PICTURES

 Hope you like the pictures taken with the camera bought for me for Christmas Thank you Santa.

Beer Soap, this beer has chocolate and coffee in the making of it and I have followed this through into the soap and it has a lovely mocha smell.

Cup cake soaps and squares.  The beauty of our pure Olive Oil soaps wrapped in colourful merino wool. The wool is shrunk around the soap and re-shrinks each time you use it until the soap has all gone. No more flannels, sponges etc, just beautiful coloured wool.

 Gardeners soap, with antibacterial/antifungal/antiseptic properties       from the essential oils, helping hands after gardening.

 Lavender, the calming, relaxing smell of Lavender.  Plain cream    coloured or mauve and cream colour.

 One of our best sellers, Patchouli and Orange with Tussah silk.       Tussah silk adds a beautiful silk feel to the soap.

 Citrus Burst.Full of the smells of oranges, lemons and limes,     awakening the senses in the morning, invigorating after a long day at work.

Rose Geranium, a beautiful smell, also in heart shapes. This soap is salmon pink. Deep Mauve and white Geranium and Palmarosa, the same as our peace in the garden soap made into hearts.

Hand Made Soap

It is always frustrating when you want to do something and have to wait for others.  I am updating and re-launching my web site for 2012, however I have to wait for the girls to do it for me.  The eldest usually works a 12-18hour day and totally switches off on her days off the the middle one is in the middle of a new boyfriend which is taking a lot her time and her uni course.  My brother is coming up this week so I think I will get him to fix some bits around the house for me.  I spent yesterday sorting out the soap room and re-painting it, pink for love and green for calm, I have ordered all I need for making hair shampoos and the bottles so they should be launched in March and also I have to make some more baby soap, we are calling it Bella (beautiful in Italian) soap along with bottom cream with calendula which is so good for the skin.  My youngest has just had exams and he gets so stressed his excema breaks out so I put lots of this cream with calendula on for him and it calms his skin.  So having again used him as a guinea pig I know it is safe.  Look out for the new products in March.

PICTURES

Having received a camera for Christmas as requested I have been taking lots of pictures of the soaps as they are drying.  Lavender, Geranium, Rose Geranium, Beer - beer given to me by Hammerpot Brewery, thanks guys. There is also neem with added aloe vera to calm the skin and more on the way, so watch this space.

Hand Made Soap

It was a very interesting article in the Green Parent, Melinda Coss is very well known in the soap business and it was to me a real accolade to be included alongside her.  It is very true what the article says there is no soap like homemade.  When it says homemade check how it was made, if it was made in large batches of over a 500 soaps it was mechanical the only homemade/handmade was cutting the blocks and packaging.  Interestingly while reading some articles I read that if a soap says it is a beauty bar then it is not soap but synthetic soap made for commercial re-sale.  Hand made is in my kitchen, I started by making in small molds, then onto using empty pringle tins, now I use small crates like the ones the mushrooms come in.  I used to make one batch at a time, I now make four at a time but this will only make around thirty to forty soaps and to make more I will need a lot more room.  Reading the article I knew about sodium laurly sulphate, not to be confused with the milder sodium laureth sulphate, both of which are not in my soaps.  I did not realise the other agents that went into commercial soap, no wonder so many people say to me they cannot use soap.  I always say, it is not that you cannot use soap, you cannot have on your skin what they put into the soap, pure soap has nothing more than Olive Oil, coconut oil, palm or sunflower oil added shea butter, cocoa butter and to this is added sodium hydroxide which creates the process for the oils to saponify, turning them into soap.  Other than essential oil, benzoin for holding the smell and vitamin e, nothing else is really needed.  Milling soap dries it dreadfully, making the soap take from the skin the moisture it is missing.

Articles

I have received several emails regarding the article in the The Green Parent, which I have yet to read.
  All of mine are grown up, but during their growing up I had to deal with a six week old that had a milk allergy, a two year old who developed asthma and eczema.  Two are dyslexic, one is dyspraxic and all have allergies relating to food or fragrances.  Washing powder is never ever bio, and never changed from two different ones.  Hair shampoo, soap, shower gel are all made by me and I have done for years for them.  My youngest suffers from stress eczema so all you can do is make sure any triggers are not around to make it worse.  Being a boy he is the hardest to convince about what he uses, so he has to have his favourite smell in his soap and hair shampoo then when his scalps says enough  he goes back to the good stuff.  Seventeen years ago I began training as a therapist with Reflexology, a huge thirst for knowledge and I worked out what was the problems with each child and I am pleased to say along with Homeopathy I have managed to keep them 99% off Doctors presecriptions.
I have trained with crystals and believe in working with a dowser and last year talking to the lovely person who walked my dogs for a week, I was able to give her a list of possible triggers for her eight year old, my Christmas card said "since we have avoided the foods on your list she is so much better".  Sometimes it is the most obvious that causes the problems.  Years ago I had a lady who had been everywhere, spent a lot of money trying to solve a skin problem.  She happened to come into me for Reflexology, realising that her problem was localised to intestine point on her feet I asked her what her most favourite food was and what she would never want to give up - Chocolate - a month later, no chocolate whatsover and her feet were clear of this terrible skin problem she had had for years.   Often we ignore our bodies and yet they are tell us what we need to know and skin is the greatest book.

Ecxema.

The year before last after my first Christmas of selling soaps life was very quiet, nothing really got going soap wise until about March.  Last year I was busy after Christmas and this year as I have been so busy up to Christmas I thought it would be quiet and that I could take a couple of months to catch up with the house work, one very dirty dog, and lots of mud from the rain and a back garden that has been trampled by a few chicken and a dog.  Not even at the end of the first week and the phone is ringing and emails are coming through which is fantastic but obviously I am not going to get as much done in the house as I hoped.  Am definitely going to have to look for a new home for the soaps and someone to help with them.  Am off in the next few weeks hopefully to learn more about herbs for eczema and psoriasis and use them in my new creams and some in the soaps.