Just in time for the Summer Solstice Sale!

Thieves' Oil Lip Balm has come to the HAFshop.

Thieves' Oil, the mix of spices and perfumes that kept those now infamous rascals from contracting the bubonic plague as they ransacked houses, is the same mix of essential oils we use in this lip balm, together with beeswax, cocoa and shea butters, vitamin E, and other moisturizing oils.

Steal a kiss!

And more news... we're phasing in our new lip balm containers.  So far you can buy Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey Lip Balm, our awesome mix of orange essential oil, honey, shea & cocoa butters, vitamin E, and other moisturizing oils, in the new containers, both at Reef Botanicals and in the HAFshop.

We've heard our customers' request for the lipstick style container, and we've responded.  Enjoy!

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.

Shared with:

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?

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.

You Want Some!

Starting NOW, well... as soon as this posts, at any rate, the next ten orders on our site will include one of our NEW LIP BALMS!  Get kissable lips for Valentine's Day!

When you place your order, just tell us in the comments section which one you want.  If you can't decide and don't specify, we'll choose for you.  Each balm is selling for $5.00, so this is a very cool deal for our next ten customers.  Plus, it gives you a chance to check our our brand new stuff!

Here are your choices:

Chocolate Chip Mint...

It's full of luxurious olive oil, sweet almond oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, and vitamin E, in a beeswax base.  Even better, it's made with real dark chocolate and peppermint essential oil for a chocolate chip mint taste and smell that's irresistible!

Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey...

Sweet orange essential oil gives this balm its wonderful scent, but it's the olive oil, almond oil, shea butter, cocoa butter, honey, and vitamin E suspended in the beeswax base that will save your lips from the cold winter wind.

Eucalyptus:

Made with olive oil, almond oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, and vitamin E in beeswax, plus eucalyptus essential oil that's great for healing chapped lips and clearing your nose when you've got a cold.  Plus, it's a light sage green from the sea kelp we've added, known for its high vitamin and mineral content, antioxidant properties, and ability to confer elasticity.

and Totally Tasteless:

Our most basic balm is made solely with olive oil, grapeseed oil, cocoa butter, beeswax, and vitamin E to pamper your lips without all the extras and with no nut-based ingredients, even shea.  Do keep in mind that our equipment may have been in contact with nuts and nut products, so if you've got severe allergies be careful.

Jump on this one!

Even more new stuff!

I know, I know, it seems like we've got something huge and new going on every day. I feel the same way, believe me! It's all just moving so fast.

We've been busy! So busy that we haven't been able to take photos, but those are coming soon, I promise. In the meantime, we've made some new things for you to check out.  They're all up on the site, even though we haven't got photos, because we wanted them to be available to you.

Just in time for Valentine's Day and the need for kissable lips, we've got - count 'em - FOUR lip balms! Each is in a quarter-ounce pot, easy to use, easy to just chuck into a purse or a pocket.

The first is for those of you who are no-frills. The ones who shun the flavors and smells and reach for that original Chapstick. Our Totally Tasteless Lip Balm is all of the healing without the bells and whistles. Moisturizing oils, cocoa butter, beeswax, and Vitamin E are all you'll find in this one. We even stayed away from the almond oil and shea butter for those of you with mild nut allergies.*

*Note: Shea is a nut, for those of you who didn't know. Eric is a nut too, but he's not an ingredient so you don't need to worry about him. Also note, our equipment is all likely to have touched nut products, so those of you who have severe nut allergies should beware. The last thing we want is for you to get hurt.

Our second balm is the Eucalyptus.  Made with an assortment of moisturizing oils, as well as both shea and cocoa butter, beeswax, and Vitamin E, it started off great.  We didn't stop there, though.  Eucalyptus essential oil is both great for healing dry, chapped lips and for helping to clear your nose when you're stuffy.  So having it on your lips, right there beneath your nose, is perfect!  Is that it?  Oh no!  This one also has sea kelp!  Not only did it give the balm a really cool sage green color, but it also is loaded with vitamins and minerals, is full of antioxidants, and has elastic properties that are used in anti-wrinkle creams.  Top shelf!

