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!

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 Regular users will remember that these were withdrawn earlier in the year, after we received feedback that the mask was becoming too thick for the airless pump packaging and the nozzle was becoming blocked.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.

Magnificent Monoi!

We've pleased to report that we have a new supplier for our Monoi de Tahiti - and it's just lovely! We've always had a soft spot for this lovely tiare flower infused coconut oil, since it smells so wonderful and suits all skin types. It's also an ingredient in our South Pacific goats milk soap....so yes...we've already made a batch and it should be ready in a few weeks time!

We've found that Monoi de Tahiti is particularly suited to sensitive and troubled skin, and sinks in easily to leave a luxurious, fragrant sheen on the skin. As many customers will know, we have sensitive skin and eczema in our family, so we were delighted when we found that Monoi not only smells wonderful but also has skin-soothing properties too. At this time of year, we think that Monoi makes a wonderful natural face oil so that's why we supply it in 10ml rollerball bottles (perfect for a little facial massage). It's also available in larger bottles too, and to celebrate it's return, we're offering some special offers on our Facial skincare page.

So what should you know about about Monoi de Tahiti? Monoi is produced via a process called enfleurage, where tiare blossoms (Tahiti's national flower) are gently macerated in pure coconut oil. Monoi means 'scented oil', and since 1992 genuine Monoi production and ingredients have been protected. This means that genuine Monoi has to be extracted from mature coconuts gathered from Cocus Nucifera trees growing in French Polynesia, and only tiare buds from Gardenia Tahitensis species of Polynesian origin are permitted.

Research has found that Monoi oil is rich in skin soothing ingredients, making it a naturally concentrated emollient that is capable of penetrating and re-hydrating the skin's epidermis. It is believed to offer skin protection from both the sun and wind, and supports troubled skin conditions. So how would you use Monoi? Here are a few suggestions:

• After bathing - a light application will offer skin moisturing qualities.



• As a pre-shampoo hot oil treatment - simply apply a small amount to dry hair and leave as required, before shampooing the hair. Monoi will deeply condition the hair, to leave a healthy shine.



• During a bath - add a few drops to the water to release the lovely floral fragrance and encourage relaxation, whilst giving the skin extra softness and a subtle fragrance.



• As a natural massage oil - it is well suited to massage since it sinks in easily without leaving any oiliness.



• Monoi can also be used as a tanning and aftersun oil. However we do not recommend this, since excess sun exposure can damage the skin.

Monoi is an unusual oil, since it is solid at below 68F (20C). This is perfectly normal, and shows it is a genuine oil without any synthetic emulsifiers. So in warm weather it will be a pale golden oil, and in colder weather it is an off-white solid oil. This is why we sell Monoi in bottles - it creates far less mess to use it from a bottle when it's a liquid! It needs to be melted before use, so when it's cold you can either stand your bottle of Monoi on the radiator, or in a cup of hot water. Solidifying and melting will not have any impact on the Monoi, but it is very important to never use a microwave to warm Monoi.

We hope you enjoy using this deliciously fragrant, exotic oil!

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.

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!

The Natural Soapworks is awarded BUAV’s Humane Cosmetics Standard

Today we have received some fantastic news – The Natural Soapworks and Natroma product ranges have achieved the Humane Cosmetics Standard (HCS)!

The HCS is the only internationally recognised scheme that enables consumers to easily identify and purchase cosmetic and toiletry products that have not been tested on animals. The standard is managed by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), and the ultimate aim is to end all cosmetics and household products testing on animals.

From now on, our products will be able to bear the Leaping Bunny Logo, since we have never conducted or commissioned animal testing on our products or their ingredients.

We are very proud to be a member of this standard and you’ll soon see our details in the BUAV’s Little Book of Cruelty Free. In the coming weeks we’ll be issuing further information, but for now if you’d like to read more on the standard, please visit: Go Cruelty Free

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!

