Christmas Order Deadlines

Thanks for all the Christmas orders this year! We have been so busy, visitors to our shop have been amazed by the empty shelves. As we often joke at this time of year - we need more elves!

Rest assured, we'll continue to work around the clock to re-stock. There is currently only a handful of bath bombs and bath melts available (every year we have sell outs!), but more are being manufactured today and tomorrow to make sure last minute hampers can be made up. So fingers crossed the shop will be looking less bare later on today, and there will be plenty of fragrant options!

Deadlines and dates:
Website orders - the last date for receiving these is Sunday 18th December. We intend to ship orders received by this date on a first class Royal Mail service, to try to ensure they arrive on time but this cannot be guaranteed. Large orders will be shipped on a next day courier service. Hampers are all being shipped on a signed for service, so please ensure someone is at home to receive parcels.

Ruskin Shop - we'll be open every day until Christmas Eve between 10.30am and 4.30pm. The exception is tomorrow 16th December (sadly we have to attend a family funeral), so we'll be open 10am - 11am and after 2.30pm - 4.30pm on that day. We'll be open between 10.30am - 1.00pm on Christmas Eve.

After this, we'll be closed for 2 weeks - to recover! Our websites will continue to accept orders, but these will not be processed until after we return to work on 10th January 2012. Sorry for the inconvenience of this longer than usual close down, but we'll definitely need to re-charge our batteries after this year!

We're off to the Frost Fair!

Phew! We've been so busy in the last few weeks, with a fantastic evening shopping event and Christmas Craft Fair at the Ruskin Glass Centre last week. It was wonderful to meet so many new and old customers, so thank you for popping in to buy your Christmas gifts!

This week, we're off to Shrewsbury to set up our stand at the Frost Fair. This is a fabulous event organised at the National Trust's Attingham Park each year. There's a huge number of craft and food stalls and once again we're in the largest marquee. It's one of our favourite events each year, so we hope to see you there between 2nd - 4th December 2011!

This means that our shop will be closed until Tuesday 6th December 2011. Website orders will still be accepted as usual, but they won't be dispatched until after we return on the 6th. We'll be processing orders in date order, as they arrive, but there's still plenty of time before Christmas.

Natroma Holistics at the Ruskin Glass Centre

Quite a few new customers to our Ruskin Glass Centre shop are surprised to find that The Natural Soapworks is run by Holistic Therapists. Our specialisms are Clinical Aromatherapy and Sports Massage Therapy, and even though we're usually busy making natural skincare products we enjoy giving massage treatments and the satisfaction that comes from helping our holistics clients.

Sadly we know what it feels like to be rushed out of a treatment room because the next person has arrived, so we wanted to offer a tranquil setting for our therapies. Our treatment room was purpose built and luxuriously appointed to provide a relaxing and soothing environment. We also only offer limited appointments each week, to ensure that clients don't feel like they're on a massage production line! But we can be flexible about offering evening appointments outside of our normal opening hours if required. We can also attend sporting events and offer on-site corporate staff therapy packages for local businesses. We're also pleased to have made arrangements for a Reiki Master to visit us each week, and she'll be offering appointments most Thursdays.

We've added a new page to The Natural Soapworks website which gives more information on the Holistic Therapy treatments we can offer in our luxurious Stourbridge treatment room. Please ring us on 01384 399451 to discuss your requirements and arrange an appointment with a therapist.

Natural Skincare Christmas Gift Ideas

It's begining to smell a bit like Christmas.....and it's because our Christmas Gift Catalogue was released on Saturday for Stourbridge customers. We're displaying the gift packaging in our shop, and the lovely smell is coming from our Fragrant Christmas Decorations!

Today we've also begun uploading items onto The Natural Soapworks Christmas Hamper page, so it's now just 12 weeks and counting! More hampers will be added in the coming days, and we'll keep the page updated as items sell out.

We're particularly pleased with the 2011 Four Seasons hampers. Stourbridge customers will remember these from a couple of years ago (and have kept asking for them to return) so they have been updated and will be available on the website for the first time on the botanical soap hamper page. They're presented in ivory gift hampers wrapped with luxurious teal coloured organza ribbon and a beaded leaf decoration. We hope you like them!

