Merry Christmas everyone!

Today is the last day we'll be open during 2014.  Our Stourbridge shop will be open this afternoon between 12.30pm - 4.30pm, and we still have some lovely fragrant goodies for last minute stocking fillers!

After this, we'll be taking an extended Christmas and New Year break, with our Stourbridge shop re-opening again on Tuesday 13th January 2015.  During Christmas week our websites will continue to accept orders, but they won't be processed until Monday 29th December 2014.  After this, website orders will be processed from Monday 5th January 2015 onwards.  Local customers who need urgent items can e-mail us, since we'll be calling into the workshop on a regular basis to process website orders (so as usual we'll be happy to arrange times to collect orders etc).

As most customers will know, it's been a very difficult year for us this year.  We'd like to thank everyone who stuck by us, was understanding and sent us messages of support in the Autumn.  We genuinely value your kindness, and hope everyone has a peaceful and restful Christmas.

Christmas craft events are nearly here!

Just a quick reminder that we'll be attending the Frost Fair at Attingham Park this weekend.  We set up on Thursday and it runs between Friday 28th - Sunday 30th November.  We love attending this event so why not visit our Facebook page, to see how we get on.  Our Stourbridge shop will be closed Thursday and Friday, but will be open on Saturday between 11am and 4pm.  It'll be back to normal again from next Tuesday. 

If the Frost Fair is too far to travel, there are also some craft events coming up at the Ruskin Glass Centre.  The dates for the diary are:   Christmas Craft Fair 6-7th December, and the evening of 11th December for the popular Candlelit Shopping evening.  Hope to see you there!

Christmas is coming...

We're now opening our Stourbridge shop again, and it's been lovely to see so many customers again.  We've been keeping ourselves busy making new items which are part of this year's Christmas range.  We're already accepting Christmas orders from local customers, and have started adding Christmas Hampers to The Natural Soapworks website.

Take a look at our new Festive Bath Bombs!  These are larger 140g bath bombs in some gorgeous luxury fragrances:  Christmas Rose (red), Winter Jasmine (green) and Frankincense & Myrrh (gold).  These are packaged in gorgeous organza wrappings, covered in glittery snowflakes - great as a small gift or perfect for a little self indulgence!  You'll find these in some of our Christmas hampers this year, and they're certainly proving to be popular.



The Natural Soapworks - Festive Bath Bombs

But we have found that we have a couple of problems with these....

1.  They keep selling out, so we can't seem to keep up with demand!
2. We keep getting covered in glitter every time they're wrapped!

 So try not to laugh if you spot that we're looking a little more sparkly than usual when you call into our Stourbridge shop!

Closed due to family bereavement

It’s with great sadness that we announce that Sarah’s Mom died yesterday.

As some of you will know, she was recently diagnosed with advanced lung cancer and during the last 5 weeks we have spent most of our time with her at the hospital.  She was a lovely, generous and very brave lady who fought her illness with great courage and dignity. 

In the coming days The Natural Soapworks will remain closed, as we come to terms with our grief.

Scam emails

We've received a few e-mails suggesting we have sent an e-mail with an invoice attachment.

We want to confirm this appears to be a scam e-mail, and was never sent by us - it would be impossible since the e-mail address does not exist.  The person mentioned in the e-mail does not work for us.

This has to be a scam, so we can only suggest that you do not open the attachment (it's likely to be a virus) or reply to the message.

Changes to our opening hours

Due to a serious family illness, we have decided to reduce the opening hours of our Stourbridge shop.  We're still spending lots of time at the hospital, so we're going to try opening most afternoons until the end of August.  Exact hours may change occasionally, so we're sorry for any inconvenience.  We won't be accepting appointments for Aromatherapy treatments in the coming weeks, but may be able to arrange some Sports and Swedish Massage appointments.

This change in our shop opening hours will have no impact on website orders - these will be processed as normal.

25/8/14 UPDATE
We'll be closed on Tuesday 26th August, and at the moment do not know if we'll be open this week.  For urgent queries, it will be best to contact us by e-mail. 

Off to the Shrewsbury Flower Show

This week we've been busy preparing loads of hampers and soaps ready for the Shrewsbury Flower Show.  We'll be setting up our stand on Thursday this week, and exhibiting at the show on Friday and Saturday.  This means our Stourbridge shop will be closed from Wednesday onwards.

After attending such a busy show, we're expecting to be pretty tired!  So we'll be taking a weeks leave, returning to re-open our shop from Tuesday 19th August 2014.   During this time, our websites will continue to accept orders and these will be processed in date order once we return.

Limited opening hours this week

Unfortunately we have a family illness again, which means more trips to the doctors and hospital.  We're going to try to open our Stourbridge shop as often as we can, but it's likely that our normal opening hours will vary each day.  As things become clearer, we'll keep updating our opening hours on this blog and hope it helps customers in planning their visits.

For urgent order queries and if Stourbridge customers would like to arrange a specific time to call in to make purchases, it will be best if you send us an e-mail.  We'll be picking up messages regularly and will try to get back to you asap.

Feeling hot, hot, hot...

Unfortunately the workshop is causing us problems again.  Today was unbearably hot, so in view of tomorrow's weather forecast we've decided it will be best to close the workshop for tomorrow.  We'll be open again on Saturday, but will be closing a little earlier than usual.

We apologise for any inconvenience, but we'll continue to work on finalising this years Christmas range somewhere cool!  The Ruskin Glass Centre was very quiet today so we're sure that tomorrows closure won't cause any problems.

