My Biz: Shop sells supplies for do-it-yourself soaps, candles

Owner: Sandy Rosenberger

Company: Hearthstone Gifts & Supplies

Address: 329 10th Ave. SE, Suite 126, Cedar Rapids

Phone: (319) 377-1472

Website: www.hearthstonegiftsandsupplies.com

Elevator pitch: Light up the world, and make your own candles

CEDAR RAPIDS - It's good to know what's in your soap, Sandy Rosenberger said.

She held up two bars of glycerin soap base, one of them containing goat's milk.

“Milk,” she noted, “is good for your skin.”

Rosenberger explained that it's possible to make a bar of soap in 10 minutes, as many of her customers do.

“You cut the soap base up into small chunks, melt them in the microwave, add color and scent if you want, pour the mixture into a mold, and you have a bar of soap,” she said.

Rosenberger opened Hearthstone Gifts & Supplies, her basket weaving and gift business in uptown Marion, in 2001. As trends changed, she dropped the baskets and expanded into the candle- and soap-making supplies as well as teaching classes for do-it-yourself projects.

“I'd been doing candle making on the side while I was weaving baskets, and had been reading about soy wax being the new thing, and safer than paraffin. It took off like crazy and I taught hundreds of classes,” she said.

After she lost the lease on the Marion space, she relocated to the newly renovated Cherry Building in the New Bo District in September 2011.

Hearthstone is the only business in Eastern Iowa that offers more than 100 different candle- and soap-making fragrance oils and the supplies needed for making all natural candles, soaps, bath and body lotions, Rosenberger said, as well as home-scenting products such as reed diffusers and incense.

“Some crafts are very expensive to get into because it takes all this stuff to get started, but candle and soap making is not,” she said. “A glass measuring cup and a spoon is all you need for making the glycerin soaps or soy candles.

“Glycerin is a natural moisturizer that locks your moisture into your skin,” she said, “so you don't get as dry as a lot of the more detergent-based soaps out there on the market.

“There is no animal content in it, either.”

Rosenberger said she stocks already-made candles and soaps for customers who aren't interested in making them.

“People are becoming more aware of the ingredients going into the products they're buying and they want more control over what they are putting on their skin, especially on their children or their babies,” she said.

“The soap bases I stock are fragrance and color-free so you can avoid fragrance or dye all together, if you wish, since you are making it yourself.”

Do you know a business owner or manager who should be considered for “My Biz” or an entrepreneur who might be good for our soon-to-debut “From the Ground Up” feature? Contact business business editor Michael Chevy Castranova at michael.castranova@sourcemedia.net.