Happenings, Happenings

So... just because I've been quiet doesn't mean I haven't been busy.

I've been knitting my little heart out and adding some things to Fabric of my Mind, like these new washcloths.

This one is a basic washcloth (or dishcloth, if you prefer).

And this one's a cool basket weave with a seed stitch border.

I did both in an awesome gardenia yellow cotton bamboo yarn that is really soft and has a gorgeous sheen to it.  I understand that cotton bamboo is a great fiber in that it's got the strength of cotton and the absorbency of bamboo.  Not bad!  Of course, my very first washcloth, a duplicate of the basic one above, went to Eric for "quality control testing."  He uses it as a face cloth every day and loves it.  Of course, when he saw the basket weave, he wanted that one for "quality control" as well, but it made it into the shop.

I've also got 41" of Eric's cashmere scarf done.  Talk about soft!  It's insane how soft 100% cashmere is.  Insane.  I love knitting with it.

Meanwhile, I've been filling orders for Mother's Day gift baskets, of course, like this one.

The request was for "fresh" scents including soap and candle, so I stuffed in an Autumn Harvest candle, a couple Garden Party soaps, a Lemongrass & Sage soap, an Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey lip balm, and a When Life Hands you Lemons sugar scrub.

And then, since I can't seem to keep them in stock for more than a minute, I made another batch of Purity Makeup Brush Soap.

So there you have it!  Check back Sunday when I revisit a fellow artist for you.

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New to the HAFshop!

This soap has been available at reefbotanicals.com almost since the beginning, but it's now available at the Reef Botanicals HAFshop as well.  Plus, and perhaps more importantly, we got photos!  They've been a long time coming.  And actually, we had photos ages ago, but that was before I knew how to take a proper photo... and before the light tent and lights.  Feel free to click that link and laugh at my old attempts, but now you can see what they really look like.

With cheery, citrus-like lemongrass essential oil and bits of sage, this is definitely one of my favorites!

Fizzy Bath Bars: A How-To

Before I started making them, I'd never used a bath bomb!  Can you believe it?  And that's what our Fizzy Bath Bars are, bath bombs, just in a different shape than the traditional.

Now I've determined that I can't live without them.  It's just so nice to sink into a hot tub and drop one in, have it fizz all around and release the scents into the air.  I'll stay there until the water goes cold and I turn completely into a prune.

It got me thinking, though, what about others who'd never used them?  Some of you may never have even seen them.  Or heard of them!  What do I do?  A demo!  Of course a demo.  We have our very own Reef Botanicals YouTube channel, after all.

A Re-Introduction

I already told you about our Fizzy Bath Bars, but here's the visual!

Awaken is made with sea kelp in the mix for green specks and some wonderful properties it has.  It's scented with lemongrass, sweet orange, and eucalyptus essential oils, and is amazing for getting your mind going!

Romance is a pretty pink bath bar, containing cocoa butter and scented with geranium, clove, and lavender essential oils that combine to smell like roses!  It's still all natural - the pink comes from the bit of cocoa powder we've included, as well as some amazing freeze-dried powdered raspberry!  Yes, really!

And last, but not least, Serenity contains yellow kaolin clay for a nice creamy color and the wonderful properties of the clay.  It's scented with lavender and rosemary, for a heavenly relaxing scent that fills the whole room and turns your bath into a haven.

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.

It Was a Blast!

Tonight, Eric and I took Reef Botanicals on the road for the very first time.  The event was Halloween in December, a fundraiser for Isaac Bonewits, a well-known Druid leader and author in the Pagan community.  He's got cancer and is undergoing chemo, and his family is having difficulty keeping up with bills.

So we packed up our soaps, sugar scrubs, and candles, and hit the road, down to the IHOP in Somerset, NJ.  IHOP graciously agreed to close its doors for this "private party," so the event organizers could collect $5 per person toward Isaac's recovery from anyone who entered.

The soaps went into these great baskets we found, that gave us just the natural feel for which we were looking.

I also made up three gift baskets.  One, a Chocolate Decadence basket, we donated to the fundraiser's silent auction.  The value of the basket was $40, but the lucky person who was the highest bidder got it for $20, half  price!  Even with the discount, the basket was the highest-paid prize of the auction.

The basket contained a small round pillar candle in our Chocolate Decadence scent, a 10 oz container of our Cafe Mocha sugar scrub, two large Fudge Chunk soap bars, and two Fudge Chunk hand soaps.

