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        Fall Edition   

          Letter from the Editor

          New! For the Soap Makers

          Selling Your Crafts   Making Soft Pretzels this Weekend!  Co-Op Order for the Holidays

T R A D I T I O N S   C A L E N D A R         Subscription Members   Ten Best Wines Under $15

See Entire Collection CD     See Holiday Special   See Subscription Deal

Fall

 

Winter

 

Handmade Gifts Offer a One-of-a-Kind Approach

This Christmas more and more people are taking the time to learn how to create their own unique gifts for family and friends and the whole thing is going over like eggnog on Christmas Eve.  There are so many people into making their own gifts because it comes from the heart.  It shows you took the time to do something because the recipient is worth the time and effort.  But these gifts are not the macaroni photo frames we made in school.  

Making your own Christmas Decorations from pre-cut wood forms or glass bulbs is also very hot, as well as making your own greeting cards and home decorations.  101 Gift Ideas for Under $5 can help decide what projects are right for you..   

Everyone is counting down the days of Christmas.  As of today, there are only 50 days left!  My how time passes.  In honor of the up and coming season our 101 Gift Ideas is completely done,  our e-Books are Buy One Get One Free, Our Spiral Bound Books on Amazon now all come with a CD ROM, great for gift giving, and our Craft Supply Store offers a CD ROM with every order along with a face mask and plastic gloves.  New Subscribers and old subscribers get a free large gold foil pull bow with every parcel we mail out.  We find this handy at any occasion.  This new CD ROM acts as a screen saver with falling snow and a utility for just about any craft with color wheels, recipes and many other resources you need to get at while crafting.  Click here to see our demo CD ROM Screen Saver and Utility.  Back to Top.

We have a new illustrator in the house and she will be creating patterns, gift cards and many other neat things for the Mabel White Company and for our subscribers to download, print and use.  The photo above is a gem soap made with clear melt and pour glycerin and white oil based melt and pour to achieve the veins.  Our Melt and Pour Soap Book discusses this method.  We have been soap focused all month, experimenting with the ever economical cold process (8 Parts lye One Part Oil) and just having a ball.  This month we made carrot soap, tomato soap, and many other cool soap with PVC pipe, cut them as they pushed out of the PVC and hand wrote the name of the soap across each bar while still soft.  Because we had so much darn fun doing this, we wrote a book called "The Natural Soap Maker" which only discusses the Cold Process.  Lye and fat you can simply get from the grocery store.   Back to Top.

Making Pretzels This Weekend!

What do we have planned for this weekend?  Pretzel making and lots of them!  We will be using the Amish Pretzel Recipe, maybe starter yeast for yeast, and making plain, almond, cinnamon-raisin glazed,Soft Pretzels "everything" including garlic and onion, and great warm cream cheese dip to accompany them.  Making pretzels is a great family event and we intend to freeze any left over dough to make more during the holidays.  Click here for the Soft Pretzel Recipe, and here for the Starter Yeast recipe. We prefer you right click on these PDFs and save the target to your hard drive.  Back to Top.

Co-Op Order for the Holidays

We are about to order enough supplies for our families to make ten soy candles in 6 ounce tins with 2 Pounds of soy flakes, 24 bars of soap with 2 Pounds of White Soap Base, 5 Air Gel Room Fresheners, and scented oils to make these, use around the house, and in other projects:  2 Ounces each of Vanilla, Pumpkin Pie, Apple Pie, Christmas Tree, Chocolate and Oatmeal.   This Holiday Craft Package will also include other items such as cute molds, PVC pipe molds to make cold process soaps,  large gold foil pull bows we happen to have on hand here, a few ceramic rings for fragrance oils that go on light bulbs and our CD ROM we send with any craft supply order with recipes and instructions.  It also acts as a screensaver.  Click here for Demo.  and will be sold in its entirety for $48.00 each, please add $6.95 for shipping.  To participate in this bulk buy deal please e-mail  Mabel by clicking this link.     Back to Top.

 

We also had a customer who owns an old country store ask us to create "drink" recipes.  When we asked her "What KIND of drinks?" she replied Hot Chocolate, Cider Mulling Spices, and things of that nature.  We not only came up with a great document on Mabel's Country Drink Mixes, but we added packing ideas that include tying the finished product with raffia and placing a cinnamon, peppermint or rock candy stirrer stick knotted in the raffia with perhaps a little card.  We found that produces a cute finished product. Also see how to make your own powdered Vanilla.

