HOW I WRAP MY HOMEMADE SOAP! With Rajiv Surendra

I have a very satisfying tray full of Wise Man soap, which I made a month ago. And I cut it up before the holidays, put it in the closet, and I have allowed it to cure. And now that it's been curing for a month, it's ready to be packaged. So I thought I would show you how I package my soap. A very satisfying process, a very rewarding process. I start with a stamp that I had made years ago. I did a drawing. This was sort of just as a whim one Christmas when I thought I would gift my friends homemade soap. So I did a pen and ink drawing. It says Rajiv's Wise Man Soap and then a bunch of other little text. And then I took my drawing to a wonderful store on East 11th Street called Casey's Rubber Stamps. And Casey took my drawing and created a plate from it, which was pressed into hot rubber. And he created a rubber stamp for me. That's what they do at Casey's Rubber Stamps. This is a wonderful little tool that I have just used for many years, over for eight years. So I start with this. And then the actual labels for the soap are glassine paper. Glassine paper is a sort of grease-proof paper that is excellent to use for wrapping soap. I stamp the glassine paper with my stamp. And then the labels have to dry for about an hour because it's an oil-based ink. So it takes a little while to dry. And then once the labels have dried, I will start wrapping. So it's kind of like a one-man assembly line here. But I'm going to get started. All the labels have dried. And now I will begin wrapping my soap. So I have my setup here. So I take a label and place it face-side down. I get a bar of soap and just line it up with the text. And then I start wrapping. I make the label super long so that there's a double coating of glassine paper around the soap just to really protect it. And I have my tape on a 3M tape dispenser. This is the heavy-duty tape dispenser. So it's very heavy. And it is a joy to use. For years, I've just used my tape from the stationery store off the little dispensers. And, you know, every time you use it, you have to pick it up. Whereas this just makes it easier. And it's just, oh, it's like I've always wanted one of these. So I treated myself this year. I felt like, okay, it's time. You've been doing this soap thing for years. And you really do like making things efficient. So you can get a tape dispenser. There. There's the bar of soap wrapped up. Okay, five down, like 20 more to go. So satisfying. It's tedious, fussy work. But there's something nice about it. Kind of because I have a whole bunch laid out in front of me. I flow, or sort of fall into a rhythm. And it's kind of peaceful. Wrapping my soap. It's so satisfying. Just very nice to wrap it and then look at it. It looks so professional. Well, I was wrapping soap all into the net last night. And now, now I'm ready for the final step, which is taking the soap that has been beautifully wrapped in its glassine paper label and wrapping it up in brown paper. This is like the final packaging to make it look like this. This is just, once it's packed in the brown paper, I consider it done and ready to go. Ready to go as in I can store it like this. And if I'm running out of my apartment and I want to take a gift to somebody special, then I can just grab it like this. And I don't have to wrap it up. I used to store the soap like this. Like I had my stock and I would store it like this. And then every time I wanted to gift it to somebody, I would have to pull out all my supplies and wrap it up to make it look like this. So now I just do it like in bulk, just wrap it all like this and it's great. It also looks really beautiful when I'm storing it like this. So the way I do this is I take just brown paper off of a roll. I buy the brown paper in bulk, like on a big roll and I put it on a paper roll and then I cut it up into pieces that are the perfect size for wrapping. And I wrap this final brown paper with no tape. It's very simple. Just use the paper and some string. So I get a piece of the brown paper, put the soap face down. I get my piece of string ready. So I've cut these all to length, to the right length. And then just wrap like this. Let's put these sides in. Let's bring it up on its edge to this side. There. Quick, easy. Crease the sides and the brown paper stays in place. And then I put it face side down on the string. And the string holds it really tightly in place. There. Do that again. No talking. There. So that's how I pack it up with the paper. The final step is sealing it with some sealing wax. So light a candle. Get out the seal and some wax. Wax goes on. There. There you have it. This is how I wrap up my soap. It's a lot of work. It's tedious. It's fussy. But in the end, when I look at the pile of soap that I've created, I'm just filled with joy. Makes me happy.