Torn on Fragrances!!!

Ok so since my last post I came upon a couple of dollars that will help me get some of the things I need so badly such as fragrances. Well, now I'm torn as to which fragrances to get and who to get them from. My three choices are New Directions Aromatics, Brambleberry, and Wellington Fragrance. I can't decide. They each have their pros and cons. For instance New Directions has some of the lowest prices for their pound of oils. However, they do not have the colors I want not even titanium dioxide to help make my soap white. They have colors but I am leary of FD&C colors as they tend to be unstable in HP/CP soaps. I am going for powder pigments such as iron oxides and ultramarines. Even if they did, their shipping is higher than the other two places. Brambleberry is also reputed to have excellent fragrances for soaping, they also have some other tools that would be useful such as a wavy cutter, and pour spouts for their bottles. They have the colors I want also. The drawback is that the oils they have while sounding great seem to be stand-alone and not ones that are simplistic enough to blend well with other scents. This is important to me. Maybe I'm just being anal about it though. Finally Wellington fragrances has a pretty good deal on prices as well, but they tack on a $10 fee for minimum orders. It's trifling to say the least. It adds at least $20 to the whole order when paired with the shipping which is actually reasonable.

My other issue is that I am trying to budget this money out. There are other things I need to purchase such as packaging for soaps, more shipping material like box mailers, business cards, and labels. So all the money can't go on just scents and colors no matter how much I'd like that. I have also had to back out of getting another lotion base which I would have preferred from NDA. Simply because they have a lotion bottle there to die for. It would look so good, but the drawback to that is how smart of me would it be to purchase another lotion base? My lotions aren't doing so well (although I have a sneaking suspicion as to why), so is it smart business to buy yet another lotion base? Maybe not. I was thinking shower gel since so many people seem to like those in many cases better than bar soap. However that drives my costs up by another $30+ because if I buy lotion or shower gel I will need the bottles to go with it. I would still have a few dollars left over after all that even with the extra cosmetic bases tacked on. I guess my frugal nature is really having a hissy fit about spending more than $20 at one time. I have to be so careful about my expenditure that it is almost unfathomable to me to consider spending more than $30-40 online at once let alone the amount I will have to spend now. Meager to other soapmakers but a big yet necessary step for me to take. I whined and pouted about not having the money to buy this and that, and now that I have a bit of pocket change to spare for this exact purpose I'm sweating bullets.

I'm trying to purchase most if not all the things I need online at one spot to save on shipping. I want other things too like what about things for my masks? They are lacking in additives and I wanted to add at least two different kinds of clay to the mix. I was also considering natural colorants that would double as things I could effectively put in the clay masks. Colored clays would work well for this but so would ground herbs like parsley and maybe tumeric. I may have to get some things at one place and a couple others somewhere else. www.wholesalesuppliesplus.com has other things I wouldn't mind getting, but I will never waste time and money buying FO's from them again. Their clays and ground herbs were good prices so I guess that's might be my next mission.

Maybe writing this out will help me in my decisions. If I can re-read this maybe I can get a clearer picture of what I need to do.