If you have noticed our Traditions Calendar is also being paid more attention to with great reminders of rituals we would like to honor if only us busy mothers could remember.  We really write that stuff to remind our own selves!  Other news includes the Mabel White Craft Store is fully operational, and we just added an e-Book Store so that all of our works and back issues can be now accessible.  How to Flavor Your Own Coffee Beans has just been posted gratis in the "About Us" page, the only space we could find to put it.  Another new addition to the Mabel White Library by Candy Snyder, Maybell Colorado, is "Garage Sale Queen" a great inspirational piece of work to get going!  She even discusses selling hot coffee, baked items, and craft items when having a REAL garage sale.  As they say, "presentation is everything."

After a year or so, we are actually almost done with 101 Gift Idea's to make for under $5 and that is a real breakthrough at Mabel. Candy Snyder was right, you cannot buy a pack of clothes pins for under $5 these days, so this project has been an interesting challenge.     Our Holiday's Section now has gift wrapping idea's and we will be adding many more.  We noticed tying a cinnamon, rock candy, or peppermint stick to raffia is a great way to enhance any homemade gift such as jams or hot chocolate mixes.

This year we converted the "Entire Collection" idea to a Mabel White Country Store Subscription Program that made more sense for both the company and our beloved customers. The Entire Collection is still available but it will be limited to the time period in which it was created and not include any new items.  We found it was impossible to produce new ideas with no future income from that.  Subscription buyers not only get the Entire Collection on CD, but anything new that comes out as we produce it and usually before it becomes available to the general public.  If you are a former Entire Collection buyer we recommend you do consider becoming a subscriber.  If you refer a friend who does subscribe, and you let us know, you get a free Entire Collection CD ROM each time you may give as a Christmas gift!

We determined to begin FREE "Recipe of the Week" when we came across this Ham and Broccoli Cheesecake Recipe and just could not help ourselves.  Next week we have a Pear Tart with Blue Cheese Streusel and it is decadent.  We still think our Ten Best Wines for under $15 is an ongoing great reference and a page worth saving as a favorite. 

Last but not least, we have quite a nice line still coming for this season to include:  Atkins' Recipes for the Holiday's, Making Soap in a Blender, Twentieth Century Housekeeper:  Making Herbal and Natural Cleaning Solutions, Recipes of our Famous Friend's and Seasonal Soap and Candle Recipes to name a few. Click here for a glimpse of the Holiday Offer.  Speaking of holidays I have always wanted falling snow in the Contact Us section and finally got to it!  

Wishing You the Best!

Deborah R. Dolen 

Soap Idea!  Making our own natural soaps with lye is becoming a big focus this month.  We find the ingredients easy enough to obtain, (the grocery store) and extremely economical to call a hobby.  Our experiments shown us that most recipes are 8 parts fat or oils to 1 part lye solution.  Mixing this formula in a blender until it is thick like honey (traced) and then adding your natural colors and scents are easy enough to do.  We simply pour the product into already prepared molds--such as a 3" wide 6" long PVC pipe that has been treated with mold release, and capped of at the end with plastic and a rubber band is the way to go.  But our biggest tip yet is that you can obtain nice oils, such as walnut and hazelnut at the dented can food stores for almost nothing!  Usually a label is ripped and so they sell an $8 bottle of gourmet oil for $1.     One of our readers, Shirley Mulanix says "I have also started adding shredded Cold Process soap to my glycerin M & P base to make the glycerin soap a little harder and last longer. My customers really like it that way.  I use Shea Butter, once you try it you will be spoiled. The bars are hard and shiny. I just made a Green Tea batch with Grape Seed Oil, it looks like it turned out great."

Soap Idea!  If you are into making soap like I am, and would like a fancy "emboss" into the finished product, find interesting coins, buttons or key chains with good detail.  I found a metal angel key chain I loved and simply snapped off the top.  Center your object (face up) at the bottom of your mold securing it with just a little rubber cement to stay in place.  The results will astound you!  We also heard placing a scented bar of soap in your drawers can work as well as a sachet!

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Selling Your Crafts

Many of our customers have been asking for ways to sell their craft products.  Click here for a free PDF introduction to our "How to Turn Your Crafts Into Gold" book.  The introduction itself is excellent inspiration and direction.

Subscription Member's

You get anything we discuss here at no charge.  Please e-mail us and we will HAPPILY forward you the new e-books and manuscripts as we produce them.  We truly thank you for your support of the Mabel White Company.  Just e-mail us from here what title you would like.

 

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