STILL FRESH!!!

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a fine shop I found in the Palm Springs area….selling ‘fresh’ and ‘organic’ skin, hair and body care.  I was impressed, although it turned out that everything wasn’t organic all the time….which was a little confusing…there was no way to know what was organic and what wasn’t.

Also, I had trouble with the FRESH idea and that these things had to be refrigerated.  I learned this after I had bought a couple of things….and didn’t like them being in the fridge….and  the ‘bio-dynamic’ ingredients inside only lasted a few days, I think….although the product itself would last for a year if refrigerated!

But…we’ve been having a really cold spring! After a few weeks in the warm desert sun and sands of Palm Springs…it is absolutely freezing!  Here it is March 8th, on Salt Spring Island, in what we call “The Banana Belt” of Canada and it is snowing even as I sit here.   The weather did solve my problem though…I put my two “fresh” products on the windowsill just outside the bathroom door that leads to the sauna.  I whip the door open, grab the jar and bottle, whisk them inside…smooth and spray on the products and out they go!  Works really well. ….except they are cold….but I don’t have to run all the way to the kitchen.

So, what’s the big deal???  Only that I THINK THESE PRODUCTS ARE WONDERFUL!!  They make my skin feel great,,,,no fragrance or chemical smells….and I really think my skin looks better; smoother, softer, less dry and YOUNGER!!!  (at my age…this last is really important).

Although I felt the products were expensive…they were not anywhere near the $158 per month I just saw advertised for some wonderful clinically-tested skin care for ‘mature skin’).

So..now I am a convert…I know how to make fresh products…we started out Salt Spring Soapworks in the kitchen, after all.    But, once we started selling our products in shops…I was convinced by even the really natural chemists we needed to have a preservative system to keep our natural ingredients clean and fresh.

We’ve always made everything in really small batches, don’t ship them all over the world, or warehouse them.  So we can use about 1/10th of the preservatives most companies do. We’ve also used the best most natural ones we could find.

The whole experience with “Fresh”  has made me feel there is a way to go back to our roots….maybe WE will get little mini-ice paks to sell our skin care…and make people keep it in the fridge…..it’s worth a try!

Linda

p.s.  I don’t really mind smelling like a cucumber!

p.s.p.s. Let me know how you feel about this??? Want really fresh products??
100% pure, natural, fresh and organic?? Want to keep them in the fridge???

The Soap Contest….We Won! We Won!

Everywhere I go…..I look at,  smell and touch soap and sometimes actually buy it.  Not that I’m short of soap…but I really like to know what’s going on in the World of Handmade Artisan Soap.   Once, I found a black soap from Portugal….it was clay, and made with lots of olive oil.  I loved it…and it helped inspire our West Coast Mud Bar with Spruce and Fir local essential oils and  from the Coast of Northern B.C.

I tried a lovely Honeysuckle soap  from a large American company making natural products…. the Honeysuckle was a synthetic fragrance, but I loved the feel of the soap.  I found they had it made in France…from Palm Oil.  That was many years ago, and Palm was unavailable in Canada, so Bill and I went to Portland where tankers of oil came in and the palm was shipped to food suppliers for taco chips, Fritos, etc.  We brought home two large barrels in the van, across the border, and made soap. It was another soap epiphany, and we still use it.

On our recent holiday down South, we travelled and hiked around Southern California, and checked out soap as we went along.  Found a really nice, totally natural Lavender Oatmeal soap…nice lather, great scent…but….they used large steel-cut oats, the kind we eat!  It made for a pretty scrubby bar, actually too rough, and the oats fell out as we used it..  We always use the quick cooking oats for soap.  They are smaller, thinner, and I think make a better soap. They just kind of melt when you use the bar…..so, I thought our Lavender Oatmeal won!

Next, I found a really nice bar superfatted with every good thing you could add to a soap; cocoa butter, shea butter, aloe vera, I forget what else!  It felt wonderful on the skin, and had a soft silky lather.  But, a thumb print remained when pressed, and it lasted maybe 1/3 as long as our bars…. just too soft…..so We Won Again!

Lots of other soaps looked  or smelled great, or had appealing packaging and cute quirky names…but….I didn’t try them.  Usually, it was the fragrance.  Anything synthetic and just too strong meant instant rejection.  Most handmade soap I saw was  neatly cut, although some looked like they had been cut on big machines, not on the handmade cutters most of us use.  The thing that really impressed me the most though, were the combinations of essential oils that the artisans used to create their really exotic bars.

p.s. You may have guessed this is my own personal soap contest, and we usually win!

p.s.p.s.  We don’t ALWAYS win!

Linda