The ‘Daily Artisan Spotlight’ is a regular feature on Mindless Pursuits intended to provide insight and exposure to the tons of talented artisans working today. Please comment and give them some encouragement and check out their work! If you would like to be in the Spotlight, click on the ‘Free Press’ link above!

What is your shop?
Pink Parchment Soaps (http://www.pinkparchmentsoaps.etsy.com)

What is your art/craft?
We make luxurious handmade soap!

Describe your style in 2 words:
Absurd

What is your favorite piece and why?
Our favorite soap is Pink Grapefruit because it’s beautiful and smells wonderful!

http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=11564693

What is the most memorable piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Don’t start selling soap! Advice was given to us by a very sucessfull soap maker. He said there were to many soap makers around already. We obviously didn’t listen.

What is the one piece of advice you’d give?
Don’t give up! Make and re-make and re-do and most importantly: Have Fun with your craft.

Looking at all of the wonderful sellers on Etsy, I often remember fondly some of the other crafts I’ve worked on in the past. While I’m not about to bore everyone by discussing them all here, one in particular stands out to me, simply because it shows how long I’ve been obsessed with cherry blossoms!

Keith’s Craftworks Products Circa 2006

As you can see, I used to be in the soap and lotion business under my second shop name, Keith’s Craftworks (Mindless Pursuits was just a personal blog back then). I was obsessed with differing scents and loved making everything from lotions to shampoos to body washes. Experimenting with scents was a lot of fun, but what I enjoyed most was playing around with packaging design. Considering I have a background in graphic design/publishing and am an artist, this should be of no surprise to anyone!

My favorite scent, however as well as my favorite package, was the ‘Cherry Blossom Festival’ line.It smelled wonderful and I loved the stock photography that I found to use as the background. I still use that background on my PC today as an occasional wallpaper! I’m currently working on making a cherry blossom logo to be my brand, but we’ll talk about that in a future post. For now, I just thought some might find a quick glimpse of my crafting past to be of interest!