Palm Free Goats Milk Soap Slices

We're pleased to announce that our handmade palm free soap slices have now been added to The Natural Soapworks website. We're really proud of these, since they use a new formulation of our popular goats milk soap. It's a really creamy, bubbly soap made even better by the lack of palm oil in the formulation, so they are completely orangutan friendly soaps! They are pretty soaps too, with delicate aromatherapy blends of essential oils.

These are slightly larger soaps, at 120g each, sliced from a log and hand decorated with pretty botanicals. We hope you enjoy using them!

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!

Skin Spring Clean with Natroma

Now that the days are lengthening in the UK, it's lovely to see some very welcome sunshine! Spring is on the way and we'll soon be baring more skin again, so it's a good time to review your skincare regime. During the colder months it's easy to neglect the skin, and it can become damaged by being exposed to the elements and the dry air from central heating systems.

Therefore we'd recommend using a cream cleanser and a muslin cloth each day, to gently cleanse and exfoliate away dry patches, and brighten the complexion. Our gentle facial approach, involves a 3 stage process which takes only a couple of minutes each day - it's no fuss and can be built into even the busiest of mornings and evenings.

First of all you massage our rich cream cleanser across the face, allowing it to draw out skin impurities. We formulated this to harness the deep cleansing power of organic caster oil and white clay, with the moisturising benefits of nilotica shea butter and D-panthenol, and the wonderful skin soothing properties of calendula and chamomile botanical extracts. These are gentle cleansers, fragranced only with organic hydrolats (flower waters), making them well suited to sensitive skin types, safe to use around the eyes and perfect for removing make up.

Our Natroma cleanser works best when used with a muslin cloth. You simply rinse a muslin cloth in hand-hot water and wring out so the cloth is warm and moist. Use the cloth to gently remove the cleanser cream, make-up and skin impurities - and it will lightly exfoliate the skin to leave it feeling refreshed, brighter and clean.

We'd then suggest using some hydrolat toner to ensure all traces of cleanser are gone and to further refresh the skin. Hydrolats are produced during the steam distillation of essential oils, so contain dissolved plant extracts which are kind and soothing to the skin. Ours are presented in a Miron glass, a special violet glass which protects the hydrolat from light.

The final stage of our mini facial, is to smooth on some moisturiser. Like the rest of our range, Natroma's moisturisers are handmade and contain a blend of flower waters, botanical oils (including jojoba oil), natural plant extracts (rosehip seed and arctic cranberry seed), and are lightly fragranced with Neroli and Rose essential oils. We're proud of these lovely moisturisers since they feel light on the skin and sink in quickly to provide lasting skin hydration without any greasiness.

Make up can be applied after moisturising, making this a quick but enjoyable mini pampering session at the start and end to every day!

To encourage everyone to try out the Natroma range, we have a special Spring Offer on the Natroma website. We're offering the facial starter kit (includes a 30ml cleanser and moisturiser in airless pumps with a 50ml hydrolat and a muslin cloth). This kit should last for around 4-6 weeks and normally costs £15.25, but our special Spring Offer saves you 15% and is just £12.95 These are available in 3 varieties - Chamomile (unscented), Rose and Orange blossom (Neroli). We hope you enjoy!

Mother's Day Natural Soap Hampers

We've just uploaded some new goats milk soap gift hampers on to The Natural Soapworks website, which would make perfect Mother's Day gifts. Our new contemporary soap range will be added to the website in the coming weeks, and we're very pleased with them!

The botancial mini soaps, will be available in 2 sizes: 25g (these are the cute mini soaps which have been featured in our natural skincare gift sets for a while), and 40g (a new larger mini soap). These look fantastic in our elegant, hamper boxes.

We're particularly proud of our new contemporary soap slices, since they look beautiful but are also handmade using our new goats milk palm-free soap formulation. We first introduced this soap recipe when we launched 'Orang 2' (our charity soap, which supports Borneo Orangutan Survival - BOS UK). It will be the base formulation for our contemporary soap range, so is particularly suitable for anyone who wants to avoid using products which contain palm oil. This soap range will introduce several new soap fragrances, and the first six are: Springtime (a refreshing and uplifting blend with herbal and citrus notes), Rosebud (delicate, sweet rose notes), Hippy Rosie (rose geranium with patchouli), Exotic Flowers (rich sensual notes of ylang ylang and jasmine), Marigold (with lavender and chamomile), and an old favourite, Lavender.

