making balms and new things

eek, it's been a while since I've posted! super busy with lots of markets and making tons of stock gearing up for the festive rush! I've also been developing a few new things too. first up is my new lavender balm.

it has many uses:

headache balm

anti-stress balm

tattoo balm

heel balm

dry skin balm

& pulse point perfume balm  to name a few!

it is loaded with rich cocoa butter enriched with olive oil,  and I use 100% lavender essential oil, no artificial fragrance. it is calming and relaxing and is paraben and sls free too.

next, i've expanded my fragrance range for my bathing truffles and creamy sugar scrubs to include seaside spa!

this fragrance is fresh & lively, very seaside-y (is that a word?) and a great unisex fragrance. everyone loves this scent in my luxury handmade soaps, so I decided it was time to make it available in some of my other products! my creamy sugar scrubs are emuslified, so they are not greasy to use and shouldn't leave your shower or tub slippery, but do still take care! I use organic shea butter, rich cocoa butter and fairtrade unrefined sugar for all my scrubs.  they leave your skin silky smooth, gently moisturised and delicately fragranced. what more could you ask for?

now, back to the lab (kitchen!) with me, lots more to make and design. I have some wonderful bespoke gift boxes in the pipeline, as well as adding a trio of soaps gift box to the existing range, which will be a christmas themed box, containing one full size bar each of: three kings, victorian christmas and snow baby.

I am also dreaming up a peppermint and vanilla christmas soap, sort of candy cane I suppose! I can't wait to get making on this one! bye for now :)

I'm famous! (well, kinda!)

Joanna from product body / absolute soap  has featured my liquid soap tutorial on her blog! you can check it out here: the soap bar blog  hurrah! I am a soaping celebrity! x

fresh new website!

just a quick post to let you lovely folk know that I have been hard at work building my new website! It is more sleek, more beautiful and infinitely more professional that my old site.

new products include my luxury facial serum with rose otto or lavender essential oils

to celebrate the launch of my new site, I am offering everyone 10% off everything for the next 2 weeks, yes you heard it here! offer closes 14th August.

to access my fresh new website click here

herbs that I soap with

I have an allotment. I've been working on it for nearly 20 years with my mum & dad. We grow food, flowers and lots of weeds (!)  soaping is comparitively new to me (4 years) but there is a solid connection between the two for me: botanicals.  I love to try and incorporate things that I have grown (on purpose as well as accidentally) into my soap recipes. I use freshly pressed organic cucumbers for my coolcumber soap, which are generally prolific, but a little slow this year due to the crappy weather. I also grow calendula petals, which I dry and infuse in olive oil for my cuticle balm, and my new pure lemon calendula soap.

 

calendula blooms that I picked today, ready for removing the petals for drying

 I infuse the petals in olive oil for a few weeks - you can speed this process up by using a crock pot or slow cooker.  the infused oil is strained, and used as part of the oils/butters portion of the soap recipe. I then blitz a good amount of the petals that remain after straining with a blender and add these to the soap batter for a beautiful speckled appearance.  the olive oil takes on some of the colour from the petals, making for a lovely buttery yellow soap.

 don't you just love the gorgeous orange hues of these beautiful petals?

I have also collected some fresh nettles, not necessarily grown on purpose, but useful all the same!  I am going to create a new soap for my pure naturals range: pure nettle mint soap, with spearmint essential oil to compliment the nettle infusion. I can't wait!

 fresh nettles picked today, for drying.

and just because I can......my pure lemon calendula soap!

pure lemon calendula

here you go my lovlies! my next pure natural soap: pure lemon calendula!

I infused calendual petals (that I grow at my allotment in Bushy Park, right next to Hampton Court Palace) in olive oil for about a month. The petals gave the oil a subtle yellow hue, which you can see in the finished bars. I also blitzed some of the petals into the warm soaping oils to give the soap some nice texture, and happily some lovely yellow speckles. I am very happy with how it looks!

it is scented with may chang essential oil, for a lemon fizz scent, which is just so pretty and fresh, and just makes me smile!

May is citrus bliss month!

May, and it's time for a special offer methinks! I am offering a few deals on all my citrus bliss range throughout the month of May!  Firstly, this week, I am offering a free bar of delicious citrus bliss handmade soap made with white tea infusion and french yellow clay, with each purchase of a citrus bliss creamy sugar scrub and double whipped citrus bliss organic shea btter cream.  to get your free bar of citrus bliss soap, just enter the code MAYCITRUS into the comments box as you checkout with paypal when your purchase a scrub and shea butter together.  This offer will be available until May 21st, and I'll be running a couple of other citrus based offers during the rest of the month.

white spring pure patchouli handmade soap

this is the second of my pure naturals range, after the beer naked ladies soap. This one is very special to me for a couple of reasons. Firstly, patchouli has been, and always will be my favourite scent. I have loved it and worn it ever since I discovered it in the late eighties as a teenager. Secondly, the water part of this soap is White Spring water that I collected direct from the spring outlet at the base of Glastonbury Tor. I was there meeting up with some wonderful soap making ladies from a soaping forum, for a birthday weekend.
the white spring well house & entrance:

the white spring outlet:

we walked up to the top of the Tor and sat for a while, soaking up the energy.  Later, once we had returned to the bottom of the Tor, we found the White Spring outlet and drank some of the pure clean water. It was delicious. We vowed to return the next morning to collect some water. (I now wish I had collected more!)

The soap is very indulgent on my part, as I love patchouli so much, and it was clear in my mind that it was the perfect one to use the spring water I had collected. I wanted it to make it pure and simple, and it is just that, pure soap full of Glastonbury energy :)

the soap: