Jamberry Nails

Mother's Day weekend my brother and his family visited.  We had beautiful weather and were able to sit outside and enjoy it.  The smell of the spring flowers wafted through the air as we caught up.

It was almost disappointing when my niece, Bailee, offered to do her grandmother's nails for Mother's Day.  Being a starving college student, my niece started selling Jamberry nails to help make ends meet.  She brought some up and planned to demo them.  My first thought was the beautiful smell of spring flowers would soon be replaced with the awful smell of nail polish!  I was wrong!

Jamberry wraps are applied to the nails by a mild adhesive.  The are sold in sheets that allow for at least 2 applications of 10 fingernails and 2 applications of 10 toenails.

To apply you simply cut one of the strips to fit your nail, gently heat the nail wrap with a hair drier then apply to your nail.  Using a nail file, you then file the wrap down to the size of your nail.  It's very simple and took me about 20 minutes to do my nails.

There's no waiting endlessly for the nails to dry either. You're ready to go once the wrap is applied to your nail.  The best part is the wraps last about 3 weeks on your fingernails with NO CHIPPING!

They come in a variety of patterns and colors and are safe for nails.  There are great holiday patterns as well as french nail tips.

Check out Bailee's website and try Jamberry nails.

For $15 a sheet you could outfit your nails for a fraction of what it costs in the salon!

Coffee Goat's Milk Soap

Thank God for rebatching!  As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I had a major mishap while making coffee soap.  It overheated in the mold actually boiling out!  I could hear it boiling as I stood behind a closed door, slightly freaking out.   I've never had this happen before and it made for quite a mess and was a little scary.  All I could picture was me opening the mold and all the soap exploding out!  I'm happy to report, this didn't happen.

In fact, through rebatching (grating and remelting the soap) I was able to save the batch and make  a very beautiful bar of soap.

Adding coffee (caffeine) to skincare products has many benefits.  First, caffeine has been shown to reduce redness.  Because caffeine is a vasodilator, which means that it constricts blood cells, it can firm and tighten skin.

Because this is a rebatched bar of soap and I'll never be able to replicate (thankfully) the process again, it's being offered as a one-time special for only $3.  Order at Lora's Beauty while supplies last.

Shoes

Last Saturday evening I was out and about when I noticed this shoe shop (Pedex) was open and had tons of people in it.  There was music and goodies so I wandered in.  It turned out to be a moving/open house event.      The place was packed and as it turned out, they were having a drawing every hour for a free pair of shoes!  I  walked over to the table and quickly entered my name as the drawing was about to happen for the hour.

Now, here's the good part....I WON!!  Now, here's where I say what everyone else says who wins a contest..."I never win anything!!"  Well,  it seems that way at least.  Of course I rarely enter contests and I did just the weekend before win this really nice beer glass, but that wasn't all luck, there was some skill involved to that one.  I had to drink a beer in order to enter the contest.

Anyway, I went back to the store last night to pick out a pair of shoes.  I picked these.  Love them!

Winning these shoes was a great way to distract me from the major soap-making mishap I had that weekend.  I'll elaborate more on that later.

A few months ago, or maybe even a year or longer...ok, a while ago I was searching around to find a better method for checkouts on my website.  I started my website using Google Checkout (now known as Google Wallet).   This was a very convenient way for me to track inventory and list products.  Even better it was free!  The only problem with it, however, was many people didn't like it.  Some people didn't have a google login or were confused by the checkout mechanism.  Many people just wanted to use paypal and that wasn't an option with Google Checkout.

After a period of time, I added paypal buttons to my website.  These buttons were created with html generated from a tool on the paypal website.  For various reasons, these buttons were very problematic and buggy.  Using the buttons also meant I had to now maintain inventory and shipping instructions in two different places!  Needless to say, this dual-checkout method didn't last long.

After some searching, I finally found the e-junkie website.

"E-junkie provides shopping cart and buy now buttons to let you sell downloads and tangible goods on your website,eBay, MySpace, Google Base, CraigsList and other websites using PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Advanced, PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Payflow Pro, Google Checkout, Authorize.Net, TrialPay, ClickBank and 2CheckOut."

For $5 a month e-junkie  provides a shopping cart that will allow you to track inventory, set shipping rules, run discounts/coupons/specials for up to 10 products.  For $8 a month you can do this for up to 100 products!

I have been using e-junkie shopping cart on my website for a while now (about a year?) and it has worked flawlessly.  The interface the seller uses could stand some work as it's not real "pretty" but I didn't find that too distracting.  My main complaint with it would be that I have yet to find a way to "change" a shipping rule. It appears that you need to "delete" a shipping rule then "create" a new rule.  This is a little cumbersome and you need to pay attention because the default for any new shipping rule is to apply it to "all countries".  This could become expensive if you think you're creating this rule for only the US when it fact you didn't change the default (yes, this happened to me and shipping internationally is expensive!)

If you're looking for a way to provide multiple options for checkout on your website at a very low price, I would recommend you give e-junkie a try.   A one week free-trial is available.

New Logo

Just messing around today and decided to get more serious about designing a logo for my website and packaging.  I think I've settled on this one.  I created it through a hack by using MS Powerpoint, Paint, and MS Word.  Once I settled on it, I uploaded three files to Google Drive. The complete image, just the tub image, and just the font image.   I'll now have access to it from any computer I'm on and I can adjust the sizes and colors of each part of the logo to suit different kinds of packaging.

I've changed the Lora's Beauty website to show the new logo.  Have a look.

Shaving Soap

Take your shaving routine to a whole new level.
This cold-processed shaving soap makes for lots of bubbly lather.  Contains bentonite clay to provide for smooth razor slip.  This bar is packed with coconut oil and cocoa butter  for a moisturizing, soothing shave.  Natural cedar scent.  A very long-lasting bar and may even make you look forward to shaving!
To order visit lb-men.com or lorasbeauty.com.

Organic Cotton Pocket Washcloths

Lora's Pocket Washcloths are now handmade with 100% organic cotton!  These washcloths contain an opening to slip your favorite Lora's Beauty soap into or the bits and pieces of soap not used up.  Washcloths are a great way to exfoliate the skin.