This post is brought to you by StickerYou. As always, all enthusiasm is my own.

Before I started blogging here, I made soaps, lotions, and other bath and body items to sell. I sold on eBay and on my own website before Etsy was even a thing. I loved experimenting and coming up with new scents and recipes. When my middle child was born, he had a lot of health problems, so I wasn't able to keep up with orders. I quit selling products, but I never stopped making them.

During the eight or so years that I wasn't making anything for sale, I decided that I liked writing and blogging more than selling, but I do still like creating things. So I started writing and blogging about making bath and beauty items along with health and beauty topics. Now, I have so much stuff that I've made and requests to have it for sale, so I've been thinking of selling some things locally. When you sell soap and other bath and beauty products, you have to learn how to label it for sale. For this post, we will just talk about labeling soap for sale. Labeling cosmetics and other products is a completely different topic, so this only applies to soap. I'll also introduce you to StickerYou, who made the labels I'll be using.

How to Label Soap For Sale

According to the FDA, soap is a product that is made of "the alkali salts of fatty acids," or what happens what you combine oils and/or fats with an alkali substance such as lye. This must also be the material in the product that gives it it's cleaning power. If you use detergents in the product, then it is not a soap and is considered a cosmetic.

Soap must be labeled as soap and marketed only as soap. If you say that it makes you smell good or moisturizes the skin, then it is a cosmetic. It would be a drug if you claim that the product can treat or prevent a disease, kill germs, or treat a disease or condition like eczema or acne.

As long as your product still qualifies as soap, the FDA does not have a requirement for the label. That actually falls under the CPSC.

Ingredients

You don't have to have a list of ingredients, but many consumers want to know what is in the product. I always list my ingredients so people can be aware for allergies. You should like ingredients in descending order with the ingredient with the highest percentage first. Any ingredients that are less than 1 percent of the total can be added at the end.

For these labels, I just used the ingredients that are in my Crafty Bubbles soap. I did not add anything to them because I was making a basic bar to use to wash hands. If I would have added a fragrance, oil, or herb, I would add them at the end as long as they are less than 1 percent of the total. If you are making soap from scratch, you can list the ingredients by their weight. When you're listing the ingredients, use the common name for the ingredient.

Other Information

Other information to include on the label would be:

Company name
Logo
Address
Weight
Fragrance

Choosing Labels

When I sold my products nearly 10 years ago, I printed my own labels. This wasn't ideal because they would fade over time, and they would smudge when they got wet. Besides that, professional stickers just look better. You only have one chance to make a first impression, so make it a good one.

The first thing I noticed about the stickers was how vibrant they are. They are also waterproof and fade resistant, which is really important if you sell at a farmers market or other outside venue.

I recently got stickers from StickerYou, and they are beautiful! They helped me create custom designs using my and blog name and color scheme. I also ordered a sheet of stickers with the ingredients and my address on them.

StickerYou is very small business friendly because they don't have minimums. Pages start at only $9.99, and you can mix and match designs on one sheet. You can create different sized labels, so you can make just the right size for your project instead of being limited to sticker sheets. The prints are photo quality, so you could upload a photo for your label.

It's easy to create your stickers. They have templates if you aren't good at design. You can customize the text, font, image, and color on the templates. You can choose from clear or white vinyl, depending on your product.

I'm not the best label placer, so I appreciate the fact that the labels can be removed and repositioned for a short time after you apply them. It was also easy to smooth out bubbles for a clean look.

Be sure to check out StickerYou for stickers, decals, magnets, and more.

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