Father's Day Sale!

For one week, and one week only at Reef Botanicals:

Our new "Father's Day gift baskets" are 25% off, costing only $30 instead of the regular $40.  The temporary price is already reflected on the site.  Just order one and we can ship it directly to dad, or to you so you can see his reaction when you hand it to him!

This basket is packed full with:
*One Smooth Operator shaving soap, scented with lavender.
*One matching Smooth Operator shaving oil.
*One Clean Cut shaving soap, scented with patchouli, lavender, fir, and rosemary.
*One matching Clean Cut shaving oil.
*One Mashed In:  Spring Seasonal, our luxurious beer soap, made with Sam Adams beer, crushed hops, and ground barley for a wonderful scent of baking bread.
*One sage green and very soft organic cotton washcloth.

It is the ultimate in pampering for the men in your life!  Dad can enjoy a shower with our amazing beer soap, and then get down to shaving... a soak with a nice hot washcloth, some skin-loving pre-shave oil, and then the amazing lather of our luxurious shaving soaps that contain spa-quality Rhassoul clay to avoid the need for gels and glycerines.

The basket will continue to be available long after Father's Day, for the regular price of $40, so it'll be great for birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, or any other gift-giving event... but get it now for Father's Day for just $30!

As if that wasn't enough, the sale continues:


Every item in the Reef Botanicals Men's Line is on sale for one week, buy two items, get one item of equal or lesser value for free.  Just purchase two items and then let us know in the paypal comments or via email what you'd like for free!.

You can choose our Smooth Operator Shaving & Bath Soap.

Or our matching Smooth Operator Shaving Oil.

If you like your shaves a little spicier, try our Clean Cut Shaving & Bath Soap.

Or our matching Clean Cut Shaving Oil.

For a terrific bath or shower experience, there's our Mashed In:  Spring Seasonal, soap made with Sam Adams, hops, and barley, and scented with just the barest touch of cedar.  This one's my favorite!

Get three of the same thing, or mix & match!

Sale ends at midnight on June 15.

My Face

This is me.

Pretty cute, right?  Sorry, had to throw that in there.  Hehe.

As a kid, I had pretty decent skin, even through my teen years. I got lucky.  Sure, once a month or so, I was likely to break out a bit, but for me, "breaking out" meant a bit of an issue on my chin or nose.  Once I hit my 30s, though, my skin changed, much to my dismay.  I'm more prone to a mild rosacea, especially when I'm stressed.  And I'm more prone to dry patches here and there and the occasional breakout.  Still in limited areas, still not a huge deal, but annoying to me.  Like a lot of women, after all, I'm my own worst critic and have a tendency to sometimes examine every millimeter of my face in my light-up magnifying makeup mirror.

Yeah, I'm nuts like that.  You know you are too.  Admit it.

Well, the other day, Eric looked at me and said, "Your face looks better."  And it does.  I noticed it too.  Me, the critic.

What's the difference?

I've been alternating, depending on my whim, between using Purity and Oatmeal Honey as a facial soap, rather than my old fancy facial cleanser (the one that is $32 for 8.3 oz and contains both sulfates and parabens, harsh and potentially harmful chemicals I definitely neither want nor need).  Hm...

Oh, and when I'm not using Purity or Oatmeal Honey, I'm saving time by washing my face in the shower... with my favorite Mock Turtle shampoo bar!  Reef Botanicals shampoo, you see, is just as healthy and harmless as the soap; it's just formulated to be more lathery and have extra hair-healthy ingredients.  That way, it's just as good as any of the other soap for skin, but even more healthy for hair.

With cocoa butter, chamomile, tea tree oil, eucalyptus, sea kelp, and honey, it's bound to be great for both hair and skin.

In fact, we have some customers who save time in the shower by just using their favorite Reef Botanicals shampoo from head to toe!

As for me, I'm curious to see the progress on my own face.  I'll keep you posted.

Perfect for Spring!

Garden Party soap, I mean.

I previously posted about this soap here, but we didn't yet have a photo.  This soap is a favorite, with a wonderful creamy lather and two spa-quality clays - red and yellow kaolin.  The clays are suitable for all skin types, pulling the toxins from your skin.  The bar is scented with geranium and sweet orange essential oils, for a terrific, light floral and fruity scent, perfect for the season.

How amazing would this soap be when included in a floral gift basket with a pale blue-lavender lilac candle, a Romance fizzy bath bar, and a Heaven Scent salt scrub?  This would be the perfect Mother's Day gift, but there are only two days left for our sale!

