Soap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Soap making has begun! In this crazy year, soap is crucial, so I will be making sure my shop is full to the brim this holiday.

If you visit my Etsy shop, you can pre-order, all shipments will go out the first week of December. 

 

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ArtBotanicalsandMore 

Catnip is in my Etsy Shop

I now have my home grown catnip for sale in my Etsy Shop.

Catnip is a member of the mint family originally native to Europe that is now naturalized just about everywhere else. The herb is aptly named since it contains a chemical that house cats find to be irresistible. This is cat tested and cat loved, they go crazy over this!

You'll enjoy the dried leaf and flower in teas and other beverages almost as much.

This catnip comes in a canvas pouch with a drawstring opening, ready to hand over to your cat, or to use to fill a toy that you make yourself.

Catnip has been used in European folk medicine for generations as a calming agent for body and mind. Not only catnip leaf, but cut of leaf, buds, stem, and seeds. The principal constituent of catnip is nepetalactone, which is what makes cats respond to catnip.

My son's cats go CRAZY over this. As soon as the package arrived in the mail, they could not stay away!

We have soap in the shop!

I am gearing up for my new soap making season, with my home grown organic calendula, and imported vervein from France.

I found 5 bars still in my inventory from last season, so I am offering them on my Etsy shop.

and if you put "bonus gift" in the comments, I will send along a surprise jewelry gift from my shop, please state your preference for earrings or bracelet.

Thanks, and come back in the Fall for the 2018 soaps!

SHOP LINK

Soap, 2017

Due to a personal family matter, my soap production had a limited run this season.

Please come back in February for the 2018 soaps, chock full of my own organically grown calendula, for it's antiseptic and healing properties.

This year's soap

This year’s version is extra rich in calendula for its antiseptic qualities, all grown organically in my garden here in Colorado.

I am also using more shea butter this year, to make the soap extra moisturizing. It's basically lotion and soap in one!

My calendula thrived in the garden, and I have enough to enrich the soap, and make tea!

Look for first shipments to go out in the beginning of December.

Traditional soap making

Here is a fascinating video showing the ancient process factories used to use to make real soap, not the detergent kind that mass manufacturing produces today:

Soap Making

The scale of this operation is something to behold. As well as the skill of the workers - using special mallets to imprint the soap, cutting with such accuracy. Before machinery, humans had to develop incredible manual dexterity. Now we just operate machines. So much has been lost. Not the recipe for this soap, though, which is from the tenth century!

and the ingredients? Just three: olive oil, water and "mineral salts." The mineral salts are one form of sodium hydroxide, coming from the Dead Sea. You can actually buy a bar of this on Amazon. (and the purchase does support a Palestinian company.)

Here is the description of how they make their soap:

"Nabulsi soap is a type of castile soap produced only in Nablus in the West Bank, Palestine. Its chief ingredients are virgin olive oil, water, and an alkaline sodium compound. The finished product is ivory-colored and has almost no scent. The compound is made by mixing the powdered ashes of the barilla plant which grows along the banks of the River Jordan with locally supplied lime (sheed). The sodium compound is then is heated with water and the olive oil in large copper vats over fermentation pits. The solution of water and the sodium compound becomes increasingly concentrated in a series of 40 cycles repeated over eight days. During that time, an oar-shaped wooden tool known as a dukshab is used to stir the liquid soap continuously. The liquid soap is then spread in wooden frames to set. After setting, it is cut into the classic cube shape of Nabulsi soap and stamped with the company's trademark seal. The soap cubes then undergo a drying process which can last from three months to a year and involves stacking them in ceiling-high structures resembling cones with hollow centers which allow the air to circulate around the cubes."

I learned about this kind of soap when I lived in Aix-en-Provence. This part of France is known for it's ancient soap making, and the soap really is a whole other product than what we think of soap today.This is when my skin learned to love the all natural ingredients, and when I learned I don't need to use any moisturizer if I am using soap that moisturizes.

Once you use this kind of soap, you will never go back.

Thank you

Thank you everyone who purchased soap this year -- selling out this quickly has me making a note to my future self next year to double my batches. Happy Holidays!

Healing Soap - almost sold out!

[LINK to my Etsy Shop.]

I am happy to say my soap is almost sold out! I only have 7 bars left. (I guess my family is not getting soap in their stockings this year. . . .) Thank you all for being enthusiastic supporters of this amazing product.

I was a little worried about needing to increase the price to cover my costs and higher shipping fees this year.  I know that you can't get soap anywhere else with this much shea butter and this much organic hand-harvested and grown calendula, as well as organic vervein from France.

I use all my herbs, butters, and oils in abundance to make each bar as powerfully healing as it can be. I think my return customers speak to how it works.

Have a great holiday - thanks for buying artisanal products made with real ingredients and loving care.

