Fantastic Frost Fair...but busy, busy!

We'd just like to say thank you to all of our customers, new and old, who visited our stand at last weekend's Frost Fair at Attingham Park. We had a wonderful time, and we were so pleased with the lovely feedback about our new range of pretty soap slice and botanical hampers! We hope the gift recipients enjoy using them.

But it's back to work again - visitors to both of our shops will find empty shelves at the moment! But don't worry, we're working around the clock to manufacture fresh bathing products and will have a selection of Christmas hampers available within the next day or so.

We also have a late night shopping evening planned for the Ruskin Workshop - so why not visit us on Wednesday 15th December for your last minute Christmas shopping. We'll be open between 11.00am and 9.00pm on that day, so hope to see you soon!

Christmas is coming!

We've been a little quite on the blog in the last few week - it's because we've been so busy! We're settling into the Ruskin workshop very nicely, and visitors may well have noticed a certain Christmassy smell in the air. Yes, we've been blending our Christmas Spice essential oil blend again, and our natural Christmas decorations are now smelling wonderful and will be hung on the Christmas tree very soon!

So we've finally managed to upload some of our Christmas gift ideas onto the Natural Soapworks website. This year, we've expanded our range of naturally decorated recycled gift hampers - and they look very pretty without causing problems for the environment.

Mindful that times are still tough, we've also done everything we can to keep prices down so website customers will find a great range of hampers containing pretty hand decorated goats milk soap slices and botanical fizzing bath melts - all for under £10.

We're expecting the next few weeks to be very busy, as we prepare for a number of Christmas craft events. So website orders are currently being processed on a 2 day turnaround, and we will continue to post out hampers until the Christmas postal deadline is reached....or we run out of soap!!

Visitors to the Workshop, are advised to place their Christmas orders as soon as possible now - we're expecting to have to close our Stourbridge order book within the next week or so. We hope to see you soon!

Ruskin Glass Centre shop opens

The Natural Soapworks new shop at the Ruskin Glass Centre opened yesterday. We'd like to thank all of our loyal customers who called in to see us, and sent us good luck cards and flowers. We were really touched to receive so many good wishes, and it really made our day! We're still busy stocking the shelves and working on the unit, but here's a picture of how the shop area looked on the first day.

During the coming half term week we intend to open the Ruskin shop between 10am and 4pm on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This will coincide with the opening of the Ruskin Glass Centre's cafe, which will be offering a selection of complimentary cakes and coffee to visitors.

We're likely to be closed later in the week since we are re-fitting the Studio 7 shop, but local customers can ring our new telephone number (01384 399451) so we can advise on opening hours. We will also post an update on the blog, later in the week. We intend to re-open Studio 7 at the Red House Glass Cone on Saturday 30th October for the 'No Tricks, Just Treats' Halloween Funday. There will be no impact on website orders - these will be processed as normal.

The final thing to mention, is that the 2010 Christmas Catalogue is now available to local customers, to pre-order natural skincare Christmas gifts for collection from our Stourbridge premises during November and December. Many of these Christmas gift ideas will be uploaded to the website later this week.

Last chance to purchase Natural Soapworks Christmas skincare gift hampers!

We're relieved to be able to say that the last of our Christmas gift hamper items have now been manufactured! It's been a very busy few weeks for everyone at The Natural Soapworks, so once again a big thank you to all of our customers who popped in to collect their orders and wish us a Merry Christmas!!

But it's not over yet! There's still one more weekend before Christmas, and we know how frustrating it can be when you can't find a suitable gift for someone.

That's why we're going to open up Studio 12 again during this last weekend of the year, and we'll have a range of Natroma skincare products, goat's milk soap mini soaps, botanical bath melts and other lovely fragrant goodies available to purchase. We still have a few of our special £5 Secret Santa hampers too, but they'll be selling out soon!

On Saturday and Sunday we'll be offering our popular 'while you wait' hamper wrapping service, so remember to pop in and see us if you're in need of some final gift inspiration!

Our final opening hours for 2009 will be:

Thursday (17th) from 1pm-4pm

Friday (18th) from 11am - 4pm

Saturday (19th) from 11am-4pm

Sunday (20th) from 11am - 4pm

Monday (21st) 10am-1pm

Tuesday (22nd) 11am - 4pm

Natural Soapworks Christmas orders

We just wanted to add a quick thank you to all of our customers who are calling in to collect Christmas gift orders from the Studio. Last weekend was busy and we're expecting the coming weekend to be even busier! It's been lovely to see everyone, and we'd like to thank you for your seasonal good wishes.

As we predicted, some of our goat's milk soap varieties are now at very limited stock and will definitely sell out before Christmas. (Sorry but Geranium, Herbal Zest and South Pacific are now down to just a handful of bars). So if you'd like a particular fragrance, we'd advise you to try to purchase very soon.

We're already scheduling lots of soap manufacture in the coming weeks so we can bring old favourites back to the shelves towards the end of January. Phew! Looks like we're going to be busy again.....

Christmas time at The Natural Soapworks

It's a hive of activity at the Soapworks at the moment! Christmas has well and truly arrived, with orders seeming to be arriving from all over the place - which has made it a little difficult to blog.

Apologies for this, but we're rushed off our feet and need to maintain the momentum of making our natural skincare goodies and packaging them into hampers. To give you an idea of what we mean, this week we've been making hundreds of bath bombs and fizzing bath melts - since as usual it's difficult to keep up with demand for these. Fingers crossed there should be a good stocks available again by this weekend! Also, we're already running low on certain soap varieties, so we'll be updating the website as each variety sells out - if you want a particular variety over the Christmas period it may be best to purchase early to avoid disappointment.

From this weekend, remember that Santa takes up residence at the Cone, with his own grotto and fun activities for children - so you'll need to ring the Cone for details since pre-booking is essential! See you soon...