If you miss it, you might just need to get these for a birthday gift... or, y'know, yourself.

It's supposed to be Spring.

I could swear it is.  A few days ago, it was even Summer!  I distinctly remember 91 degrees and Sun.  In fact, I blogged it!  The high today?  61 degrees Fahrenheit.  61.  And it's cloudy.  It's OK, I'm still going to take Meg for a walk.  We have soap orders to get out, and there's no reason not to walk them down; we both need the exercise.

And this Sunday, I'm still doing the MS Walk.  It's supposed to be 56 with showers, but my friend and I will walk the six miles through lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.  It wouldn't be right not to after collecting donations.  I'd feel guilty.

Besides, I have to bring my friend some soap.  I gave her a bar of the coffee soap to try, and now she wants to buy some more.  I love that she loves it!  And that also means it doesn't aggravate her allergies, since she's got those.  I'm thinking I'm also going to bring her a bar of our brand new soap, Garden Party.  I absolutely love the stuff, and with the Red and Yellow Kaolin clays that are in it, it's great for oily skin, which she's combating.  Hey, we all have our issues.

Plus, it smells like Spring - we used geranium and sweet orange essential oils, and it's fantastic.  On a day like Sunday promises to be, I think bringing something that smells like Spring is in order.  To lift our spirits, y'know?

Contest Update

Our shampoo naming contest ended last night, and with well over 100 entries, we've narrowed it down to the top five.

To do so, Eric went through the emails we received and pulled all of the proposed names, without any identifiers, and printed up a copy of the list for each of us. We each narrowed the list down separately, then together, and then haggled to reach the top five. They are, in alphabetical order (and we still don't know who they belong to, since we haven't checked):

Mermaid Tresses
Mock Turtle
Scentual Morning
Sea Dew
Sun Salutation

After we've had some time away from the list, tomorrow night we'll haggle some more and announce the winner at 10 p.m. EST.

Thanks to everyone who entered! Check back tomorrow to see what we picked!

Finally! And a Contest!!!

So here it is, and I must apologize for the wait - the photo of our new shampoo.  I've been using it for the past few days too, and I absolutely love it!  Now that I know how to use bar shampoo (sparingly, that is), I don't have the slightest hesitation over this one.

It's a stronger scent than our first shampoo, which I find great for waking me up with the tea tree and eucalyptus.  In short, it rocks.  You can see it's greener than the other one; that's the sea kelp, said to be great for hair.  I honestly can't rave enough about this one, so I might as well stop here and introduce...

well, that's the thing.  We haven't got a name for it!  Hair Dew (our first shampoo) took much thought and made sense for that product, but with this one we're stumped.  So... we're leaving it up to you.  I should let you know that this contest is not limited to followers of the blog, it's also open to Facebook fans, Twitter followers, members of the Handmade Artists' Forum, members of other discussion forums of which I'm a member... in short, everywhere.  The prize?  A free bar of this new shampoo!  We'll send you one, and we'll foot the bill for shipping too (in the lower 48 of the United States).  If you're outside of the lower 48 states, you can feel free to enter, but shipping charges will be paid by you.

To enter, click here and use the contact form on the Reef Botanicals site to give us your idea for the name of the shampoo.  Unlimited entries per person, and the contest will end on Sunday, February 14, 2010, (yes, Valentine's Day) at 10 p.m. EST.  Just note that only entries emailed via the website contact page will be considered.  The winner will be announced here on Tuesday, February 16, and contacted via email for a mailing address.

Our ingredient list, to help you with ideas:  A variety of oils, cocoa butter, chamomile, honey, sea kelp, tea tree essential oil, eucalyptus essential oil.

For those of you who can't wait and want to buy the new shampoo before it's named, it's available on the site as "Contest Shampoo."

Lathery!

Our new shampoo is, anyway.

Yup, a second option for you.  And me.  We had a request for a shampoo made with chamomile, which is reputed to control dandruff.  Plus, I wanted one with less of the butters.  So we've done it!  This shampoo is made with chamomile tea, cocoa butter (no shea - or nuts of any kind, actually), various oils for a great lather, honey, sea kelp for elasticity (in your hair, not the soap) and hair health, and tea tree oil.  And it's scented with eucalyptus, for a really nice mix with the tea tree.

Yet another success!  And I'll have photos for you tomorrow.

As Promised, One For the Girls

Shaving soap without the masculine smell! The very same recipe as our Clean Cut Shaving Soap, but scented with only lavender essential oil. This one is Smooth Operator Shaving Soap, a nod to those women who may let the men around them think they have the upper hand but know they're truly the smooth operators in the bunch.

