Spring Fayre - Ruskin Glass Centre - Saturday 12th March 2022

A date for the diary - why not pop in to see us on Saturday 12th March to choose your perfect gifts for Mother's Day and Easter!

For Mother's Day gift ideas visit our Mother's Day Gifts page on the Natroma website

 

Natroma & The Natural Soapworks Opening Hours

Just wanted to mention that we're going to try extending our opening hours for our Ruskin Glass Centre shop.  The Centre has been very quiet during the long period of building work, but the good news is that it's nearly completed now and the car park has been finished! 

Our new opening hours are:

Monday - Closed
Tuesday - 1pm to 4pm
Wednesday - 10am to 4pm
Thursday - 10am to 4pm
Friday - 10am to 4pm
Saturday - 10am to 4pm
Sunday - by arrangement*

* we are usually closed on Sundays, but we will open if there is sufficient demand.  Please contact us to make arrangements.

We'll continue to update this blog on a regular basis, with any changes to these hours.  Regular customers will also know that we regularly work past 4pm, so if you'd like to call in a little later then please give us a call and we'll be able to advise if we can stay open later to accommodate your visit. 

Hope this helps!

The Natural Soapworks at the Ruskin Glass Centre

By now, visitors to the International Festival of Glass will have noticed that a certain Stourbridge soap company is named on one of the new business units at the Ruskin Glass Centre. Today we've been asked about this quite a few times so we wanted to confirm that yes, it's true - The Natural Soapworks is expanding again!

Anyone who has visited us over the years at the Red House Glass Cone will have noticed that we keep outgrowing our premises. So we've taken the decision to expand into a much larger unit at the vibrant new business centre at the newly refurbished Ruskin Glass Centre. This will enable us to open a larger shop and we're also having a fully equiped holistic treatment room built so we can offer Natroma aromatherapy and holistic therapies too.

It's all very exciting, but we're currently awaiting building work to be completed before we can open the new unit. So for now, please continue to visit us at the Red House Glass Cone and we'll post more information about the new premises later in September!

NEW! Natural Shaving Kits

We've just updated our Natural Soapworks Pamper Hamper page with a range of new natural skincare hampers which would be perfect for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas. By popular request, we've included some new natural shaving items which would be great for Father's Day.

Our Natural Shaving Kit (left) contains some our our luxurious Forest Spice shaving soap. It's a specially formulated goats milk soap, that contains a lovely blend of woody essential oils (with skin caring properties), and rhassoul clay which is a fabulous clay that's usually used in spa treatments. This gives the soap a really lovely feeling on the skin, with a rich creamy lather (without lots of foam) which keeps the razor close to the skin so it glides and reduces razor burn. Teamed with the shaving soap, we've added a natural bristle wooden shaving brush and one of our Natroma Shaving Oils.

The Shaving Oil is presented in a Miron violet glass bottle with a pipette attachment, so you can measure out the correct amount of oil for a pre-shave mini massage. This helps the facial hair to lift and soften, so the razor will glide more easily and cause less irritation. The oil is packed with skin-kind botanical oils and herbal extracts - all formulated to calm and nourish the skin.

Our larger Shaving Hamper (contents shown right) also contains a black stone soap dish to stylishly drain the shaving soap between uses, and a new Natroma After Shave Balm. This is a lovely completely natural balm, for use after shaving to naturally condition and moisturise the skin with botanical butters, oils and herbal extracts. In this hamper we also include a fact sheet on shaving, with a recommended routine for obtaining the perfect shave!

What is aromatherapy?

These days, there are all manner of products on the market claiming to have aromatherapy benefits. The problem is that quite often cosmetics have names that make them sound like aromatherapy products, but they only contain minute amounts of essential oils or even have synthetic fragrances. These products may not even be formulated by a professional Aromatherapist, so how do you spot the genuine article? We hope the following information about essential oils and aromatherapy will be useful.

Aromatherapy is often defined as the careful, controlled use of essential oils, to enhance the well-being of the mind, body and spirit. Essential oils are highly concentrated, volatile, and fragrant substances that are extracted from flowers, berries, twigs, wood, seeds, fruits and leaves of many familiar plants. Essential oils have many different properties and research has shown that each oil contains a complex mixture of chemical components which contribute to essential oil therapeutic qualities. These could be stimulant, expectorant, anti-infectious, anti-inflammatory, relaxant, calming, soothing or uplifting. The important thing to stress is that they need to be used with respect and knowledge, so aromatherapy is far more than just pretty smells!

A professional Aromatherapist will have extensive knowledge of the therapeutic qualities and the chemical components within each essential oil. This enables them to create synergistic blends that are personalized for their client, taking into account their needs and any existing health conditions. In the hands of a knowledgable professional Aromatherapist, this means that these plant essences can be therapeutically blended to assist with stress, enhance health and support the body’s own healing processes. Clinical aromatherapy focuses on achieving synergy within the essential oil blend, and usually employs massage to use essential oils in a holistic treatment. So while this is not a medical treatment, aromatherapy has been found to work psychologically and physiologically to improve well-being.

In the coming months, we’ll be featuring a number of essential oils to explain their qualities and why we use them in our handmade natural skincare products. In the meantime, you can see more about our natural ingredients on our websites.

The Natural Soapworks and Natroma product ranges are formulated in-house by a professionally qualified Clinical Aromatherapist, and member of the International Federation of Professional Aromatherapists (IFPA).

The 2010 ducklings have arrived!

We just wanted to mention some new arrivals were spotted this afternoon - the ducklings have finally arrived!

We've been expecting them for a while, so it looks like Spring is definitely here. Visitors to the Red House Glass Cone should visit the canal side, and look out for 13 little ones this year. They are quite noisy and have lovely yellow colouring at the moment. We'll try to post some pictures, if they will keep still for a few moments!

Meet the new neighbours!

We thought you might like to see our new neighbours -aren't they cute!

These lovely little ducklings arrived 2 weeks ago and we've had some trouble taking their picture, since they move around so fast. Finally at last we managed to catch them all in one place, so hopefully you can see that there are 10 little ones following their Mum.

They are growing at an amazing speed and have doubled in size since they arrived. So if you pop down to the Red House Glass Cone, try to find the time to stop by the canal. They can be regularly seen outside our studio, and you'll know they're around since they make a surprising amount of noise for such little ones! We'll try to keep you updated on their progress.