Secret Garden

I thought I'd share another one of the soaps I made for my Daughter a few months ago. You won't find this one on my website, you can only buy it on my Daughter's website, where it's even on special at the moment, or I sell it at the markets.

I had it listed on Etsy, with a few other different soaps, one of them was the Mandarin and Vanilla you might remember from a few months ago. Anyhow I ended up taking them all off yesterday, because after 4 months I didn't sell any at all, very disapointing:( so no more listing on Etsy for this little black duck, I'll leave it to the experts:)

With Secret Garden you can close your eyes and imagine you're showering under a waterfall in a tropical rainforest, it's sooooo relaxing!

The aroma of tropical and citrus fruits will fill your senses, fresh squeezed oranges, pineapples, bananas, coconut and fresh kiwi fruit will make your mouth water, very tempting:)

The little leaves on the soap is where I got my inspiration from, isn't nature wonderful? they look so pretty.

Free Earrings?

A little birdie has told me that lovely Lou from Rocks Revealed is giving away a silver pair of Rose Quartz earrings, handmade by Lou herself, some people are just so clever!

If you'd like to enter all you have to do is sign up for their newsletter, but be quick as they are drawn on the 8th September:)

A touch of sunshine

My Sunshine bar has had a face lift, normally it has a orange swirl through it, but I thought it was time for a bit of a change. This bar has finely ground oatmeal, apricot kernel oil and avocado butter added and carrot tissue oil and paprika.

I think it looks like it has little leaves on it, what do you think? It's a shame it has that white flecky thing happening, I might leave the oatmeal out next time. If you'd like to see what the original one looks like, you can see it on my website, well, till I get the chance to put the new one on that is:)

Reminder to myself - don't soap when upset!!!

Geisha Girl

I'd been planning Geisha Girl for a while and couldn't wait to make it. I had set aside a morning when I thought everything would be AOK to have a nice quite morning soapmaking:) The only thing I had to do was pick up a few essentials down the shop. Sounds easy? It didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

I thought I'd get my bit of shopping done first so I'd have a nice clear mind. I've found that my soap always seems to come out better if I can relax, take my time and just concentrate solely on making them.

I got everything ready to make it so I could start when I got home and off I went to the shops. Everything was fine till I was backing out of the carpark, had the car turned almost all the way around ready to drive off, when someone decided to back out as well (young man with his girlfriend in the car) and hit me.

As you can imagine I was very upset. I went home unpacked my things, had a cuppa and tried to settle down. As I had everything ready to make soap, I decided to go ahead and make it, well, I find soapmaking relaxing and thought I’d be OK and it would be all right.

Well, I was wrong:( I got right to the end, had it in my soapbox and was quite pleased how everything went so well. Put the cover over the top and Oh NOOOOO! I found the last oil that I was supposed to add at trace. Panic, panic, I had to add the oil or the soap would be no good.

I was so angry with myself because I’d tried to be so careful, knowing that I was still upset and I wanted to get the layers the way I wanted them.

Luckily I’d poured at a fairly light trace so I just had time enough to stir the remaining oil though, I knew it was going to turn out plain now, so I quickly added some balls that I’d done ready for another soap to hopefully make up for my lost layers.

So the layers went out the window and this is what it turned out like.

Exactly the same oils, colours and fragrance as the top soap, but totally different look, thanks to the man who was more interested in talking to his girlfriend than watching where he was going and my inability to concentrate when upset.

So the very next day I was determined to have my layers and tried again, with the result of the top photo, now that's more like what I wanted:)

White Rose

Just made a new batch of White Rose, this is a very feminine bar of soap with the fragrance of, you guessed it, roses.

This bar was made especially for my Mum who only likes using plain white soap, but I just couldn’t resist adding the extra touch of pink:) but she doesn't seem to mind just the small amount of colour and I think it adds the finishing touch to this bar.

It contains Macadamia oil and Mango Butter, both excellent emollients, making it a really nice bar to keep your skin feeling soft and moisturised.

Lavender!

Lavender Fields

Love it or hate it, Lavender is here to stay. Lavender has a well-established tradition as a folk remedy and its scent is familiar to almost everyone.

Lavender oil is a natural antibiotic, antiseptic, antidepressant, sedative and detoxifier. It is especially successful in the treatment of burns and is used to encourage wound healing, it is soothing for inflamed skin conditions such as eczema, dermatitis and psoriasis and can be used as an antidepressant.

A few drops of lavender in a hot footbath has a marked influence in relieving fatigue and it can help to relax and bring a good night’s sleep. A truly indispensable fragrance!

Lavender & Mint

Everyone is impacted by Fragrance - Part 2

In my previous post “Everyone is impacted by Fragrance” Lara commented that maybe the super-sensitive nose some pregnant women develop, has the purpose to protect them and their baby.

I agree totally with Lara, I think she hit the nail right on the head, I think that is exactly why Mother Nature has given us this acute sense of smell at such an important time, when our babies are relying on us totally to protect them from any dangers that might stop them from developing properly in the womb . We know by extinct that strong smelling chemicals are properly not the best things for us to be using at that stage.

It’s a shame that it doesn’t continue for most of us after bubs is born. I was watching my son play football last week and was horrified by the number of times a Grand Mother was rubbing Hand Sanitizer on her little grand-daughter, this little girl looked to be about 2 or 3 years of age.

I was sitting right next to a lady who in the space of only one half of a football match, that’s approx. 30 minutes for those of you who don’t spend every Saturday watching their sons running around having fun, said, “come to Grand-Ma and wash your hands” three times. 3 times in half an hour and I was thinking about the amount of chemicals that little girl was having rubbed into her.

Whatever happened to good old fashioned “clean dirt”? now I know that sounds a bit silly, but once upon a time children were allowed to play in the back yard in the dirt and the mud having fun and getting exposed to germs that would allow their immune system to develop, which really is a good thing. Oh course, washing hands with soap and water after play and before eating is necessary, but a little bit of dirt isn’t going to hurt them.

When I got home I had to investigate the ingredients contained in the Hand Sanitizer she was using just in case I was wrong and there really wasn’t any chemicals contained in it, although I really didn’t think there would be much of a chance of this. So here we go:

Dettol Instant Hand Sanitizer:

Ingredients: Alcohol Denatured, Water, PEG/PPG-17/6 Copolymer, Propylene Glycol, Acrylates/C10-30 Alkyl Acrylate Crosspolymer, Tetrahydroxypropyl Ethylendiamine, Fragrance, Limonene.

OK, I really don’t know that I’d want to be rubbing this stuff on our children’s hands a couple of times a day, let alone 3 times in half an hour. What about the old fashioned way of just taking a plastic bag with a wet face cloth? Surely this is a lot safer to use on our children’s delicate skin.

I also looked up FRAGRANCE on the Cosmetics Data Base, as that’s what we have been discussing and they give it a score of 8 out of 10 for being a high hazard to our health, check it out yourself, it’s a great spot to type in any ingredient you’re not sure of and finding out exactly how bad or good it really is for you.

Come on Mums and Grand-Mums, let’s try and cut down on the use of chemicals we use on our children, for their health’s sake.