Dudley Mayor and Mayoress visit The Natural Soapworks

Yesterday we were delighted to welcome the Mayor and Mayoress of Dudley to The Natural Soapworks!

 

We're supporting the new Recycle for Dudley scheme so they called in to see us, and we explained how we make our luxury soaps and natural skincare products.  As you can see from the picture, the Mayor seemed pretty impressed by the rich, creamy lather of our soaps!

 

We'd like to thank them both for spending time with us on a lovely visit, and hope that Dudley Council residents sign up to the new recycling scheme.

Feeling hot, hot, hot...

Visitors to the workshop this week, will have noticed that we're struggling with the heat.  Unfortunately our workshop has such a large expanse of roof, that it absorbs lots of heat from the sun during hot weather making the workshop feel very warm.  So we've spent the last few days moving our products and ingredients into cool places, and we'll be operating reduced shop opening hours during the next few days.

But even though our shop will be temporarily closed, it's business as normal!   (Behind the scenes, we're busy working on our Christmas gift range which will be launched during August). Customers can still contact us by e-mail and website orders will be processed as normal.  Stourbridge shop customers can contact us by e-mail or phone, and we'll make special arrangements for collections of products and orders.  Fingers crossed we'll be open again very soon, and in the meantime we're sorry for any inconvenience.

Enjoy the sunshine everyone, and see you soon!

UPDATE:  Thanks to everyone who popped in to see us last week, and tolerated the heat in the workshop!  The weather is still causing problems, so we'll be opening our shop (whilst processing website orders), at various times but these opening hours may be subject to change at short notice.  Thanks again to everyone for their support, and understanding and we hope that things will return to normal again soon.

We're supporting recycling in Dudley!

We're very pleased to announce that we're supporting Dudley Council's improved recycling scheme.  There's a new website, which contains lots of information on the new recycling service, collection details and other ways to reduce waste.  This will enable Dudley borough residents to recycle even more materials, including plastic bottles and cardboard.  Dudley borough residents who sign up to the scheme can also access an incentives page on the website, where local businesses like our own are offering discounts and special offers as a thank you to those families that "do their bit" for the environment. 

We've always been passionate about environmental issues, and take great care when selecting packaging materials for our products since we dislike unnecessary and wasteful packaging.

• Our hamper boxes are either made from recycled materials, or are made from card that can recycled or composted.  (Although we know that many of our hamper boxes are re-used again or kept as keepsake boxes!)
• The packaging for our goats milk soaps is deliberately simple.  There's no need for a wasteful box, so we just use a paper wrapper and bio-degradable cellophane hygiene cover (this special eco-film will completely disintegrate in 1-2 years).
• Our bathing products are packaged in cellulose bags - this allows them to be composted.
• We always try to use PET and recyclable plastic containers for liquid products, with a preference for supplying products in either glass or aluminium wherever possible.
• We only use paper tissue in our hamper boxes, and paper carrier bags in our Stourbridge shop.
• We re-use any packaging or cardboard boxes received from our suppliers, and only purchase bio-degradable loose fill packaging and bubble wrap. 
• We encourage the use of re-usable items such as our washable muslin cloths, bathing mitts and scrunchies and offer a range of re-usable shopping bags in our shop.  Even our fragrant decorations will last indefinitely if they're periodically topped up with essential oils!  (More natural and far better for the environment than spray or plug in air fresheners).  
• We actively encourage the idea of customers re-using their glass packaging (discounts are available), by offering a refill service for certain items on our Natroma website.  Stourbridge shop customers can obtain refills on many items including hydrolats, facial oil serums, botanical oils, essential oils, balms, and crystal deodorants.  

All of these actions often mean that we have to pay more for our packaging but we think it's the right thing to do, since it supports the environment and minimises waste.   We're really pleased that Dudley Council has been able to widen the scope of the items that can be placed in the black recycling bins, and hope this improved recycling scheme has a significant impact on reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfill. 

2013 Soap Sale!

Regular customers to our Stourbridge shop will know that we sometimes have a basket of bargain soaps for sale.  These are usually older goats milk soaps that may have weird shapes (we hand trim each block, to ensure that our full sized soaps have regular shapes).  These soap mis-shapes are always very popular since the soaps are still lovely to use, and have a hard, long lasting texture with a rich creamy lather.  They're perfect as guest soaps or for use in the kitchen/second bathroom etc.  We sell these soaps at a lower price by weight (each soap is individually priced), compared to our standard bars, and they tend to sell out quickly, so we never have time to add them to our websites!