Funniest name of the night goes to our Orange You Glad I'm Your Honey Balm.  This one's got all the oils, the beeswax, the Vitamin E, and the butters... but it's also got honey!  Honey is a natural antioxidant that's also got the ability to retain moisture, so it's perfect for a lip balm.  Scented with sweet orange essential oil, this one smells amazing too.

Last, but definitely not least, is the Chocolate Chip Mint Lip Balm.  It's got all the oils, butters, Vitamin, E, and  beeswax, of course, but this one's also got... wait for it... dark chocolate!  Yes, that's real dark chocolate melted into the recipe.  Scented with peppermint essential oil, I can't think of anything but ice cream when I'm wearing it.

Is that all that's new?, you ask.  Is that what she's so hyped about?  No, that's not all.

We already had, of course, the Clean Cut Shaving & Bath Soap.  You know all about that one.  Great soap, awesome close, smooth shave, but a pretty masculine scent, what with all the fir and patchouli involved.  What about the girls?  Yeah, what about them?  Well, now we're covered too!  Our new Smooth Operator Shaving & Bath Soap, made from precisely the same recipe so you get all the benefits, is scented with 100% lavender essential oil for a more woman-friendly experience.  It doesn't leave the guys in the dust, though.  Lavender may be a flower, but it's probably the most guy-friendly flower around.  I promise, using Smooth Operator, even if you're a man, won't get you beat up on the playground.

We done yet?  Nope, not quite yet.

I've been dying to try bath bombs... or rather, our version, which are Fizzy Bath Bars.  Remember those awesome soap molds my sister and brother-in-law got us for the winter holidays?  It occurred to me that those would be perfect for Fizzy Bath Bars!  So I was really dying to try them.

In fact, I did try some a while back.  There's a reason you didn't hear about it.  It's mostly because they were not a success.  See, I'm not a patient person.  You could say, and still be accurate, that I'm a fairly impatient person, in fact.  Rather heavy-handed.  A bull in a china shop is what I might be likened to by an observer, and the observer wouldn't get an argument from me.  So when I studied up on these things and read "very little liquid," well... let's just say that the correct version of "very little liquid" and my version of "very little liquid" diverged.

I used somewhat more liquid than I should have.

If you don't know how these things work when they're working properly, it goes like this:  You run a nice, hot bath, take a very dry Fizzy Bath Bar, hop into the bath (just don't literally "hop," I don't want you hurting yourself), and drop in the nice, dry Fizzy Bath Bar, which proceeds to fizz as it reacts with the bath water.  As it fizzes and dissolves, it releases the benefits therein into your bath.  The scents from the essential oils fill the room and take their aromatherapeutic effect, any butters or other ingredients housed therein do their stuff.  That sort of thing.  It's really nice.

When it works.  The key, you might have noticed from this narrative, is that it reacts with water.  Yeah.

What happened on that particular occasion, the occasion when I first tried to make Fizzy Bath Bars, is that I used too much water in the bar itself.  I didn't notice right away, mind you, because it still looked pretty dry to me.  So I took the mixture, pressed it on into the mold, ... and then pressed it again.  And again.  Only it kept growing.  So I took some off and put it into another bar of mold.  And the third one too.  And then all three were growing... and growing... and growing.  As Eric put it, we had in our kitchen the Stay Puft Marshmallow Bars.  Finally, I gave up.  I wrestled the puffy, sticky messes out of the mold and onto a sheet of freezer paper, where they finally stopped reacting with the excess water in them and stopped growing.  By then they were indecipherable blobs with slightly crusty outsides and mushy insides.  Not what a Fizzy Bath Bar should be, to say the least.  Completely unmarketable, in fact.

We didn't waste them, though.  We had to try them anyway.  So we popped them in the bath, one after another, and they fizzed, bubbled, and dissolved.  I must say the smell from the essential oils was wonderful.  So I knew I was on the right track, just not quite there yet.

Now I'm there.  Our first Fizzzy Bath Bar is Serenity, made with a mix of lavender and rosemary essential oils, a heavenly and relaxing combination.  This bar is perfect after a long day of work when you just want the world to disappear for a little while until you can face it again.  It's also got a touch of Yellow Kaolin Clay in it, with all the benefits that carries.

You can expect to see a couple more within the next few days, also just in time for Valentine's Day.  If you need a gift or want a romantic bath with your honey, this is the way to go!