According to authors Susan Worwood and Valerie Ann Worwood of their book titled, Essential Aromatherapy...A Pocket Guide to Essential Oils and Aromatherapy ,
that when purchasing essential oils (EO) that you should:
(1) Shop around.
(2) Essential oils should be contained in dark bottles with the Latin name on the bottle. If the Latin name is not on the bottle, then is should be catalogued or at least have a company brochure listing the Latin name. For example, Whole Foods carries the Simplier brand of organic essential oils. Near the display there is a pamphlet produced by the company which gives all the details of each oil.
(3) An expiration date should be on the bottle. Normally, oils should last two years, unlike oils from the citrus family ie lemon are said the deteriorate and lose their value quickly.
(4) There is a complication when using the term "Essential Oil" on a label. The legal definition used to describe all sorts of the things which are not truly a plant essence extracted from a plant. Some people will try to maximize profits by selling bottles of a liquid purporting to be an essential oil when it is actually was man made.
(5) Another problem is that the bottle correctly indicated that the EO on the label and not the particular oil stated. It may be a combination of some other oils blended to together to create that particular scent or an oil that smells similar.
(6) Labels may say that they particular product is "natural" or "pure". This may be accurate but it can be misleading because the substance inside the bottle is indeed natural, but is not the natural substance the label leads you to believe. For example, it may say carnation but to the trained nose it could be something completely different.
(7) If a whole range of EO are being sold at the same price in the same size bottle. Normally, EO are sold in milliliters and are a variety of prices depending on how much the of the plant the manufacturer has to extract to create that size. Some oils will need more of the plant than others which means the higher the cost.
(8) Pure, undiluted EO should be sold in dark bottles, such as brown, green, mauve or blue. Blue and brown are the most common colors. If the oils are sold in clear bottles or even worse plastic, the company is not aware that these types of bottles let the light in which damages the product. So it is best to avoid purchase oils from this company.
(9) The bottles of EO should always have dropper tops which allows for measurement. This is a practical feature and also for safety. For the practical side it helps with the proper measurement when adding to your bath products, but EO evaporate and deteriorate when exposed to air so bottles with out the dropper tops will accelerate this process. As for a safety feature, the dropper tops will not allow children to drink from them. Often the scent will smell so good that they will think it is good enough to drink such as lemon might considered for lemonade. Once consumed they will find out that is not. If a child accidently has consumed a large quantity of oils, proper authorities such as CDC, a proper aromatherapy practioner should be contacted for further advisement.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
New Botanicals at Juniper Tree
I was at Juniper Tree over the weekend to purchase some supplies for an upcoming class. I noticed that they added two new botanicals. The first one is purple tulip petals which sell for $1.40 per ounce. I know that sounds like alot, but I figure you can get more bang for your buck by cutting the petals into smaller pieces. These petals are a very pretty and would look good in your bath salts.
The second botanical is something that I never saw before. It is called "Orange Velvet". It is a very unique flower petal that is orange with a velvet brown trim. This would be interesting to add to your bath salts. The price for this particular item is 70 cents per ounce.
Since you will be adding only a pinch to your bath salts, an ounce or two will last you a long time.
The second botanical is something that I never saw before. It is called "Orange Velvet". It is a very unique flower petal that is orange with a velvet brown trim. This would be interesting to add to your bath salts. The price for this particular item is 70 cents per ounce.
Since you will be adding only a pinch to your bath salts, an ounce or two will last you a long time.
Monday, April 2, 2007
How to Make Your Own Bath and Body Products The Easy Way
Here is an article about making your own bath products that I thought you would enjoy reading:
How To Make Your Own Bath and Body Products The Easy Way
by: Katherine Durkes
If you think about making your own spa products - such as lotions, body washes, and exfoliating scrubs - you probably think it sounds difficult. It probably brings to mind lots of weird ingredients, chemicals, and slaving away over a hot vat of goo for hours.
After this article, you'll know that nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, using my method (which I call The Easy Way), making your own bath and body products takes less time than going to the mall, and you get twice the quality of skin care.
The Two Ways Of Making Products - Hard and Easy
There are two ways to make your own bath and body products - The Hard Way, and The Easy Way. The Hard Way means investing a lot of time in books and trial-and-error in your kitchen, and a lot of money in ingredients. Often, you need patience and perseverance as you attempt to make a basic lotion or liquid soap, but it doesn't come out as well as you'd hoped. Heck, you didn't even get to the fun part, which adding the scent and color!