Enjoy!

New Things

Lots, in fact! New photos of our already-in-circulation products, a change to a current product, and a new product...

First, the photos.  You remember the Cool as a Cuke soap, yes?

How about the Honey Chocolate?  Also, this is a new batch, so the bars are now the same size as our other soaps, rather than being smaller and fatter.

And you can see the Peppermint Pumice Foot Rounds much more clearly now, in their new setting of actual peppermint and the very pumice that's in them.

Last, but definitely not least, Purity has never looked so pure as it does against stark black, showing the Reef Botanicals logo stamp to its greatest advantage.

As for the change in a product we already had, that's the Lavender Soap.  I know, I know, how could we make such a perfect soap any better?  By taking the suggestion of a friend.  I was asked by a friend who knows what he's talking about whether we had any soaps with chamomile or would be making any.  Great idea, I thought, why not make a line of products that include chamomile?  Why not, indeed.

So... our lavender soap now uses chamomile tea as the liquid part of the base (remember, basic soap is oil, liquid, and lye) rather than deionized water.  The tea, of course, is still brewed using deionized water, but it includes all the benefits of chamomile.

The new product?  No photos yet, but as requested, we've now got a feminine/unisex shaving and bath soap!  This soap is based on the same exact recipe as our Clean Cut Shaving and Bath Soap, but the scent is pure lavender essential oil.  As soon as we're able to cut it, I'll show you what our new Smooth Operator Shaving and Bath Soap looks like!

I'm planning to have more news for you tomorrow.  We shall see...

Oooooooooooh, so that's the key!

Good grief, I'm a little bit doofy.  So you know I was kind of up and down with the shampoo at first, my hair felt weird for a while, then better.  A couple days ago, it was weird again.  And I talked to Eric, because I didn't want to be selling to anyone products that I couldn't stand behind.

And we realized what I was doing wrong on the "weird" days.

I was using it like soap.  When I use bar soap, I scrub.  When using bar shampoo, I was scrubbing.  This is wrong.  You need so very little of it (which means it lasts even longer!) that I was using waaaaaaaaaay too much and pretty much grinding it into my hair.  No wonder it was behaving strangely!

I've stopped that, and just barely rub it, or even lather it between my hands, and just use the lather... it still lathers like crazy and now works like a dream!  So... the key is... use a teeny tiny bit.  Make it last longer.  Get your money's worth.  And it'll be perfect.

Learn something new every day.

New Product... !!!

Ever heard of Sodium Lauryl Sulfate?  I hadn't.  I hadn't, but I've been using it for approximately 39 years.  It's in my shampoo, you see.  Betcha it's in your shampoo too.  Why should you care?  Here's why.  Scary, right?  But what to do?  Hm... what to do... ?

Can you guess what we did?  Made shampoo!

What's in our shampoo, you ask?  Olive and other natural oils, sodium hydroxide, water, shea butter, cocoa butter, honey, peppermint essential oil, and rosemary essential oil.  For the benefits of these ingredients, click the links!  That's it.  Eventually, we will  have other varieties, of course.  But this is the first, in Rosemary & Peppermint.  Here's what it looks like:

Yes, a bar.  A solid bar of shampoo.  Weird, I know.  Eric had used bar shampoo before; I hadn't.  I'll admit, I was a little skeptical regarding its efficacy.  So before I agreed to list it for sale, I had to test it on my very own head.

Now, if you know me, you know that's huge.  I have long hair.  I love my hair.  I do not mess around with my hair.  I used the shampoo.  See how dedicated I am to all of you?  I risked my own hair for you all!

My observations...

New Shampoo: Day One

I used the shampoo and was surprised, despite Eric's assurances, at how quickly and well it lathered. I mean, it's a bar, for Pete's sake.  But it works!  My hair felt clean.  I did use conditioner, because I wasn't brave enough to refrain.  Besides, I figure my hair needs time to adjust.  Plus, I have hair that tends toward the dry.  I'm lobbying for us to make a line of all-natural conditioner because I just don't trust my hair without it.  It's long.  And I wash it every day, at least once a day.  But the shampoo worked!  It also felt very clean post-shower, even after the commercial conditioner.  The conditioner I used was Fructis.
I hate it.  Maybe I shouldn't say that, but I do.  I bought it once when I was away and forgot my normal stuff, and use it only occasionally.  But I feel like it doesn't really do the job.  But I used it on day one of the natural shampoo trial.

