The Anatomy of a Soap Label

The handmade lotka paper is made in the highlands of Nepal by rural craftspeople in an environmentally friendly process with 50% recycled content. The raw material for our paper is the Daphne bush. It is farmed and harvested from 3-4 year old plants that are cut down and stripped of their bark. The plant is not destroyed when cut down, it regenerates from the root. The cane like stick, once its bark is removed is dried and used to heat the villager’s homes, to provide fuel for cooking and also for the production of the paper. All of the water used in the paper production is reclaimed and reused. The bark is beaten by hand and boiled to break it down to a pulp (where it is mixed in with recycled pulp and paper scrap collected from the card and envelope manufacturing process) that is then pored into screens to form the sheets. These sheets are then dried in the sun. The whole process is not only earth friendly but also provides a large community with a healthy enterprise.

It is from this paper that we create the cigar band labels used to wrap our soaps.

Our seed paper has a blend of wildflower seeds embedded in the paper; Tolerates partial shade; needs 4 hours a day of direct sunlight and grows to about 3'. Seeds include Spurred Snapdragon,Tussock Bellflower, Creeping Thyme, Lilac Godetia, Foxglove, Catchfly, Monkeyflower, English Daisy, Red Corn Poppy and Showy Evening Primrose. This blend is specifically designed for those who wish us to print directly onto the handmade seed embedded paper.

Germination may begin as quickly as one week or may take up to six weeks depending on your regional growing zone.  If you plant the seed paper in a pot, or in your garden please cover with just 1/8” of soil and keep moist until established.

A Sneak Peek!

A Sneak Peek at the Designer Line-up for 2013 Fashion Week San Diego

The ride of a lifetime has now begun ... please keep your hands inside the vehicle at all times!

More to come ... so please stay tuned!

It's Been Such a Long Time ...

since I last wrote.  I know.

We've I've been a little busy ... okay, more than a little ... crazy busy.

So ... to catch y'all up:

Days have been filled to the brim with meetings ...

and new body products like this whipped, chocolate body souffle

and these incredible chocolate bath truffles

which are also available without chocolate ... 'cuz not every woman wants to smell like a dessert!



And then ... a trip to the beach to celebrate our 1st Anniversary ... 'cuz we're cool like that the Smalls were at school and it was our only chance for 6 hours of silence, together, that didn't involve sleeping.




And sometime around the end of February, we headed out to Lincoln City to stock a new store that opened up right on Hwy 101.  Cool place filled to the rafters with amazing artisan treasures.



And to round out the month, with the first designer meeting under my belt, The Muse has been heading into overdrive spinning fabrics into clothing, setting up artistic collaborations with other equally talented designers, and talking to potential wholesale accounts about their carrying of our line of body products.

It's been a fun month!

There's so much more to come ... will keep you posted ;)

365 Days of Creativity - Day 6 - Holy Habaneros

About a week ago, I have a message from my sister-in-law ... she's experiencing some incredible pain in the muscles of her legs.  Pain that the doctors are suggesting to be treated with some heavy-duty meds.

She doesn't really want to go that route ... and I can understand.
Completely.

So ... I jump online and begin researching alternatives to medication in the treatment of deep tissue pain.

And on one of my favorite sites for alternative medicine, I find what appears to be a pretty amazing idea:

Capsaicin Cream

I locate a recipe and send my husband to the store for a pound of habaneros.

which he chopped for me ♥

so I could then cook them in olive oil in the slow cooker for the next 24 hours.

When finished, the whole, visually volatile mess is run thru the blender ... 

'cuz, ya know, it certainly ISN'T HOT ENOUGH AS OIL ALONE!

After blending, I strained out all the little particles ... thought about feeding the pieces to the chickens and changed my mind ... they love me and I didn't want to ruin that relationship  ;)

The strained oil is then blended with organic beeswax and poured into these cute little jars to cool.

For all intents and purposes, this stuff sounds amazing!  We've listed it in our online store.

For those wanting to know what this stuff does and how it's used, here's more info:

Deep Tissue Capsaicin Cream, good for arthritic pain, deep tissue pain, bursitis, fibromyalgia, diabetic neuropathy, joint & muscle pain, and post-herpetic neuralgia.

When applied to the skin, capsaicin cream has been found to deplete substance P, a neurochemical that transmits pain. Capsaicin is a natural chemical with desensitizes a person to pain, providing a temporary reduction in a person's overall pain levels. When used regularly, capsaicin cream will provide prolonged pain relief.

