Interview with Teri of Tree Marie Soapworks
When Teri with Tree Marie Soapworks first entered the Soap Challenge Club in 2016, people took notice. She creates beautifully intricate cold process bars. Customers and fellow makers love watching her work on her YouTube channel and seeing the results on her Instagram page. Learn more about how Teri got started, what inspires her, and her soap making tips.
How long have
you been making soap and how did you get started?
My
interest in soap making started out as an interest in learning old skills. At the
time, I had the love of learning self-sufficiency. My family had a garden, fruit
trees, chickens, and bees. I made my own bread and laundry detergent, and
was learning canning and preserving food. One day, when the topic of soap making
came up, I dove in and haven’t looked back. I started making soap in 2015.
My passion for learning old skills quickly became a passion for design, as my
background is in art and graphic design. In August of 2016, I entered
Amy Warden’s Soap Challenge for the first time, and tied
for 3rd place. The Soap Challenge Club opened a whole new world of possibilities for
me, and now my concentration is all about soap
design.
What advice would you give to
makers just starting their businesses?
For doing
business you need connections. Even if you aren’t sure about your path, it
doesn’t hurt to start a following by making a presence on social media.
You can easily set up an Instagram and Facebook page. After that, start a YouTube
channel or start blogging. You need content to draw people to you, so start now; in
the future you will be glad you did.
What inspires
you to create?
Nature, colors, landscapes, patterns,
art, and other soap makers…Pinterest. I am a visual person so I have lots
of Pinterest boards full of
inspiration.
What is your favorite soap
making technique?
I have many favorite soap making
techniques and lately I have been favoring swirls, specifically the Taiwan Circling
Swirl and Feather/Secret Swirl.
Lavender and Cedar Taiwan Swirl Soap
How did you come
up with the name for your business?
Teri is short
for Theresa. Marie is my middle name. I have always loved the nickname of Tree for
Theresa, it somehow fits me. Tree Marie has a ring to it. Soapworks to me
is kind of like works of art. So there you have it, Tree Marie
Soapworks.
What is your favorite Bramble
Berry product and why?
I am loving Cashmere Fragrance
Oil…that scent! Swoon! Jade Fragrance
Oil is great too. My favorite good actors in cold
process soap are Energy, Lavender and Cedar, Tobacco and Bay
Leaf, and many others. I also love the cocoa butter pastilles;
they are so easy to work with!
Tell us
something unusual or unique about yourself!
I used
to skydive. For my first solo jump, the dropzone had a bigger airplane than usual (a
Casa). To exit that aircraft, you just run out the back, like 007. I jumped out over
the Atlantic Ocean and had to get across the Intracoastal Waterway to get back to
the dropzone…talk about an adrenaline
rush!
What are some of your other hobbies
and interests?
Besides a love for my family, I love
working in my flower beds and trying to advance my photography skills. I
also have/had a love of fabric and paper crafts and was deep into quilting and card
making before soap making came along. I was privileged to take a quilting class from
a Japanese sensei while we lived in Japan.
What is your
number one soap making tip?
My advice would be to
join a group like the Facebook group, Saponification
Nation. Search topics, like water discounting, soda ash, and whatever you
are curious about, and if you can’t find the topic with a search, ask! You
can learn so much! I find the soap making community to be a very giving community.
Also, advance your learning by joining contests like Amy Warden’s Soap
Challenge Club. I can’t begin to tell you how much the Soap Challenge Club
elevated my soap making skills. I would encourage you to take Amy’s
challenges, even the ones that you don’t think you would like. Those are
the ones that I learn the most from. We need to be pushed out of our comfort zone or
we will never grow.
Have you ever
experienced a soapy fail? How did you work through it, and what did you learn?
Yes, the worst one was my second batch for two
reasons. The first is that I was overly cautious and wore a mask over my
mouth. This caused my goggles to fog up. I adjusted them and I got a speck of lye
from my gloved thumb onto my cheek, and it started burning. I ran to the bathroom
and put my head under the faucet and flushed it for 15 minutes. (No worries, I am
fine. I just have a barely noticeable dot on my cheek). In the same batch, I used
“essential oils” from a craft store and it came out ugly and had
lye pockets. I learned not to wear a mask over my mouth, to wash off my gloved hands
after dealing with lye, and not to buy fragrance/essential oils from a craft
store.
If you were to
give one of your soaps to a stranger, what design would you choose and
why?
I would probably pick the Taiwan Circling Swirl
just because it’s such a gorgeous
design.
What do you love most about
creating bath and body products?
It’s
using my creativity and inspiring others! I love visualizing something in my head
and trying to create it. In my YouTube videos, I explain the process
verbally, and tell what I learned to improve my next design. That way I am always
learning and you can learn right along with me and be inspired.
♥
My Little Succulents Lavender and Cedar Soap
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