But every few years we have a massive soap sale, to clear our curing space and soap store.  This year we've had a massive stock review to make room for all of the 2013 Christmas soaps, so this will be our biggest soap sale for quite a few years.

 

This year website customers can enjoy some soapy bargains too, and some sale soaps have been uploaded to the Natroma website.  Discounts range from between 25-50% off, so if you don't mind using weird shaped soaps, half bars or older soaps with a reduced fragrance, then this is a great opportunity to stock up on lovely mild, goats milk soap at a bargain price.

Catch these while you can...we know they're going to sell out fast!

 

We'll also be having a Summer Sale in our Stourbridge shop starting on Saturday 8th June 2013.  Many sale items are one offs (so won't be available on-line) and will include a clearance of soaps, older bathing products, candles, small gifts and some items of jewellery. 

Holistic Therapy Spring Offer!

We really enjoyed meeting so many people last weekend, at the Stourbridge Open Studios event.   Everyone seemed to have a great time, and it was good to have a chat and advise on our various natural skincare products.  So thanks to everyone who called in to see us, and we hope you enjoy using your products.

This week we're nearly back to normal on our Stourbridge shop opening hours, with a slightly later start today (Tuesday we'll be opening at 12.30pm).

We're accepting holistic therapy bookings again now, so remember that there's only another couple of weeks left on our Treatment Spring Offer - 20% off Paul's Swedish, Sports and Lava Shell holistic therapy treatments.  The diary is filling up quickly so catch it while you can!  Treatments needed to be booked by the end of May (but can be taken during the next few weeks) to qualify for this special offer. 

Beautiful Things

Visitors to our Stourbridge shop are always commenting on how it contains lots of beautiful things.  Many people linger for a while taking in the beautiful aroma coming from our soaps and skincare, having a chat and checking out the many items that would make lovely gifts. 


Gemstone chip necklace



Chakra Hanging Crystal

It's great feedback, since we pride ourselves on having a shop that's a little bit different.  We're always on the look out for unusual or pretty products to complement our own - and more often than not, we hand select items that we'd like to own ourselves!

So finally (we always seem to be too busy to photograph things and upload the product information) we're pleased to be able to add a few items onto our Natroma website....on the Beautiful Things page.



Natroma Chakra Crystal Bookmarks



Over the coming weeks we'll try to add some more items, but for starters there are some lovely natural gemstone inspired gifts - crystal necklaces, handmade chakra bookmarks and hanging light-catcher crystals.  There are also some fair trade hand-crafted floating candles and orchid tea-lights and incense gifts which are really pretty and smell wonderful.

We hope that our website customers like our Beautiful Things, and that these new products help when you're looking for an unusual gift. 

New! Organic Facial Oils

Visitors to our Stourbridge shop, will be familiar with our organic botanical oils.  We introduced them several months ago, since we felt that customers with certain skin conditions would benefit from adding these oils to their skincare regime.  Using these oils in small amounts as a facial serum can be very helpful with certain skin-types, so we're pleased to now have Argan, Jojoba, Rosehip and Tamanu available on the Natroma website, listed under Botanical Oils.  These are certified organic oils (and Leaping Bunny approved too) supplied in 10ml blue glass bottles with a pipette attachment.

We can't make any specific claims about these oils, but have included a little information about each one on the Natroma website and would encourage customers to research each oil's properties.  We've always loved all of these oils so they regularly appear in our products, and we're not surprised that they've become popular with quite a few well know celebs just lately.

For best results use the pipette to dispense between 1-3 drops onto the palm of the hand, then warm the oil by rubbing the palms together.  Apply the oil to the skin in soft patting/massage strokes, and the idea is to only apply sufficient oil that's needed (you'd need more on very dry skin, and less on a combination/oily complexion), so the skin absorbs the oil within a couple minutes.  As we often say "less is more", and definitely try to avoid getting an oil slick on the face!

These oils are also perfect to use if you wish to try a little facial massage.  You'll need to apply a few more drops to allow the fingertips to glide over the skin (it's important that you don't feel like your fingertips are dragging or stretching the delicate skin on the face), and you should aim to massage for a few minutes using gentle circular movements.   The idea is to gently stimulate the skin, and we'd recommend that you do this regularly followed by one of our Natroma Clay Mask treatments.

You can also try adding a drop of your chosen oil to our Natroma moisturiser each day.  We developed the formulation of this cream so it could be enriched and adapted to suit different times of the year, so the extra drop of oil will make the application feel slightly richer than usual.  This is particularly good when the skin is dry and is feeling tight or uncomfortable (perhaps after spending too much time in the sun, or when the weather is very cold).

We hope you enjoy using these oils, and would welcome customer feedback on how they're working!