Recommended dosage is .025% capsaicin cream, applied to the skin four times a day, directly over the areas of muscle or joint pain. Amount may be increased to no more than .075%.  Those sensitive to capsaicin may experience a stinging or burning sensation as a result of the capsaicin infused oil, this is a normal reaction to the capsaicin oil.

When using, wear gloves when applying ... or wash hands immediately after coming in contact with the cream. Do not use with a heating pad. Do not apply immediately after a hot bath or shower. Avoid getting in eyes or other mucus membranes. Do not apply to broken skin.

Ingredients: organic habanero oil, Grade A virgin olive oil, organic beeswax.

* Please note, this product has not been evaluated or approved for use by the Food & Drug Administration for its healing or medicinal properties.  Use of this product should not be lieu of your doctor's advice.  In case of a harsh reaction, such as inflammation or skin blisters, discontinue use immediately.  Always seek medical advice when experiencing internal pain. *

365 Days of Creativity - Day 4 & 5 - Shhhh!

On Monday, I was accepted as an Official Designer for Fashion Week San Diego.

YAY!!!

So, life's a little exciting around here at the moment.
And on Day 4, I spent most of the day working on 2 designs for San Diego ...
can't show them to you, 'cuz it's a S.E.C.R.E.T!

For those that know me, you know how much I love sharing on FB the stuff I'm doing in the studio.
Day 4 ... notsomuch ... 'cuz no one's supposed to know about any of it until like, October.
The kids have been sworn to secrecy ... bribed with candies for the next 6 months!

Now ... Day 5 ... that's a completely different story.

I can tell y'all about today ... until the cows come home.

Except, there's not much to tell ... we chopped about a pound of habaneros.  Okay, not "we" ... my husband chopped them for me ... and now they're marinating in the slow cooker for our next project.

which will be shared with you ... tomorrow.

Until then ... hasta la manana!

365 Days of Creativity - Day 3 - Vanilla Cream

Vanilla Cream Massage Oil Body Bars ...

we revised the recipe, replacing the majority of the shea butter with illipe butter and moderately increasing the amount of vanilla flavor ... creating a scrumptious treat for your body, mind, and spirit.

Illipe butter is the fat obtained from the nuts of Shorea stenoptera, a wild crop in the jungle of South East Asia. It is pale yellow solid fat after extraction, which turns quickly into green color. It has recently been introduced as a cosmetic raw material and is used in various skin-care preparations such as nourishing night creams, sun products, hair masks, and lip balms. It is the exotic butter that comes closest to matching cocoa butter in triglyceride composition. Illipe butter is recommended to heal sores and mouth ulcers. It reinforces the skin lipidic barrier and helps maintain skin moisturization, practically reversing the damage to the skin caused by the environment.

Cocoa butter is obtained by pressing crushed seeds of the cacao tree, Theobroma cacao. Cocoa butter is a well-known, valued ingredient in chocolate. In cosmetics, it is valued for its melting point, which is close to body temperature, its greasing and lubricating properties, and emollient virtues. Cocoa butter also provides skin conditioning and thickening attributes.

365 Days of Creativity - Day 2 - Ice Dyeing

Last week, with the arrival of my tax refund, I placed an order for new fiber reactive dyes from Dharma and some raw bamboo/cotton & hemp/cotton yardage.  At our local thrift store, I found a number of blank, white men's t-shirts and baby onesies that I could add to my newest passion:  Ice Dyeing.  Since it's more cost effective to dye projects in large quantities, I rummaged through my overstock and discovered about a dozen of my Made in Oregon t-shirts that, for one reason or another, hadn't sold.  I added those brilliant white t-shirts to the steadily growing pile of stuff needing color.

With the equivalent of about 20 yards of fabric, I decided the best way to tackle the prep work was to throw it all in the washing machine, split over two loads.  First the fabrics were washed in Synthrapol to remove any sizing or fabric softener residue.  Then, the fabrics were soaked in a soda ash mixture for about half an hour before being wrung out and placed into the two dye tubs.

This time around, I decided to layer the fabric, ice and dyes.  Seven colors were used in the first tub and four in the second tub.  Each 64-quart tub held about four layers of ingredients:  fabric, ice, dye, repeat ... then covered with a lid and allowed to sit overnight so the ice could melt and do its job.

 

This morning heralded in the grand reveal:  opening the tubs, rinsing off the fabrics, and surveying the results.

I have to admit ... they look pretty damned cool!