Soaperstar gets a mention!

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Babs at http://www.soapstuffdaily.com/ for featuring Soaperstar soaps on her wonderful blog.  It's great to get a mention from anyone but from a fellow soaper, it's great to be recognised for my work.  She featured my two new Valentine Limited Edition soaps - Velvet Heart and Midas Touch.. I'm so delighted. 

You can read her post here - thank you again Babs, I really appreciate it!

Fabulous Limited Edition Valentine Soaperstar soaps!

I wanted to make some Valentine specials this weekend and thought why should it only be for women (so many Valentine gifts are) so I made one for the ladies and one for the men!

Midas Touch is our limited edition Valentine's soap for the man in your life!

A luxury handcrafted pure glycerine soap, perfect for all types of skin, with added Apricot Kernel Oil and a skin hydrating Ecocert additive to ensure your skin is treated with the luxury it deserves!

Midas Touch is a very modern style soap, deeply coloured with black and two different types of golden natural mica.

Fragranced with our special Midas Touch Fragrance Oil, a lush green woody citrus blend of sandalwood, cedarwood and tobacco leaf - a very male scent, deep and mysterious.

Velvet Heart is our limited edition Valentine soap made specially for the woman in your life - a luxury handcrafted blend of Goatsmilk & Glycerine soap, to which we've added Apricot Kernel Oil and an additional Ecocert skin hydrating additive to keep your skin soft & supple.

We use natural micas to create the softest, most romantic pinks and this wonderful soap is beautifully fragranced with our Velvet Heart fragrance Oil - a beautifully soft, romantic blend of Red Roses, Sweet Violets and soft White Musk.

I loved making both these soaps - the fragrances are wonderful, my house smelt like heaven when I made them!!!! Both are now available to buy online at http://www.soaperstar.com/ ... and remember they are both limited edition so once they're gone, they're gone!!! AND, they're both covered under our New Year Special Offer - buy 4 soaps, get a 5th mystery one for free... this finishes on 31 January so get your skates on!!!

Experimenting with Essential Oils

I've had a growing interest in essential oils for some time but I've been afraid to jump in there and try them out.. why? Well, there are some issues with essential oils that you don't get with fragrance oils - firstly, they do have an effect on the body and mind; that's a good thing right? Yes, however there are contraindications with some people, ie pregnant women and I was afraid that something I might make may cause problems - how awful would that be? There's also the issue of blending the various oils together to make different new fragrances - whilst this is a great idea in principal, the testing and experimenting can also be costly.  And we all know, in this day and age, costly experimenting is something very small businesses can't always afford.  On the other hand, they can't afford not to either.  Hmmmmm, so where did that leave me then?

I decided that I'd go the safe route into this unknown territory! I chose a variety of citrus essential oils that I personally really like, ones that are safe to use (small safe even with small children) and try them out on me.  After all, none of my products are tested on animals, only humans, including myself so why should any new product be any different?

So, from my fabulous supplier, I got a variety of oils - Lemongrass, Grapefruit, Lime, Mandarin, Tangerine, Basil, Fennel and May Chang.  I also know that citrus oils can sometimes be so not longlasting so I bought the May Chang (aka Litsea Cuba) as I know that it acts as a "fixative" for the other citrus oils. 

Last night, I made myself a body butter using my usual recipe - a tried and tested recipe that I adore and one I hope to introduce my customers too early this year.  I added a blend of Grapefruit, Mandarin and May Chang and I have to admit, even for a complete newbie in this area, it's lovely! Fresh and uplifting and it has a slight "fizzy" aspect at the end which I believe is due to the May Chang.  I really love it.  Now the only thing is that the body butter didn't firm up as usual but it was warm in the house last night (we've gone from minus temperatures to 10 deg in about two days with this crazy weather) but I need to see how it is today.  I did a lovely whipped version, very light anyway so it's not surprisingly it isn't that firm really!!!

I'm off shortly to have my shower and slather this wonderful butter all over myself and see how the fragrance has developed! I'm really excited to try this ... it may only be the first of many experiments! Keep an eye on this space for feedback!