A LINK to my Etsy shop if you want the last few bars.

Let's talk about Red Clover

My daughter recently gave me a jar of red clover buds she had gathered.
I did some research and found out this:

The common names are red clover, trefoil, wild clover, and purple clover.

Red cover: Relaxes nerves and the entire system.
Can be used as a sedative.
Has been used to fight cancer.
Found in herbal combinations used for cancer.
Wash for sores.
Can be drunk freely.

Red Clover Herb is often compared to alfalfa both for its nutritional value and appearance. They are reported to have diuretic, expectorant, antispasmodic and estrogenic properties.
Red Clover herb is a blood purifier that increases the body’s production of urine and mucous and promotes menstrual flow.
Contain bitter compounds that increase the production of digestive fluids and enzymes, especially bile. These compounds also shrink inflammation and relieve pains. Red clover is an excellent herbal source of calcium, chromium, magnesium, phosphorus, and potassium.

Red Clover Herb is high or very high on the following nutrients:
• Calcium
• Chromium
• Magnesium
• Niacin
• Phosphorus
• Potassium
• Thiamine
• Vitamin C
Excerpts from Practical Herbalism
In 1896, King said that, “Red Clover is an excellent alterative, and one of the few remedies which favorably influences pertussis.
After another quarter century of experience with the herb, the Eclectic Materia Medica of 1922 recommended it for the specific indications of, “irritability of the respiratory passages, with dry, explosive cough; carcinomatous cachexia,” and gave the following information: 
“Trifolium is alterative and anti-spasmodic. It relieves irritability of the respiratory tract, alleviating dry, irritable and spasmodic cough. Whooping cough is especially moderated by it, and it is frequently effective in lessening the distressing cough of measles. It also modifies cough in bronchitis and laryngitis. Its alterative powers are underrated, and it should be given where a general deobstruent effect is desired in chronic skin problems, and unquestionably has a retarding effect upon malignant neoplasms.”

Not a bad list of ways this powerful little flower can improve our health.

and the Etsy shop is open!

Your microbiome, and how to strengthen your good bacteria

We live in a new age of weird diseases and symptoms -- many traveling under the "auto-immune" banner. People by the droves go to their primary care doctors and complain of stomach and digestive ailments (bloating, food allergies, abdominal pain), light-headedness, fatigue, skin rashes, eczema, rosacea, and worse. Their doctors, in turn, follow the protocols of their training and order up standard tests in search of something physical. The tests come back negative. Now the flummoxed doctor is beginning to wonder if he has a hypochondriac on his hands, and the patients either persist or resign themselves to pain and misery, becoming depressed as symptoms continue to plague them. Sometimes more tests are ordered, but seldom is a solution found. It's a bad scene all around. Welcome to the world of microbes, the artful dodgers (at least when it comes to standard medical tests).


As patients feel sicker, doctors unknowingly feed the flames by prescribing more pain medication, antibiotics, etc., to try to alleviate symptoms and show their patients that they are "doing something." Vicious circle. The misery continues.


Well, if all politics are local, all health is in the gut and the skin. We are the microbial profile we feed on a daily basis. And while "feed" mostly means the mouth, it also importantly includes the skin. A good bit of advice is to live dirty and eat clean. That means we do ourselves no favors by constantly cleaning our hands with hand sanitizers, applying skin products and soaps with anti-bacterial elements and good-bacteria killing chemicals (go ahead, read the ingredients, see if you have the slightest idea about what you are slathering to your skin and scalp on a daily basis... didn't think so).


I have been eating a very low carb, organic grass-fed diet for almost five months, and my health has seriously improved. I have much more energy, don't have that brain fog, my rosacea has improved, my eczema has improved and certainly my moods have improved. I also have been using only products that support local bacteria, free of detergents and chemical additives, antiseptics and antibacterials.


Feed your good bacteria! My soap, full of coconut oil, shea butter, organic vervain and calendula will do just that.
I promise your skin will be amazingly healthy -- I do this for myself because I have to and now I will never go back to commercial skin products and the way they strip the good bacteria away.


Diet and skin products -- ask your gut what it prefers, and ask your skin what makes it glow.

Holy Basil

Today I am harvesting the holy basil (Tulsi basil) buds to save the seed.
The fragrance in the basil bed is just so amazing, I wish I could bottle that smell.
WAIT, I can!

I will be making basil infused oil this year. What a calming and still feeling this aroma imparts. . . .

Here is a little video of how a field of this plant looks, and how it is harvested.

We have soap!

So the soap making has started full force, and my studio is filled with the heavenly smell of vervain, calendula, shea butter, and lemon.

This is my favorite ritual of late Summer/early Fall, which gives the soap plenty of time to cure before I start selling it for the holidays. I am cutting the bars a bit thicker this year.