And then I made a real mistake.  Either my hair needs to acclimate to the new stuff, which it does, definitely, or it really just doesn't like my styling products.  I use CHI Silk Infusion and Volume Booster and I actually like them.  I've been using them for a few years now.  Well, I put them in, as usual, and my hair rebelled.  It felt weird and fluffy, and kind of greasy, and just altogether odd.  I hated it.  All.  Day.  So... next use, no product.

New Shampoo:  Day Two

My shower went as follows:  Cafe Mocha sugar scrub, followed by our new shampoo, then the conditioner I've liked all these years, Herbal Essences.  Still not brave enough to go sans conditioner with my long, fine but thick, dry hair.

This time, I was able to really pay attention to the shampoo, smelling the rosemary and peppermint, and then the touch of honey behind those scents.  Then I washed with Cool as a Cuke soap.  Rinsed off, rinsed my hair, and let it dry.

I don't blowdry, haven't in years, since I resigned myself to the fact that I just don't have straight hair.  Oh, the hours saved by quitting that practice!

I also got smart last night.  I bought a wide-toothed comb, the kind you're supposed to use to detangle hair, as opposed to the brush I've always used, that catches and breaks my hair.  Yeah, I know, if I care so much about my hair, why'd I use that sort of brush?

Absolutely no idea.

At any rate, I combed my hair while wet, and for the first time since I stopped straightening it, didn't use any styling products.  Love it!  Soft, clean, and holding the wave.  Success!

Charlie Brown Never Knew This Kind of Peppermint Patty

These vegan-friendly Peppermint Pumice Patties, I mean.

They're a mini version of our new Peppermint Pumice Foot Rounds, and a great trial size, the same size as our hand soaps.

Made with a mix of oils, cocoa butter, peppermint essential oil, and ground pumice, these all-natural soaps will clean, enervate, massage, exfoliate, and moisturize the most overworked part of your body - your feet!  All day, we walk, we stand, we jog and run.  Even when we're sitting, we never take every ounce of weight off of our feet.  We wear shoes that pinch and push, and that don't breathe.  Now in the cold weather, our feet don't even get a break with the temperature - they're variable frozen and overheated, chilled and stifled.  It's about time to take care of them!

That's not all we've been doing, though.  We've replenished our stock of vegan-friendly Lemongrass & Sage soap, this time in a proper size to match our other bars.  Just like the originals, though, these are made with a mix of oils for a great lather, lemongrass essential oil for that terrific citrus scent, and real sage.

And this time, we had enough soap "batter" for some hand soaps too!

All of these items, as well as our new Clean Cut shaving and bath soaps...

 ... are already available online, but locals will be able to see and smell them in person at Clockwork II:  Steam Pirates Invade, where Eric and I will yet again be vending and selling our soaps, scrubs, and candles.  This is a related event to Halloween in December, so I can't wait to see what they come up with this time.  If you're free on the evening of January 5, come by and witness the lunacy, plus meet us and see what I've been jabbering about since November.  Hopefully seeing our products in person will make you fall in love with them, as you should.

There's more in the works, of course.  Watch this space for news of more new and different products, specials, events, and more.

One for the Boys

We have come up with our first soap for men - a shaving soap!

When I say "we," mind you, I'm speaking loosely. I really should be saying Eric, since he did this one nearly solo. He researched it and worked out the recipe, he chose the scent, and he actually made it nearly all himself.

We started to make it, you see, mixed the basic ingredients, got them into the crock pot, started to cook them and stir... and then I got the call that my sister was in labor and had been for several hours. Yes, labor.

So at a quarter to 11 the other night, I dashed off to the hospital while Eric continued to make soap. My sister had the baby at 2:47 a.m., and I stayed with her and her husband visiting until 7:30 a.m. or so. I was demolished by then, and Eric was just getting up for work as I climbed into bed for a few hours.

The soap was already in the mold and curing.

Scented spicily with fir, rosemary, lavender, and patchouli essential oils, this is also our first round soap!

It lathers like crazy from the combination of oils used, perfect for shaving.  Plus, it's made with Rhassoul Clay, which has been used for over 1400 years as a natural beauty treatment for skin and hair, and shea butter, which also makes it a wonderful bath bar.

Personally, I love that we tried round bars too.  They just look so nifty!  They were... interesting to work out, though.  Removal from the mold was a heck of a process that included lots of trial and error, freezing the soap and a hammer.  There were times we might have looked like an Abbott and Costello routine, in fact.  But the result is definitely worth it.

