Zingara - Pure Essential Soap

With our Pure Beer soap collection creating a LOT of interest, and due to the things I learnt from working with beer and other additives, I decided I wanted to work on another collection of soaps.. this one is called the Pure Essential Soap collection.

Pure Essential Soap is going to be a collection (number as yet undetermined) of 100% natural soaps, all with additives that are proven to perform for your skin, with natural colours and all fragranced with pure essential oils.  This was quite a challenge for me as, any regular reader will know that I LOVE my colours and I'm, what's known in the trade, as a complete FOHO (FO is short for fragrance oil and ho is... well, ya know).  To move to work only with natural colours and essential oil (or EO) blends was a bit of a leap for me ... but YAY to that! Again, if you're a regular reader, you'll know I love a good challenge! I need to always push myself to do something different, something new, something a little out of my comfort zone... otherwise things get a little samey, a little too easy.

So how did I go about planning the Pure Essential Soap collection? In the intial stages, I thought "what would I like to see for sale .. if I could make any soap but within the 100% natural boundary, what would I want".  That's always my own personal starting point.  Then, once I had a few thoughts under my belt, the iamhandmade.com team had a meeting ... well, ok.. me and Titch and Malky were driving down to Cork one day and we did some brainstorming in the car but hey, that's a meeting right? We threw around more ideas and names and what might be added and came up with a plan, at least four solid ideas for soaps and ideas for more.  I like that type of planning, it makes my brain go fizzing in all sorts of directions.

So ... the next set of blog posts will be about the Pure Essential Soap collection, the first being Zingara.

Zingara is made with Sweet Almond & Golden Olive Oils along with tons of creamy Cocoa Butter.  We then added Goatsmilk, Pink and White Clays, Colloidal Oatmeal & Pure Silk.

As I'm using only natural colours and fragrances, I decided to try out two colours (yeah, why do one when you can do two?).  The bottom layer of the soap is coloured using Pink Clay which came out a really lovely deep dusky pink and the top layer is coloured pale yellow using Tumeric - this was added to the soap at trace so it's given a lovely light speckle to the finished soap.  The line dividing both layers is my VERY FIRST Cocoa Line which I actually hadn't planned but then, once the pink layer was poured, I decided to just go for it.  I was a little nervous as I know that the soap can split along this line if the cocoa is put on too thickly so I was very careful.  Hubs was fascinated by this and watched over me doing this.  I wanted to shadow the use of this cocoa again in the soap so decided, at the end of making it and making the textured tops, to dust the cocoa, very sparingly, on the top of the soap, once made.

Whilst I use white clay in almost every soap now (great for all skin types, even sensitive and dry, and adds a lovely glide to the soap .. plus its great for use as a shaving soap too), I hadn't ventured very much into coloured clays until I started using them with the Pure Beer Collection.

Pink Clay is excellent for dry, sensitive & mature skin types and is just a lovely colour.  It has a softening affect that refines the skin texture & provides hydration through moisturising properties. This delicate clay has firming and toning elements that improve connective tissue so it is perfect for more sensitive skin types.

I really wanted to use Goatsmilk in the soap as I'm a huge fan of it's skin loving benefits.  It's packed with vitamins A, B6, B12 and E and is a wonderful natural emollient. The high content of capric, caprylic and caproic acids act as a natural AHA, exfoliating deal skin cells and balancing the pH of the new, healthy skin underneath.

When we were discussing colours and fragrances, I'd just taken delivery of stunning 5 Fold Orange and a Pink Grapefruit essential oils.  I just had to use them.  To deepen the fragrance and soften it, I added the Bourbon Geranium (which, any who buys essential oils lately, knows how expensive it's become) and I anchored the whole blend with some Dark Indonesian Patchouli - one of my favourite essential oils, it adds a depth and warmth to a blend.

So, do you want to see some pictures? Oh yeah!!! Here you go....

Zingara is available to pre-order now online, http://www.iamhandmade.com/ourshop/prod_2027227-Zingara-PreOrder-Cure-Date-13-June.html, so make sure to order as soon as possible before these are sold out.  

Couture Cupcake Soaps - Now on Pre-Order

These were fun to make! And they're on pre-order right now too! All of them are made with Goatsmilk, Kaolin Clay & Pure Silk.

Enjoy x

Black Raspberry Vanilla:

 Raspberry Lime: 

Tangerine Tango:

Links for the pre-orders are in the titles of the soaps.... really hope you enjoy these! Happy Saturday! x

Cosmetic Labelling

Well, this week I promised myself I'd have all my paperwork finished - however, that was easier said than done! EU legislation is rigorous around the whole area of cosmetic labelling - given soap is considered a cosmetic, everything I produce must meet the regulations.  I totally agree with this of course, I want my customers to be very aware of what they are purchasing (I am planning an ingredients information page on my site, when I get it set up and running) - it's so important that people are aware of what they are putting ON their bodies as much as they are now becoming so aware of what they are putting IN their bodies.  All my soaps will be vegetarian friendly, not tested on animals (unless you consider my husband an animal that is!) and all will have added oils or butters and an extra moisturising factor in order to be as skin friendly (skin loving, skin adoring, all about the skin!) as possible.  You can rest assured that if I don't use it, you won't be - you won't be able to even buy it because I certainly wouldn't be selling anything to anyone that I wouldn't use myself on a daily basis.  So correct (and legal) labelling is really vital to us and to our customers. 

However, saying all that, in order to label fully, there is a huge amount of work to do in order to make sure you're doing it the right way.  Firstly you have to carefully list your formula, including all additions.  Each ingredient has an special INCI name - INCI means International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients - which lists all products with either it's Latin or scientific name.  For instance, instead of thinking manufacturers are really snobs because they write Water as Aqua, they are, in fact, legally obligied to do so. 

So, once you've written up your formula, then you must work out the percentages of each ingredient, then list the INCI name for each one.  Once you've done all that, then you know what is in your product, at what percentages and their correct legal name.  Only then can you list your ingredients, highest percentage ingredient on down (just like for food labelling). 

For every ingredient, you must also keep on file a Material Safety Data Sheet and show your calculations for any allergens that may be present in your product.  When I say allergens, I mean some substances in some fragrances (including both fragrance and essential oils) that occur within those fragrances - you may have seen something like Linalool or Limonene listed, these are the potential allergens.  Now, the reality is that they are in such a tiny, infintesimal amounts that few people would ever have a reaction (for instance, I have very sensitive skin and have never had a problem with them). However, again, where people want to know this information, it is vital for us to be able to provide it to them. 

So you can see just how much work goes into preparing all the legal information required to protect our customers - all hugely important to us but it all takes time. 

The great thing is that, once I have a final listing of ingredients, I get to design my labels which is really great fun! And today I have managed to finalise my design and I'm really happy with it - it's the right size and shape and colour(s) and I really really love them.  So, even if the paperwork is a big workload, though utterly necessary, I do get to make lovely things from them so I'm happy!!!

Keep watching this space as I hope to post pics of a new soap tomorrow.  Oh, and remember, it's Friday night!!! Yay!!!!