Productive Day

Saturday was a busy day besides being a weekend day and not a day job day!  I made soap in the morning as you can see here. The one on the left is Chamomile Soap with olive oil infused with Chamomile Flowers and swirled with the herbal powder also. I decided to add some of the flowers on the top of the soap and I think it came out pretty well. There is not any essential oil added as it is one of my unscented soaps but after awhile you can smell the appley scent of the Chamomile herb in the soap. The other batch is Rosemary Lemongrass which really fills your senses with a herbal lemongrass scent. I do love making soap and I know that is is great for the skin because of the moisturizing oils that make up the soap recipe.

I choose to use a formula that is heavy on olive oil that is so wonderful for the skin, Shea butter which moisturizes, cocoa butter which is soothing to the skin, avocado oil that is a nutrient for dry skin and coconut oil for its wonderful lather. All these are blended together into a moisture rich bar with pure essential oils for an aromatic way to cleanse your skin.  All good reasons to use handmade soap as opposed to commercial soaps.

I know you have all heard that your skin is the biggest organ of your body and you need to be careful what you put on it as well as what you put in your body. You want to use things that protect it and take care of it and not harsh ingredients that dry it out and irritate it. One more note of information is that in commercial soap, the manufacturers skim off the soap's natural glycerin which is one of the main moisturizing components of the soap process as it draws moisture from the air and onto your skin. This glycerin is then re-sold to cosmetic manufacturers for a profit leaving commercial soaps not as moisturizing and can be and usually are dring to the skin. Handmade soaps have this wonderful ingredient in each bar and on your skin when you use it.

OK getting off my soap box for now. 

Scents are one of my passions as well as taking baths rather than showers.  So, making soap seemed like a natural way for combining these two into a business as well as the art and science that also go hand in hand with the making of soap.

Just wanted to share abit about me and Ritual Waters.....



More about Lavender

Lavender and Lavender Essentail Oil (EO) has so many therapeutic qualities and also many emotional/spiritual qualities that it should be part of everyone's household. From something as simple Lavender sachets added to scent linens or in a eye pillow to ease headaches and help one relax to sleep. We also have a Lavender Farm in Eastern North Carolina that I visited several years back that grow several different varieties of Lavender at their harvest festival. You can visit them at

www.sunshinelavenderfarm.com/    While there we had Chocolate Lavender ice cream plus they had several Lavender crafts they were demonstating. Their site also has information on planting and also recipes for using the herb Lavender. 

Now Lavender Essential Oil is what I use most. I use it in several of the soaps I make - Lavender, Lavender Orange Oats, Lavender Rosemary, and Walk in the Woods Soaps. Lavender is a versatile oil that blends with many other scents from the citrus scents like Orange and Grapefruit, to the mints and to the really earthy oils of Patouchli and Oakmoss. I also use Lavender in my Soaking Salts as the EO has the therapeutic properties to be sedative, antidepressant and analgesic which is great after a stessful day at work! If you are adding jus the EO to your bath , only add about 5-6 drops to you bathwater as you will be inhaling the scent through you nose and into you skin. EO's are very concentrated and as the saying goes "less is more".

Please note these are properties not prescribed by medical field but from aromatherpy and anecdotal only. I also use Lavender in my lotion bars as much for the scent as for its know skin heaing properties. I have also applied a few drop for insect bites to ease itching on my grandaughter's bug bites.

A wonderful book by Valerie Ann Worwood titled The Fragrant Heavens  talks about the spiritual dimension of fragrances and she writes about Lavender being " caring, cherishing, and nurturing " and an oil that uplifts the spirit. Lavender is a physically and emotionally healing oil and I hope you will welcome it into you daily life.

One place I highly reccomend to purchase wonderful therapeutic grade essential oils is http://www.lovingscents.com/   They have a wonderful newsletter and allot of information on their oils.

Ingredients - Calendula officinalis

Calendula officinalis is a wonderful herb that we use in several of our products. This beautiful flower is a perennial that is also known by the name of "pot marigold". Please note that it is not considered the "common marigold" or Mexican mariold as these are part of the Tagetes family and do NOT have the same properties.
The Calendula plant is easy to grow and will tolerate most soils if you are a gardener. The flowers are considered edible which I thought interesting and they vary in color from yellow to various shades of orange. This wonderful plant has been used as a dye plant to color butter and cheese in Europe and to flavor soups and stews. We add Calendula petals to our Calendula soap and the petals keep their wonderful orange color and do not turn brown. I have been wanting to try adding Calendula powder to the soap to see if it will impart a yellow color that stays through the soap curing. For the Calendula soap I infuse olive oil with Calendula flowers to make a nice soap for sensitive skin.
Calendula has many medicinal properties as it has anti-inflamatory, antiseptic properties, and is also antibacterial and antifungal. This makes it a great addition to any cream or salve and helps soothe irritated, chapped skin, eczema, and insect bites. We use Calendula infused olive oil in our Herbal Salve and all Lip Balms for these reasons.
We will be showcasing more of our ingredients in the coming weeks to explore why we choose our materials carefully in preparing our products for your use.
 

What has changed in Ritual Waters Soaps

I had made a decision several weeks ago to remove Palm Kernel oil from my soap formula. I had been using Palm Oil and Palm Kernel Oil to add hardness and lather to my bars for many years. But, in reading of the effects of the increased demand for Palm Oil and Palm Kernel Oil on the cutting down of the Rain Forests in Malaysia and Indonesia I am joining other soapmakers who have also decided to change over to other oils for their soap. The Oil Palm production is affecting the Rain Forest wildlife, particularly the Sumatran, Bornean Orangutans, Sumatran Tigers, Asian Elephant, and Sumatran Rhino are all in danger of disappearing. It appears that levelling and clearing the rain forest is cheaper than reworking the land that was used for rice paddies but at what cost? Sometimes the fires used to clear the Rain Forest burn out of control.  The Oil Palm is used mainly as an edible oil that China, India, the European Union, and the US supposedly use in processed foods to eliminate the trans fat from our diet. There are other oils that can help with this like Soybean Oil or Olive Oil but these are more costly than Oil Palm but the cost to the environment far outweighs the dollars saved. Oil Palm is sometimes the only oil in some US processed foods like packaged cookies, crackers and pop corn. Oil Palm is not as healthy as some would like us to believe and has been shown to promote heart disease. Please follow this link to learn more and read the full article - http://www.cspinet.org/palm/PalmOilReport.pdf

 

My soaps now have more Coco Butter which will replace the Palm Kernel Oil for its hardness and will make a more moisturizing bar. I feel this will hopefully have better impact on the environment. Please read ingredient labels and avoid processed foods that contain Palm Oil as a way to voice your opinion to save the Rain Forests in Malaysia and Indonesia.