Natroma launches New Mum pregnancy range!

It's been a long time since we last posted....sorry, but we've had a really busy start to the year! Our thanks to everyone who's placed orders on the websites, or popped into our shop to pick up supplies and have a chat. (We'll try to keep things more up to date from now on!)

Behind the scenes we've been working on a brand new Natroma range, especially for new Mums or Mums to be. There’s a great deal of myth and fear surrounding the use of essential oils during pregnancy, with various lists of ‘banned’ essential oils circulating on the internet. We often speak to anxious pregnant ladies who've heard bad things about one essential oil or another, and after they've left us we usually shake our heads in disbelief over the latest horror story!

Sadly many of these stories circulate without any sound reasoning or clinical evidence, so it’s little wonder that new Mum’s often feel confused by the contradictory information and may even decide that it’s safer to avoid using any aromatherapy products during their pregnancy. We think this is so sad, since correctly formulated aromatherapy products and professional holistic therapy, can provide comfort and support during what can at times be an anxious (and sometimes difficult) chapter of a woman’s life.

So we're launching our New Mum range to provide user friendly, luxurious pampering aromatherapy products that can be enjoyed throughout normal pregnancies. The range has been formulated with knowledge and care, and we hope that women will feel confident in using the range. Wherever possible we're using organic ingredients with therapeutic essential oils correctly diluted in lower concentrations than usual (typically at or below 1%).

We're making no medical claims about our pregnancy products, but they have been carefully formulated to take into account the growing body of evidence that essential oils can support a variety of health issues. For more information visit the New Mum Pregnancy page on the Natroma website.

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).

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!

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!

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.

Natroma Autumn Skincare Advice

Sadly the days are shortening, and it’s definitely becoming chilly at night! So while Autumn may encourage you to enjoy outdoor activities, it’s important to remember that your skin will retain less moisture as the air becomes cooler and drier. This is why at this time of year, many people experience dryness, fine lines, dull and sallow skin tone, sun and age spots, flaking and irritation as well as the flare-up of some conditions like rosacea. So it’s a good idea to pamper your skin in the Autumn and make some adjustments to your skincare regime in readiness for Winter. During the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing a series of articles on Autumn skincare starting with the hands and nails.

Hands and Nails

Nails and cuticles can become dry and flaky at this time of year, so we’d suggest that you invest in products which will replenish lost moisture to keep the skin soft and in good condition.

Our orange blossom and rose hand creams have a lovely formulation, enriched with jojoba and avocado oils with glycerine, comfrey and evening primrose extracts to nourish and condition the hands without greasiness. For the nails we’d particularly recommend a butter enriched nail balm. Our Nail Silk contains shea and cocoa butters, jojoba and avocado oils to replenish the nail surface and surrounding skin. This is a rich balm which smells heavenly (it contains frankincense and neroli, with a touch of lime) but it sinks in within a few minutes. Many of our customers enjoy massaging their nails and cuticles with Nail Silk, whilst watching the TV each evening.

For extra special pampering, invest in a pair of cotton gloves. Slather your hands with balm and hand cream and wear the gloves in bed. You’ll be amazed at how much softer your hands will feel in the morning!

Visit http://www.natroma.co.uk/store/d26-nails-and-hands/ for more information on these items.

Natural Soapworks Anniversary Event 3rd - 4th October 2009

Our anniversary event has arrived! To celebrate 3 years of making natural skincare, we'll be offering 10% off every item purchased in the studio at The Red House Glass Cone this weekend. In addition to this, we'll also be giving away a free bath bomb with every puchase of Q10 (full size) products. There's also a prize draw and we'll be demonstrating some lovely new products which we're launching this weekend. These include a new Q10 facial balm (a natural, intense moisturiser), some dry facial masks (supplied in powder form so you can mix them at home, and we do not need to add any preservatives), and a new Exotic Flowers body lotion enriched with camelina oil. We'll have testers available so you can try them out during your visit.

We'll be opening Studio 7 & 12 between 11am and 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, and hope you can join us to see the launch of our Christmas Gift Catalogue! We have some lovely gift ideas this year with stocking fillers from £1, and a range of natural skincare gift hampers ranging from £3 upwards. In total we have 64 different items in the studio catalogue, so there should be something for everyone. The new hampers will be on display in Studio 12 for the next few weeks, so you can see them before placing your order. Since it's our anniversary, we'll also be offering a special 10% off the first 50 Christmas orders placed in the studio during October, so you're advised to order early this year!

So that website customers don't feel left out, we'll also be offering a 10% discount off purchases made on the Natroma website at http://www.natroma.co.uk/ this weekend.