We have two more gift baskets still in stock.  There's another Chocolate Decadence basket, this one with a larger square pillar candle in Chocolate Decadence, a tea light in Chocolate Decadence, a 10 oz container of our Cafe Mocha sugar scrub, one large Fudge Chunk soap bar, and two Fudge Chunk hand soaps.

The other basket is Citrus Splash, featuring our square pillar in Lemongrass & Sage, a votive in Lemongrass & Sage, a 10 oz container of our When Life Hands You Lemons sugar scrub, a Lemongrass and Sage soap, and a Root of the Matter soap.

Setup of our table was... fun.  Actually, it was, but it was definitely a challenge.  We had a booth, so our wares were tough to reach at times, and soap tends to be a fairly hands-on item.  People want to touch it and smell it.  We worked it out, though.  Our baskets were perfect, and the signs I made for them turned out to be very pretty with the two-tone green.  Our candles were something of a hit; the Chocolate Decadence sold out immediately, and our blue Winter Wonderland candles were a hit as well, as were our pale yellow-green Lemongrass & Sage candles.

Our Lemongrass & Sage soaps sold out entirely, and our Honey Chocolate isn't far behind!  We'll be making more of both imminently.

All in all, we were very well received and very happy with our experience.  Even from people who didn't purchase immediately there was a lot of interest, taking of business cards, and inquiries as to our next appearance.  As a result, the remaining sugar scrubs are up on the site and ready for purchase, and the candles won't be far behind!

On top of everything else, we were glad to be able to help out a family in need.

Not for Guitarists!

Eric has been using solely our soaps and sugar scrubs, and noticed tonight that all the callouses on his hands are gone. As he was "lamenting" their loss, he commented, "I'm glad I'm not a guitarist." They need their callouses, y'see.

Tonight, I finished the batch of Cafe Mocha Scrub for the Halloween in December event this Sunday evening.  It's... it's... OK, I'll say it, it's great.  It smells of the brown sugar, coffee, cocoa, and spices from which it's made.  Eric says that he plans to use it every morning because the spiced coffee scent helps him wake up.  And there's nothing like waking up to the smell of fresh coffee, is there?

I couldn't stop there, though.  Oh, no!  We now also have a batch of When Life Hands You Lemons Scrub.  This one is my personal favorite, because I just love citrus.  I'm in heaven with the scent of light homemade lemonade to wake me up in the morning.  And yes, I squeezed the lemon juice myself!

The jars and tags make them look so gorgeous too.

Right?

So you figure then we went to bed, yes?  No!  No, because we wanted candles.  We already made a few Chocolate Decadence candles for the gift baskets we'll be bringing to Halloween in December, one as a prize for the silent auction and two for sale.  These candles are mottled mahogany brown and scented with Fudge Brownie and Vanilla Hazelnut.  Yum!

And we already had our Thanksgiving Harvest candles, in a deep mottled orange-red, with an apple spice scent...

... and our Healing Tea candles, in a mottled sage green, scented with green tea and eucalyptus.

Well, tonight we poured Winter Wonderland candles, which will be a beautiful light blue, mottled with snowflakes.  Because, y'know, there won't be enough snow this weekend!  Ha!  Of course, this weekend at Halloween in December only, the candles will be dubbed "I'm Dreaming of a White Halloween" candles.  It's only fitting.

Photos will follow tomorrow!

A Clean Endeavor

I am Larissa, doing business with my husband Eric as Reef Botanicals, making high quality natural soaps. We knew we were right for each other early on, but didn't even realize until after we married in March of 2009 that we both loved to make things from scratch.

It was only natural for us to combine our talents for art, craft, and recipe development and step into the arts of candle and soap making.

We've got four recipe varieties so far:

Fudge Chunk contains Ghirardelli cocoa powder and has a subtle chocolate scent.

The Oatmeal Honey is made with precisely those ingredients, and smells amazing! We have it in both bath bar and hand soap size.

The Honey Chocolate is similar, but made with premium crushed cacao nibs, giving it a slight chocolate smell and exfoliating properties.

And our Lemongrass & Sage soap is made with lemongrass essential oil and dried sage. It has a great lather and an amazing citrus scent that wakes me up in the morning.

All of the soaps are made with all natural ingredients, nothing synthetic. Many of our soaps are also vegetarian or vegan-friendly. Those are noted in the descriptions.


Today, we're planning a coffee soap with fresh-brewed coffee and coffee grinds for exfoliation.

Each bar comes packaged in a beautiful organza bag, tied with a ribbon. They're perfect for gifts or to spoil yourself.

We're having a blast! Feel free to visit the site, email us with questions, and place an order.