Fragrant Rock & Fossil Festival

On 19th & 20th September Dudley concert hall and museum will be hosting the bi-annual rock and fossil festival. We'll be exhibiting, and have created some special ammonite soaps and dinosaur bath bombs.

So why not visit with all the family? The festival will be open between 10 am and 5 pm on Saturday, 10 am and 4 pm on Sunday, the entrance fee is only £1.00 per person. Exhibitors will be there from the world of geology, and there are special events including superb fossil and crystal displays, gems and cut stones, jewellery, face painting, fossil casting and lots of craft activities for children. There will be a Birds of Prey Display and lots of small animals from Dudley Zoo to interact with too!

Studio customers should please note that we'll have reduced opening hours this weekend.

Natural Soapworks & Natroma Anniversary event!

How time has flown by! Can you believe it, The Natural Soapworks is nearly 3 years old, and Natroma is also approaching it's first birthday too.

It's been a fantastic few years, and we've loved formulating more and more bathing and skin care products. Whoever would have thought that a soap making hobby would turn into a product range which now numbers over 100 items! But probably the nicest part of what we do, is that we get to meet lots of people to talk about skincare (and our products of course!) The feedback has been wonderful, and we're really chuffed whenever someone pops in to say "thank you" or tell us about why a particular soap or a cream is really suiting their skin. Thank you -it always makes our day!

So to celebrate our two anniversaries, we're holding a "First and Third Anniversary" event at The Red House Glass Cone on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th October 2009. We'll have lots of special offers, will be launching some new products, running a prize draw, and revealling our Christmas gift range! So why not call in to collect your copy of the Christmas Catalogue. You'll also be able to have a look at the new seasonal hampers which will be on display, so you can start to think about which Christmas goodies to send to your friends and loved ones.

For website customers, we don't want you to feel left out. Orders placed on The Natural Soapworks and Natroma websites on the 3rd and 4th of October will also have some special offers...we'll tell you more, closer to the time.

So for now, pencil these dates into your dairies!!

Bath Bomb Workshop - Sunday 27th September 2009!

Have you ever wondered how bath bombs are made? By popular request, we'll be running another bath bomb workshop on Sunday 27th September. This is the last chance this year, to have fun making lots of fizzy bath treats using natural ingredients and essential oils.

The workshop will include a session on creating bath bomb recipes, including how you add in additional luxury ingredients like botanical oils and butters. We also include a session on blending essential oils for use in the bath, so you use the right concentration to fragrance your new creations!

The session will start at 10am, and lasts until lunchtime. The cost is £25, and this includes all the materials and use of equipment etc. You'll get to keep all of the bath bombs you create, and these will be available to collect a few days after your course. We can also post out the bath bombs, if people live further away (but there's a separate postage charge for this).

This course is limited to 8 attendees, so book early to avoid disappointment. Lots of fun and laughs guaranteed!!

It's beginning smell a bit like Christmas....

It's that time of year again, when soap production is stepped up in readiness for Christmas. We've been very busy formulating so we can introduce a few new seasonal soaps for this year. But there will be some old favourites too. So don't worry Frankincense & Myrrh fans, the first batch was made yesterday and the studio smells just heavenly!

So if you pop in to see us this weekend, we hope you'll understand why there's more than a hint of Frankincense, Myrrh, Cinnamon and Clove in the air. We'll be on site all weekend, but will have limited opening hours on Saturday since we're running another soap making class to introduce another group of people to the addictive fun of soaping!

Handmade @ The Cone Exhibition

Here's the reason, why there weren't many posts during July! We've been preparing for an exhibition at the Red House Glass Cone in Stourbridge (it runs from this weekend until 13th September 2009). In a moment of sheer madness, we decided to create a soap sculpture....so here it is!

It's made from our cold-processed handmade goat's milk soap, and contains over 1000 hand carved bricks which form the shape of the Cone. As you can imagine this was really difficult to do, to ensure that each layer decreased at the correct angle to make up the outline of the Cone's shape.

Then on the outside of the Cone, we've added a collection of hundreds of ivy leaves and flowers - all moulded by hand from coloured soap. We estimate that it's taken well over 100 hours to create this sculpture, and we will be taking great care to ensure that it doesn't get wet!!

So if you're interested in wacky pieces of art, we hope you'll pop along to see our Natural Soap Cone. It smells quite nice too!

Explorer 8 problems for The Natural Soapworks website

We're sorry for there being a long gap between blog postings. It's because we've been very busy during the last few weeks, but we'll be adding more articles and telling you what we've been up to very soon!

On a practical note, we've found that The Natural Soapworks website is having problems with the latest version of Explorer so the drop down menus aren't working. This is a bit of a problem since you need to use these menus when placing orders! So if you've upgraded to Explorer 8 , we'd suggest that you choose the Compatibility View so you can see everything as normal. To do this, you simply click on the Compatibility View button which is located in the top right hand side of the browser address line, next to the Refresh button.

Isn't technology wonderful! In due course, we'll have to see if this part of our website can be changed, but for now this offers a simple fix for users.

Botanical Soap Making Courses

We're still taking bookings for our popular cold-process soap making courses this Summer. But we wanted to mention a special annual one which is scheduled to run at The Birmingham Botanical Gardens on Saturday 27th June 2009.

Our soap making class will run from 10.30am - 4pm in the Study Centre. This is such a beautiful venue, since you'll have the chance to walk around the gardens and glasshouses during the lunch break and after the class ends.

We always run the soap making classes at The Botanical Gardens with a larger group. This is a big advantage during the practical sessions, since participants work in pairs to share the vigorous whisking that's involved in making real soap! Since it's a bigger group, there's also a discount on our usual course fees, so you'll only pay £65.

So if you're interested in learning how to make real soap in a beautiful botanical setting then please contact the Study Centre to reserve your place on 0121 454 1860.

http://www.birminghambotanicalgardens.org.uk/leisurelearning/workshopseries?id=11