2010 International Festival of Glass Soap

Who would have thought that glass making would be the inspiration for a soap?!

The 2010 International Festival of Glass weekend is fast approaching (August Bank Holiday 27th - 30th August), and will be celebrated across the Stourbridge Glass Quarter, so we knew that we had to create a new soap. In 2008, we launched our very popular Festival soap. This has since been re-named as Kaleidoscope and still features it's 4 colour swirled pattern. This year's special edition soap is called Crystal.

Crystal has been inspired by the 'frit' (chunks of glass) that's melted in the pot in the furnace. Once the molten glass reaches the correct temperature its gathered onto the blowpipe, and then the glassblower gets to work creating their beautiful masterpieces.

Crystal is a sweet smelling (Geranium and Lavender) chunky topped soap, that's mainly cream coloured with pink and purple chunks running through each bar. Each bar is quite unique, and as the outer part of the bar is washed off it will reveal different patterns. Crystal is one of our lovely new Natroma coconut milk, palm-free soaps so is suitable for all skin types, and vegan customers.

The International Festival of Glass will take place between 23 August - 11 September at venues across Stourbridge's Glass Quarter including: Ruskin Glass Centre, Broadfield House Glass Museum, Red House Glass Cone, Bonded Warehouse, Holy Trinity Church and the Dial Glassworks. So we hope that you enjoy the Festival and pop in to see us at the Red House Glass Cone over the Bank Holiday weekend!

Orang 2 palm-free goat's milk soap

This is a quick note to mention that Orang 2, our new palm-free orangutan friendly soap, is now ready for sale!

A couple of weeks ago we told you about how the very first batch of Orang 2 soap had been donated to Borneo Orangutan Survival UK. We're very pleased to say that it seems to be selling well at the BOS UK events.

Our own batch of this brand new soap has completed it's curing period, so it has been added to the charity page of The Natural Soapworks website. So if you'd like to one of the first to try out this lovely sweet but citrussy natural goat's milk soap, please visit: http://www.naturalsoapworks.co.uk/CharitySkincare.aspx and £1 from the sale of each Orang 2 bar will be donated to BOS UK!

Our first palm-free soap is donated to BOS!

We're delighted to announce that we've finally cracked it! We've successfully re-formulated our luxurious goat's milk soap so it's now palm-free. You cannot imagine how excited we are about this, since it's taken over 12 months of testing to finally achieve the perfect formulation.

As you know, we're perfectionists when it comes to soap so we had a pretty long list of demands from this new soap...and we love the result! It's still a hard bar, still has a luxurious creamy lather, still looks beautiful, still smells gorgeous, and it's still packed with natural ingredients and goat's milk so it still feels like our soap!! (draws breath) BUT most importantly it lacks palm oil in it's formulation! Can you tell that we're over the moon with this soap?

It seemed only right that Borneo Orangutan Survival (BOS) UK should receive the first palm-free batch, since they have been our inspiration for removing palm oil from our soaps. Therefore we've donated the first 50 bars to BOS UK, and created a brand new ‘Orang 2’ palm-free goat’s milk soap to celebrate this important landmark for The Natural Soapworks. Just look at that lovely pile of soap.....

'Orang 2' is a lovely sweet but citrussy bar, containing a blend of citrus and ho leaf essential oils. Ho leaf has lovely floral but woody notes, but is the ecological substitute for rosewood. 'Orang 2' also features a pretty swirled pattern of natural clay, and as usual each bar is decorated with our hairy string and a BOS label. Every penny raised from the sale of this first batch will go to BOS UK, so Grainne and the team will be selling these bars at forthcoming BOS UK events. We'd just ask that anyone who gets the chance to buy one of these bars - please give generously, so as much money as possible can be raised for this wonderful charity.

Our own batch of 'Orang 2' is still maturing, and will be available in the studio and on our websites in a couple of weeks. As before, we guarantee that £1 from the sale of each bar will be sent to BOS UK in support of Lone, and everyone in the Nyaru Menteng team. For a while we'll still be using up the last of our supplies of organic sustainable palm oil, but then soap production will be switched over to this very 'orangutan friendly' new formulation. Our BOS soap page is: http://www.naturalsoapworks.co.uk/CharitySkincare.aspx