To take advantage of this 10% discount, please enter: CELEBRATE at the checkout. This code will only work on Saturday and Sunday (3rd-4th October). This offer is not applicable retroactively, and may not be used in conjunction with any other discounts. To qualify for this special discount all website orders must be paid by Sunday 5th October at 11:59pm BST.

Natural Soapworks & Natroma Anniversary event!

How time has flown by! Can you believe it, The Natural Soapworks is nearly 3 years old, and Natroma is also approaching it's first birthday too.

It's been a fantastic few years, and we've loved formulating more and more bathing and skin care products. Whoever would have thought that a soap making hobby would turn into a product range which now numbers over 100 items! But probably the nicest part of what we do, is that we get to meet lots of people to talk about skincare (and our products of course!) The feedback has been wonderful, and we're really chuffed whenever someone pops in to say "thank you" or tell us about why a particular soap or a cream is really suiting their skin. Thank you -it always makes our day!

So to celebrate our two anniversaries, we're holding a "First and Third Anniversary" event at The Red House Glass Cone on Saturday 3rd and Sunday 4th October 2009. We'll have lots of special offers, will be launching some new products, running a prize draw, and revealling our Christmas gift range! So why not call in to collect your copy of the Christmas Catalogue. You'll also be able to have a look at the new seasonal hampers which will be on display, so you can start to think about which Christmas goodies to send to your friends and loved ones.

For website customers, we don't want you to feel left out. Orders placed on The Natural Soapworks and Natroma websites on the 3rd and 4th of October will also have some special offers...we'll tell you more, closer to the time.

So for now, pencil these dates into your dairies!!

"Oh what a lovely smell...."

Everyday we hear positive comments about the lovely smell within our little shop. It's a joke that you only have to arrive in the courtyard at the Red House Glass Cone, and then you simply follow your nose to find our shop!

It's amazing how smells can be so evocative, and it's nice to know that we can create such a postive reaction. The second comment we usually hear is how our products do not smell like the ones on the high street, and descriptions usually include words like: uplifting, relaxing, gorgeous, sophisticated and above all...natural. It's at this point, we usually have to explain about the difference between synthetic fragrances and the pure aromatherapy grade essential oils that we use.

So what are essential oils? A technical definition would be: concentrated, hydrophobic liquids (i.e they won't mix with water) containing volatile aroma compounds derived from plants. More simply they are the natural oils extracted from plant material. Usually this is via steam distillation, but they can also be expressed (such as squeezing the peel of citrus fruits) or by solvent extraction. The cost of essential oils varies according to how difficult it is to extract the essence - so this is why citrus oils are typically cheap whereas rose (which may require kilos of rose petals to produce a single ounce of rose otto essential oil) is very expensive.

Essential oils are highly concentrated essences, each with it's own distinctive aroma, which should be handled with knowledge and care. They should not be applied undiluted on to the skin. They are sold in small bottles which have a dropper attachment and this is so they can be carefully measured out, and there is less chance of them being accidentally injested. They should always be stored in a cool, dark place away from animals and children. Aromatherapists use these volatile aromatic compounds to assist a person's mood or health, and research is still ongoing to evaluate the effectiveness of aromatherapy as an alternative therapy.

So why do we use essential oils in our products? Well, we think it's better to use natural essences on the skin rather than synthetics. But great care has to be taken when developing skincare products, since even these "natural" plant oils can irritate sensitive skin if they are used in the wrong concentration. That's why we use controlled percentages in our products so customers can enjoy the soothing benefits of these lovely fragrances, safe in the knowledge that they are well within the limits that are laid down within the EU's Cosmetic's Directive which governs the sale of all cosmetic products manufactured in Europe. Despite these concerns, we believe that natural essences are more harmonious for the skin, than many of the cheaper synthetic alternatives that are available.

We hope you found this little article interesting and the next time you say "what a lovely smell", you can now appreciate that you're admiring a natural fragrance that's captured the essence of many plants species.

Natural Soapworks Favourites

We've noticed that quite a few of our customers are ordering from the Natural Soapworks and Natroma websites at the same time. This is great, since we can combine postage and despatch everything in the same parcel. But it's not so convenient for the customer since you end up placing two orders instead of one.

So we're very pleased to introduce Natural Soapworks Favourites to the Natroma website: http://www.natroma.co.uk/store/d20-natural-soapworks-favourites/

This is a new section on the site, which will feature some of our most popular soaps, lip balms and bathing items so these can be purchased at the same time as Natroma natural skincare items. We hope you enjoy this added convenience and as a special introductory offer, until 30th April 2009 quote: SOAPWORKS at the checkout to claim a 5% discount off your order!