and saying 'thats what I want it to look like' lol.

Not sure if I'm in the market for 100,000 yet though, was thinking more of 1000.

Thanks Nickie, might get you to put me in touch with him if the need arises.

Mock up the design with paper Karen, then take the measurements and either scan the piece of paper in in its actual size or draw a sketch with the dimensions- this will give a designer (or you if you do it yourself) a template to work from and you can attach the drawing or illustrator files to emails when enquiring to companies.