Christmas is coming....

Despite the lovely weather, we're already receiving lots of enquiries about Christmas gifts. Rest assured - it's all in hand! Behind the scenes, we've been working on some lovely new natural skincare gift hampers and organic soaps, so it's been smelling a little festive in the workshop! So there's not long to wait now - our Christmas catalogue will be available to local customers on the 1st October, and we'll be uploading Christmas gift ideas onto the websites around that time too.

Customers will remember that it became a little manic last year (understatement!), so we're advising everyone to order early this year since we have no doubts that we'll have to close our order book early again.

Finally with busy times ahead, we've decided to take a short break from the workshop after the August Bank Holiday. Our Ruskin shop will be closed between Sunday 28th August - Monday 5th September, but we'll be staying open on-line so website orders will be processed as normal. Hopefully we'll have a chance to recharge the batteries, before the festive season really begins!

Fizzing Butter Melts

For a while now, Stourbridge customers have been enjoying our lovely petal covered fizzing bath melts as stand alone products. By popular request, we've now added these to The Natural Soapworks website, so our internet customers can also enjoy these gorgeous bath treats! They are individually wrapped in cellophane bags, making them perfect as small gifts or as an affordable alternative to our usual bath bombs.

Unlike many other bath melts we've seen, ours do not contain any synthetics or detergents, so they are completely natural with only essential oil blended fragrances and no artificial colours. They are quite tricky to make since they have to be hand rolled in petals, and we've also designed some lovely new fragrances including Uplift, Exotic Flowers and Ylang Geranium. You'll find that our Fizzing Bath Melts gently melt and fizz in hot water and release lots of petals and botanicals into the bath water, for really luxurious bathing!

They contain lots of organic (Soil Association accredited) shea and cocoa butters, so bath melt fans have been telling us they are so moisturising that body lotion is no longer required and they're also suiting dry or troubled skin conditions. We'd suggest that you just pat your skin dry after leaving the bath, to allow the natural butters and essential oils to sink into the skin. We're so pleased customers are enjoying using these so much!

It's busy at The Natural Soapworks again!

Sorry it's been a while since we last posted, but it's been a little busy at The Natural Soapworks just lately! Anyone who's spotted our page on Facebook, will have seen that Paul recently achieved his Level 4 in Advanced Sports Massage. It's a fantastic achievement since this is a very challenging level of study, and means that we can now offer remedial and preventative sports massage therapy in our on-site treatment room. We have no doubts that Paul is going to be very busy, and he'll be happy to discuss treatment options with prospective new clients.

We've also been busy manufacturing lots of natural skincare too, and we're delighted to welcome the return of some old favourites! The first is Blue Lagoon, our gorgeous exotic soap that's enriched with Monoi de Tahiti which started life as a special edition soap but became so popular that we had to keep on making it. We decided to give it a facelift since we weren't happy with the depth of colour of the bar (it used to be striped), so it now has a lovely blue colour with a purple swirl. Blue Lagoon has a deep, sweet and exotic aroma which is heavy with ylang ylang and vetiver, lifted with citrus notes. Blue Lagoon is available in our shop and on The Natural Soapworks website.

We're also re-releasing our rhassoul clays masks! Regular users will remember that these were withdrawn earlier in the year, after we received feedback that the mask was becoming too thick for the airless pump packaging and the nozzle was becoming blocked. But we had so many requests for them to return, that we had to find a solution. These masks have always been a favourite with us, since they were specifically developed to support break outs and gently deep-cleanse the skin (use once or twice each week). They have a lovely creamy texture so will not set on the skin, making them lovely to use and easily removed with a muslin cloth after a facial treatment. The masks are available in Rose and Orange Blossom fragrances, and have been repackaged into glass jars. Jars aren't our favourite method of packaging cosmetics since it's so easy for fingers to contaminate the product, so we'd suggest that the mask is removed with a spatula. These are available on the Natroma website, and we hope everyone enjoys using these again!

Finally we wanted to mention that we'll be closed between Friday 15th - Monday 18th July inclusive, since we'll be attending a National Trust Summer Fair at Attingham Park in Shropshire. Last year it was a lovely event, so we're really looking forward to attending again.