Getting to the Root of the Matter

Root of the Matter soap, that is.  Our newest vegan-friendly soap is made with pureed ginger, beet, and carrot - three different roots.

The funny thing is, we originally did this soap because we wanted the ginger scent, and we wanted to try getting color from the beet and carrot, and didn't think much past that.  We obviously researched to make sure that none of those are harmful for topical use, and they're not.  So it was full steam ahead with the production.

The colors were obviously an experiment.  Eric was pushing for more of a mix of colors, like our Fudge Chunk soap.  I wanted to try the two-tone layering.  The ginger is present throughout the soap, giving it a very faint ginger smell when dry, that gets more pronounced and definitely noticeable while the soap is in use.  I know because I showered with it this morning, and it was heavenly.

Then we took half of the soap and mixed in beet, and half with carrot.  The carrot half - the bottom - gave us a nice orange color.  The beet, though, didn't turn purple or red, much to our surprise.  It's a nice, natural, earthy tone, but decidedly not red or purple.  We were sure that with the way the fresh beets were staining my hands as I peeled them the red would just pop.  Not so much.  As it is, I really like the way these turned out, it was just unexpected.  Gotta love experimentation.

Because of the way we make the hand soaps, we didn't do those two-tone, but they are damn cute!

When it came to writing up a description of the soap, I did some research into the ingredients to see what I should say about them.  Well, as it turns out, all three roots involved have virtues that are espoused for various health and well-being purposes among those who are into holistic remedies.

All three are said to have antioxidant properties and various other benefits, but the most surprising to me was the carrot.  I actually read that carrot is said to have some sun protection built in.  Apparently, when carrot oil is used in conjunction with regular sunblocks, it enhances the power of the sunblock.  I'd had no idea.  I hope it works and that our soap can provide some of that benefit.

In the meantime, I do know that I just love it for the smell, the feel, the lather, and the way it washes clean.

The best thing?  These are up on the site, just in time for the remainder of our promotion:  Free hand soap of our choosing with any purchase through December 19!  Finish your holiday shopping at Reef Botanicals!

Wounded, But Worth It

Cool as a Cuke soap is almost here!  Yes, that's cucumber soap, made with real pureed cucumbers and coconut milk.  That awesome light green color comes entirely from the cucumber peels.

This is our first soap with nothing scratchy in it.  It's a nice, smooth, cool bar that does not exfoliate.  About time, right?  We've been so nutty about putting all sorts of things in our soaps, trying new recipes, that I finally had to step back and suggest a smooth bar.  It worked!

We were both exhausted when we got to soapmaking, having worked all day.  And Eric got slightly wounded when the unadulterated sodium hydroxide hit his arm, but it was just a few specks, and he's fine.  It's amazing that making soap can cause injury and yet the soap itself is so innocuous, even helpful.

The funniest part was the "zap test."  I generally leave that part to Eric, since I'm not keen on some of the soap to my tongue to see if it tingles and therefore isn't ready yet.  Well, it's not like any of the soaps we've made actually ever taste good, but this one was hilarious.  Either it tastes worse than our other soaps or Eric was expecting it to taste a little better from the cukes, but I've never seen him make faces this funny.

It was worth it, though.  The Cool as a Cuke soap is this amazing shade of light green, our first soap with a real, funky color to it.

Eric is going crazy over it, because of the lather.  When I got home the other day, tired and wanting to sit, he dragged me to the bathroom to try it.  He'd just taken the "extra" off of our equipment, smushed it all together into a blob, and used it, even before it's completely cured.  It's safe to use, just still very soft at that point.  So I tried it, and it didn't disappoint.  We found a mix of oils that gives a huge lather, instantaneously.  He, of course, had to use it again and started blowing bubbles between his hands from it.  He's like a kid!  But he's right, it's pretty kickin'.

He actually risked shaving with the lather from this soap and ended up, happily, nick-free and incredibly smooth.

This one will be available soon, once it finishes curing.  It's on the racks now, getting ready!

Our Best Yet!

OK, this is one I can get really excited about.  I am a huge, huge fan of lavender, and our only delay in making lavender soap was getting our tushes in gear and getting some essential oil and dried lavender buds.  We did.  And we made the soap, which we cut tonight.

It is, and I know I'm tooting my own horn here, amazing.  We used a variety of oils that created a hard off-white bar but with an amazing, creamy lather.  The lavender smell is gorgeous.  I just know these are going to be a hot item, but I'm definitely keeping a bar or two for my own use!  It'd be a sin to let it all go.