10 Reasons to check out our Soaperstar soap

I've been spending time thinking about all the good things about Soaperstar and our soaps and I thought I'd share these with you ... Soaperstar and our soaps are our passion and it's important to us that our customers understand how much we want to produce the very best quality soaps so that we can share this passion with you.  Here are 10 reasons why you should check out our Soaperstar Soap:

1. All our soaps are wonderfully fragranced using only the finest quality fragrance oils sourced from EU suppliers 
2. Our soaps are completely suitable for use by vegetarians - we do use goatsmilk in our products because we find the soap it produces is of such a high quality and is exceptionally kind to your skin   
3. None of our products are tested on animals - we deplore such practices.  We do test on guinea pigs though... human ones of course!!!!  
4. Our products are fully safety assessed by a qualified cosmetic chemist - you can be assured that they are entirely safe for you to use  
5. We source all of our raw materials from the highest quality suppliers only - lots of time (and money) has been put into finding the best suppliers so that we can categorically say our products are of the highest quality 
6. We are continuously testing and experimenting in order to bring you new types of soaps - we love to come up with new, creative ideas to present to you!  
7. All our soaps are fully compliant with EU regulations regarding the correct labelling of cosmetic products - unlike some companies, we do not fudge our words in order to make you think you know what's in the soap, we just tell you what's in the soap!  
8. We use only the finest quality soap safe colourants, and, in substantial quantities, natural mineral micas in order to colour and add a wonderful glisten to our soaps  
9. We can categorically say that our soaps will help to clean, soften and hydrate your skin.  We add eithers butters or oils to all of our soaps and an additional skin hydrating Ecocert approved ingredient to ensure that your skin is as soft and silky as it deserves to be.  Since we opened for business last year, we have received only positive feedback and compliments from our customers  
10. We are totally committed to providing the best customer service ever - we keep in touch with our customers via email and always confirm delivery.  

We love designing, making, producing, wrapping, labelling, photographing and selling our soaps - this business is our love, our passion and we wanted to share this passion with all of our customers!  I hope you enjoyed this and, if it's given you inspiration to check out our soaps, please do not hesitate to visit our website at http://www.soaperstar.com/. 

Two new Soaperstar Soaps! Indian Rainforest & Lavender Champagne... bliss!

Introducing two new Soaperstar soaps! I got back to some post Christmas soaping on Saturday and made the following two soaps, I'm just adoring the fragrances used and the subtle modern colouring... here come the details!!!

Both of our new soaps, Indian Rainforest and Lavender Champagne are handcrafted luxury Goatsmilk & Glycerine soaps with added Apricot Kernel Oil for extra skin moisturisation and an additional skin hydrating factor to ensure your skin in treated with the luxury it deserves!

On the right hand side, Indian Rainforest is designed as a soap for men - it is deeply fragranced using a wonderful blend of cedarwood, giving a warm woody masculine base, alongside the deep earthy scent of patchouli, a fragrance element used in many commercial aftershaves for men. However, many women will just adore this fragrance too!

The soap is coloured using two different natural micas, a deep forest green and a lighter green gold, alongside the white goatsmilk - giving an impression of dark deep Indian Rainforest.

Our Lavender Champagne is wonderfully fragranced with our Lavender Champagne fragrance oil, a blend of uplifting lemon against a background of calming, soothing lavender.
 
This beautiful blend is perfectly balanced - neither scent overtakes the other, the lemon adds a wonderful freshness against the more comforting lavender. The subtle colouring is enhanced with the use of natural glistening mica - a truly modern take on a traditional theme.

I hope you enjoy both of our new soaps - both are now availalbe to purchase from our online store - just check us out at http://www.soaperstar.com/ - we'll be delighted to see you there!!!!

January Special Offer from Soaperstar!

To help celebrate a New Year and a new decade, we're introducing a special offer for January 2010 only!

Buy 4 of our luxury handcrafted glycerine soaps and get a 5th, mystery soap for free! That's right, entirely free!

Just place an order for 4 or more soaps between now and 31 January 2010, and I'll include a free bar of soap with your order!

What a great offer - we've lots of choices of our fabulous luxury handcrafted goatsmilk and glycerine soaps on our website at http://www.soaperstar.com/ so come and choose your favourites today!

Happy New Year!

I just want to say Happy New Year to all my blog followers and readers - I really hope that 2010 brings us all joy, happiness, health and, who knows, maybe a bit of wealth too?

I hope Soaperstar goes from strength to strength - I am planning on introducing several new products in the coming months, things I'm working on at present - I like to fully test all my recipes and send out samples for people to use; there's nothing like honest feedback on performance from your human guinea pigs!

And don't forget that all Soaperstar products are suitable for use by vegetarians, nothing at all is tested on animals (other than the human kind!), all products are fully safety assessed and I ensure that all my raw ingredients are purchased from the highest quality suppliers ... this is how I can ensure that all Soaperstar products are the very best I can supply!

Have a great New Year everyone - I honestly hope that this year will bring us all our dreams come true!

Don't forget to check out our website at http://www.soaperstar.com/ for info on all our products!