I am still using the end cuttings from last years' batch. Maybe I should be making them thinner!

But I just like the chunky feel of the larger bars in the hand. Keep a look out for when they are in my Etsy shop.

Calendula!

I have harvested this year's crop of calendula, petals from the flowers are very antiseptic and healing, used for millenia for medicinal and ceremonial purposes.

and aren't they beautiful?

I will be making my vervain soap this season with added calendula petals.

Calendula has tonic and antispasmodic properties, but it is mainly used for skin care and treatment. It has great anti-inflammatory action, making it helpful with stubborn wounds, acne, ulcers, bed sores, varicose veins, rashes, eczema, and related conditions, helping soothe sore, inflamed, and itchy skin conditions.

Combining the skin healing properties of calendula with soothing vervain - the perfect combination!

Look for this season's soaps starting the beginning of November.

I am very pleased to announce my new Pinon Pine Healing Balm

This healing balm is hand mixed by me, with all sustainable, natural ingredients, including wild crafted Ponderosa Pine resin, and Pinon Pine infused oil.

The base is shea butter and olive oil. Pinon Pine oil has been shown to have miraculous healing properties for cuts and skin conditions. Only one supplier in the country hand harvests and produces this amazing oil, and I was very lucky to be able to get some at the 2016 Mountain West Herb Conference.

Friends and family have reported amazing healing properties for this balm. You need only a very small amount, as the oils are very concentrated. The balm comes in a metal 2 ounce tin, with handmade label by me!

This balm has been infused with intention of love and healing -- when you send loving vibrations to the plants and trees being used for your medicinal and skin care, the plants and trees are very happy to connect with that vibration, and the harmony created activates the healing power.

I request that before you use this balm, you send gratitude intention to the Pinon Tree and Ponderosa Pine. I am certain that this energy multiplies the healing power.

Blessings to you, and all the plants and trees that make up our web of life!
To order from Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/454182102/pinon-pine-healing-balm

Vervain seeds are in the ground!

Let's hope they like our cold/hot sunny climate here in Colorado.

My new Owl banner

I am working on a triptych for an art show coming up, and thought I would use part of it for my new blog banner. Thanks to Barn Owl for the inspiration! and since the garden is under snow right now, I won't be harvesting new herbs for a while. . . . look for new soap as summer approaches.

Soap making time!

The air has been so clear and warm, the sun is out, and that makes me head out to the greenhouse.
It's time for a new Spring batch of soap!

I have enough Calendula from last year to make one good additional batch. That, along with the Vervain, and the antibacterial and soothing exfoliants in this soap will be perfect.
AND of course, the Shea butter, which my skin loves. I hope yours does, too!

 Look for this soap in my Etsy shop in about a month.

The economics of soap

I've talked a lot about the sustainable ingredients of my soap and why this soap is so good for you skin, but now I'd like to talk a little about the economics of my soap, and what it means to support local economies.

I order my organic, sustainable shea butter from an African American lady in Brooklyn who promises her import business supports small and local farmers in Ghana.

I buy organic coconut, avocado and olive oils from Costco, where employees are given a fair wage and benefits.

I buy my organic vervain leaves from a tea supplier in Boston who exclusively imports from small growers in the South of France.

I buy the chemicals needed for saponification (sodium hydroxide and potassium hydroxide) from an educational chemical supplier here in Denver.

I make each batch in my greenhouse, using a mold I created myself, and I label with stickers I created with my own art and printed on my computer.  Each batch is a labor of love and I enjoy my work very much, and I enjoy sharing the product with others whose dry skin problems might be helped, as mine have been enormously helped.

When I sell each bar for about $7, I am basically just covering the cost of my supplies.

When you buy a bar of Dove soap at Walmart for $2, the environmental impact is immeasurably larger than the cost of a bar of my soap.  That soap is full of detergents and the result of mass production, and the executives of Proctor and Gamble and Walmart make a fraction of a few cents off each bar.  The employees who manufacture, package, ship and sell this product don't see any of that profit.  They often even make a sub-poverty wage, which is subsidized by government welfare payments which all of us pay for with our taxes.

Do you really want to add to the incredibly negative environmental and personal impact of supporting large inhuman corporations?  I think the long term spiritual and psychic impact of using cheap mass produced products is not good for you, or the earth.

So that's why I make and sell soap for virtually no profit.  I believe it's a very small contribution I can make toward a more balanced healthy earth, and maybe an example for all of us to examine where we get our products, who profits, how they help our skin, our morale, and our planet. Yes, it's hard to spend $7 on a similar item that can be bought for $2, but is it really similar?  What is the long term cost to not only your skin, but your spirit?

I encourage all of us to be more conscious consumers, with even as small an item as the soap you wash with.

Blessed Be.

Lemon Vervain soap ready to ship

Order Here