These are being previewed in our Mother's Day hampers page on the website, and will soon be available as individual soaps. We hope you like them!

Goats milk soap stocks are improving!

It's been a busy few weeks at The Natural Soapworks....making lots of soap!

Christmas was so busy that we actually ran out of some of our most popular varieties, but rest assured we now have lots of lovely goats milk soap bars curing on our drying racks. But before they are ready, we still have lots of soap offers which will be available in the studio and on the Special offers page of The Natural Soapworks website during January.

The website also has a new soap (it usually sells out in the studio before we have time to add it to the website!) which is called Blue Lagoon. This is a really lovely soap with a deep evocative fragrance of ylang ylang blended with vetiver and citrus notes. It has a deep purple base layer with a thicker blue layer over the top and contains Monoi de Tahiti, which makes the lather really creamy. It's one of our most luxurious goats milk soaps, so catch it while you can, by visiting the goats milk soap page on our website: Blue Lagoon goats milk soap

We should also mention that we're having lots of fun developing some new goats milk and coconut milk soap varieties. These are for a new range of contemporary soaps which are on the way - they will be launched in time for Mother's Day... so watch this space!

Natural Soapworks New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year to all Natural Soapworks customers!

It's been lovely to hear back from so many people, regarding their Christmas orders - it sounds like your gift recipients loved our packaging and have had an enjoyable time trying out our skincare products too. Our thanks for the lovely feedback!

It's now that time of year, when we all make some resolutions. So as a responsible skin care business, we thought we'd share some of our resolutions for 2010 with our readers.

We resolve to:

1. Continue to only make skincare products containing natural fragrances from essential oils and natural colours.

2. Continue to source only the finest ingredients for our skincare products, taking care in selecting responsible, eco-friendly suppliers who are opposed to any form of animal testing.

3. Continue to only use sustainable palm oil in our goat's milk soaps - so our soap production never contributes to the destruction of the orangutan's habitat in Borneo.

4. Introduce a new range of soaps in 2010, which will not contain any palm oil within their formulation. Watch this space!

5. Continue to publicise and support the work of Borneo Orangutan Survival UK, and their wonderful work to save and rehabiliate orphaned orangutans.

6. Continue to only use paper, glass and plastic product packaging which can be recycled. Our gift packaging will also be recyclable (or be manufactured from recycled materials).

7. Continue to re-cycle boxes and packaging materials and ensure that used printer toners etc are donated to charitable causes.

8. Maintain our stance of refusing to use cosmetic ingredients containing parabens, SLS detergents, pthalates, PEG's, petroleum derived ingredients (including mineral oil) and other nasty ingredients in our products.

9. Continue to be perfectionists - whether it be taking extra care when we manufacture our handmade skincare products, or packaging them with care so they reach our mail order customers in perfect condition. This also means that we'll value and continue to listen to customer feedback, so we keep on improving The Natural Soapworks and Natroma product ranges.

10. Continue to offer our customers great value for money by selling concentrated natural products which last and genuinely work in harmony with the skin. We'll also increase the selection of items available to mail order from The Natural Soapworks website.

We'll review these at the end of 2010 to see how we've done!

So to start things off this year, we've made a few changes to The Natural Soapworks website. Sadly part of this is due to changes in our prices, due to the increase in VAT and raw material costs etc. But this is our first price rise since 2008, and we've done everything we can to keep our products as affordable as possible. We'll also be updating the special offers page regularly so website customers can benefit from extra savings throughout 2010. So remember to visit: http://www.naturalsoapworks.co.uk/Special.aspx

To end on a positive, we've also reviewed our website postage charges for 2010 - these used to be on a sliding scale which was dependent on the value of the order. But from today we're pleased to announce a flat rate approach for The Natural Soapworks website. Orders under £50 will now cost just £2.95 on postage, and if you spend over £50 then postage will be FREE!