While the weather is hot, we'd recommend that local customers keep checking this blog since we'll continue to update our shop opening hours to try to prevent any wasted journeys.  If you need anything urgent, just drop us an e-mail and we'll see what we can do.  Rest assured it is business as usual, and we'll ensure that internet orders continue to be processed within our usual delivery timescales.  

Keep cool everyone!

Final preparations for Royal Three Counties

Later this week, The Natural Soapworks will be heading off to the Royal Three Counties Show at Malvern.  We'll have our stand in the Eden Crafts marquee which is near to the main ring. 

Natural Soapworks - Gardener's Gift Buckets

As you can imagine, the workshop has been a hive of activity during the last few weeks, making loads of lovely fresh bathing products and wrapping lots of soaps and gift hampers.

Enville - Natural Soapworks real ale soap in aid of Prostate Cancer UK

For these events we often produce new special edition items, and for this show we've created some pretty Gardener's Tins - cute little galvanised buckets containing Gardener's soaps, our new Gardener's Balm and hand care products that are perfect for green fingers!

We'll also be showcasing Enville, our brand new charity real ale soap, which was launched last week.  This is a special edition soap, created to support Prostate Cancer UK and would be a nice choice for Father's Day.

Our Stourbridge shop will be closed from Thursday 12th June (2pm) until Tuesday 17th June.  Our websites will continue to accept orders while we're away, and these will be processed in the date order they arrived as soon as we return.  For more updates on the show, visit our Facebook page.

The Natural Soapworks supports Prostate Cancer UK

Every week The Natural Soapworks is contacted by people asking us for charitable donations.  As a very small business it feels hard to have to say no to many of these requests, but hopefully everyone understands that we simply couldn’t afford to support every good cause that comes our way.   So we’ve decided that it’s best if we choose a single charity, who will receive all of our Natural Soapworks donations for this coming year. 

We’re pleased to announce that our chosen charity for 2014/15 is Prostate Cancer UK, and our donations will be made in memory of Sarah’s Dad who lost his fight with this terrible disease some years ago. 

It may surprise you to know that 1 in 8 UK men will get prostate cancer during their lives, so the chances are that at some point it will affect your life or someone you are close to.  For more information about the wonderful support and advice that’s available from Prostate Cancer UK, visit:  www.prostatecanceruk.org  We has a collection box and information leaflets available in our shop.

Thank you to everyone who's made a donation so far!

Gift ideas for Mother's Day

Natroma Soap Box Hamper

We have some lovely new gift ideas for Mother's Day this year.  More details can be found on the Natroma Gift Sets page.

Our pretty Soap Box hampers would be lovely for anyone who enjoys using handmade natural soaps.  These contain a mixture of goats milk soaps, ranging from half bars, mini soaps, soap balls and hand decorated soap slices.  Each hamper is wrapped with an elegant stitched ribbon, topped with a pretty daisy decoration.  In each hamper we'll make sure there's a range of fragrances and soap designs, to allow the gift recipient to try out a variety of soaps.

Natroma Fizz Box Hamper

Or another alternative would be our popular Fizz Box, which contains a variety of organic fizzing butter melts and bath bombs.  These completely natural bathing items would make a nice choice for anyone who enjoys taking long relaxing baths!  This hamper is also wrapped in pretty stitched ribbon topped with the daisy decoration.

Natroma Buttterfly Hamper

We also have some larger Butterfly Hampers which contain a mixture of a goats milk soap, some bathing products and a luxurious Monoi de Tahiti rollerball.  These are  lovely hampers giving the gift recipient the chance to try a variety of pampering items.  They're presented in our unusual fluted hampers, finished with lacy ribbon and a pretty butterfly decoration.  These are available in 3 fragrance options:  De-Stress, Exotic and Rose.




If you're looking for other gift ideas, remember to check out the Beautiful Things section of the Natroma website.  This contains a few of the candles, jewellery and crystal items that are stocked in our Stourbridge shop.

Just in!
We have some beautiful pear drop style sterling silver earrings with genuine gemstones in fluorite, carnelian, tigers eye, lapis lazuli, smoky quartz, amethyst, amazonite and blue lace agate. 

We also have a lovely variety of sterling sliver crystal pendants, again with a variety of natural gemstones.  Also check out our Chakra items - they're really pretty!

It's time for some Romance!

It's time to enjoy some Romance in your life!

Our Valentine's Day products are now available on the Natroma website.

Choose from sensuous heart shaped bath bombs, fizzing butter melts, heart decorated goats milk soaps and of course....our ever popular Romance essential oil blend!   This years special edition is our pretty rose petal decorated Romance bath salts with pink Himalayan salts...we hope you enjoy!

Happy New Year 2014!

Happy New Year to all of our customers!  

Our Stourbridge shop is still closed at the moment, but we wanted to celebrate the start of the New Year.  So, until 12th night (midnight 5th January 2014) Natroma website customers can enjoy an extra 10% off their orders!  Simply add the items you'd like to purchase to the basket, and then add coupon code "2014" before proceeding to the checkout.

Terms and conditions:
1. This discount may only be used on orders placed on the Natroma website, which will be shipped to UK addresses.
2. Orders using the 2014 discount code will be dispatched from 7th January 2014 onwards, using the cheapest available shipping method as standard.  Orders with priority or courier shipping will be processed in advance of standard orders. 
3. The 2014 discount code cannot be applied retrospectively and is while product stocks last.  Orders must be processed before midnight on 5.1.14.