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!

Christmas Greetings!

The Natural Soapworks is now closed for Christmas and New Year. We'll re-open the studio on Saturday 2nd January 2010, and website orders will be prepared and despatched from Monday 4th January 2010.

We'd like to thank all of our customers, for their ongoing support and custom. It's been our busiest Christmas to date, and it's lovely to think that so many of our hampers will be opened on Christmas morning. We're now going to take a well earned rest!

We hope you all have a peaceful and relaxing Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010!

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...