Thanks for reading!

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...

Natural Soapworks Christmas Gifts!

This weekend, the Red House Glass Cone hosts it's popular Christmas Craft Market. There will be an abundance of craft stalls including items handmade by the Cone's resident businesses: jewellery, textiles, painted ceramics, glass designs, and of course The Natural Soapworks bathing and skincare goodies!

This year looks like being an extra special event, with mulled wine and roasted chestnuts on offer. We'll be offering some a fantastic skin care hamper offers, free gifts if you spend a certain amount, festive soaps and bath bombs, Christmas candles, handmade fragrant Christmas decorations and much, much more! The Christmas Craft Market is open on Saturday the 21st of November from 11.00 am till 4.00 pm & on Sunday the 22nd of November from 11.00 am till 4.00 pm.

In praise of Rhassoul Clay

We're continuing our series on Autumnal skincare, with this short feature on the benefits of gentle facial exfoliation.

Colder weather means that it’s even more important to exfoliate the skin to reveal healthy, plumper new cells underneath. The summer sun can leave the skin feeling dry and tight, so using a muslin cloth as part of your cleaning approach does help. But we're great believers in the use of facial masks, and when used once or twice each week, these ensure your complexion remains bright and uncongested.

Rhassoul is a spa quality clay which has been evaluated in the USA, to test the effectiveness of including it in facial mask treatments. This research concluded that rhassoul clay gave measurable improvements in skin clarity, elasticity and texture and even reduced dryness even after one treatment! It has a very unusual texture when mixed with water - becoming cooling and almost gel-like when it's applied to the skin. We selected this remarkable clay for our masks since it is very gentle, so can be tolerated by all skin types, and it cleans without stripping sebum from the skin. (Readers may be more familiar with green clay masks, which can be quite harsh and drawing on the skin, cracking as they dry out). Instead our non-drying cream clay masks contain rhassoul with hydrolat flower waters, jojoba and coconut oils, soothing aloe vera, D-panthenol, glycerine and botanical extracts. You can read more about these natural ingredients at: http://www.natroma.co.uk/store/d5-exfoliators-rhassoul-clay-masks/

On a personal note, I find that rhassoul clay can be a life saver when my very sensitive skin decides to have a nasty flare up! I have mild roseaca and it misbehaved just recently, so I quickly reached for my rhassoul clay mask to calm things down again. I’m pleased to say that it cooled the uncomfortable burning sensation, and over the next few days was invaluable for exfoliating away the nasty little dry bumps that formed on the surface of my cheeks. So I definitely love rhassoul clay!

Natural foot care

In the third of our series of articles abour Autumn skincare, today we're looking at the feet.

A major problem associated with the feet at the end of Summer, is dry, cracked heels. These are typically caused by wearing open backed sandals during the summer. Cracked heel problems can vary between dry or flaky skin, to hard skin and deep fissures which may be very sore. So it’s a good idea to treat your feet to a pedicure.

We’d suggest using a natural pumice stone to smooth away areas of toughened skin. But a gentler approach would be to use a foot scrub to slough away dead skin. This is why we developed our Peppermint Foot Scrub (see http://www.naturalsoapworks.co.uk/Saltscrubs.aspx)

These contain a mixture of fine salts (including Dead Sea Salt), nourishing botanical oils, honey, shea butter, and Vitamin E. It's fragranced with lavender, peppermint and tea tree essential oils, and leaves the feet feeling moisturised and with a delicious fragrance! After smoothing the skin, we'd suggest that a balm product is applied to assist with re-hydration of the skin.

Psst....watch this space, since we have a new foot product on the way! Our rich Foot Balm contains jojoba oil, cocoa and avocado butters, with healing lavender, chamomile and tea tree to refresh and nourish the feet. We'll be adding this to the website in the next few days.