The Hard Way Takes Time and Practice
The Hard Way is what is taught in soapmaking classes, websites, and books. It can be fun and rewarding because of the natural ingredients and the high-quality products that result. Shea butter lotions... aloe body washes... If you are prepared to invest the time and money, and you have a lot of patience, The Hard Way does pay off. You get wonderfully moisturizing products in your favorite fragrances - even hard to find ones - that are much better than Bath and Body Works.
The problem is, The Hard Way is often incredibly discouraging to beginners. As they pour their failed body wash down the bathtub drain, most beginners start to wonder if it's really worth the trouble. Sooner or later, they go back to the mall and pay too much for what is essentially drugstore-quality products in fancy bottles and scents.
Beginners Can Master The Easy Way
The Easy Way of making bath and body products is, well, easy! With The Easy Way, you get all the benefits - the natural ingredients, the high-quality skin care products, and your favorite scents - for only 10% the work. The Hard Way is like baking a fancy Julia Child cake recipe, but The Easy Way is more like making a cake mix.
The Easy Way uses professional unscented product bases (also called "cosmetic bases") that are specially manufactured for this purpose. These bases are made with natural ingredients, such as shea butter, avocado oil, aloe, and goats' milk, so you still get high quality skin care, the same as if you had made the bases yourself with The Hard Way.
Quickly Make Lotion, Shower Gel, Shampoo, Scrub
You can get unscented bases for almost any liquid product you can think of: body lotion, massage cream, bath oil, shower gel, bubble bath, salon-quality shampoo and conditioner, body scrub, hand soap, and face wash.
Customize High Quality Unscented Products With Your Own Ingredients.
To these basic products, you add your own fragrance, color, and other special ingredients, such as silk proteins and botanical extracts. You can even experiment with natural anti-aging ingredients such as carrot seed oil, green tea extract, and collagen. These ingredients are what makes your products unique!
Just Like The Professionals
If you compare three bottles of shower gel from Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop, and Origins, you will see a lot of similarities in their first few ingredients. That's because they're all taking a basic body wash and making their own improvements on it, just like you can with The Easy Way.
Free 8-Page Report Gets You Started
There's no need to reinvent the wheel (or a basic body wash.) If what you want is to quickly and easily create your own bath and body products, The Easy Way is the method for you! If you want to get more information, I have written a quick 8-page PDF with a recipe and photos. To read it, just send a blank email to productreport@excellentlivingguide.com, and it will be emailed to your inbox. You must be able to receive attachments over 1MB (it's 1.1MB.)
About The Author
Katherine Durkes is an experienced teacher of bath and body. She runs a popular website on how to make bath and body products, as well as the Yahoo Group "Home Bath & Body." Her first e-book, "The Fast Guide To Making Bath Bombs (& Fizzies)" has over 10,000 downloads and has been featured on About.com and in Ready Made Magazine.
Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/women/article_2439.shtml
How To Make Your Own Bath and Body Products The Easy Way
by: Katherine Durkes
If you think about making your own spa products - such as lotions, body washes, and exfoliating scrubs - you probably think it sounds difficult. It probably brings to mind lots of weird ingredients, chemicals, and slaving away over a hot vat of goo for hours.
After this article, you'll know that nothing could be further from the truth! In fact, using my method (which I call The Easy Way), making your own bath and body products takes less time than going to the mall, and you get twice the quality of skin care.
The Two Ways Of Making Products - Hard and Easy
There are two ways to make your own bath and body products - The Hard Way, and The Easy Way. The Hard Way means investing a lot of time in books and trial-and-error in your kitchen, and a lot of money in ingredients. Often, you need patience and perseverance as you attempt to make a basic lotion or liquid soap, but it doesn't come out as well as you'd hoped. Heck, you didn't even get to the fun part, which adding the scent and color!
The Hard Way Takes Time and Practice
The Hard Way is what is taught in soapmaking classes, websites, and books. It can be fun and rewarding because of the natural ingredients and the high-quality products that result. Shea butter lotions... aloe body washes... If you are prepared to invest the time and money, and you have a lot of patience, The Hard Way does pay off. You get wonderfully moisturizing products in your favorite fragrances - even hard to find ones - that are much better than Bath and Body Works.
The problem is, The Hard Way is often incredibly discouraging to beginners. As they pour their failed body wash down the bathtub drain, most beginners start to wonder if it's really worth the trouble. Sooner or later, they go back to the mall and pay too much for what is essentially drugstore-quality products in fancy bottles and scents.
Beginners Can Master The Easy Way
The Easy Way of making bath and body products is, well, easy! With The Easy Way, you get all the benefits - the natural ingredients, the high-quality skin care products, and your favorite scents - for only 10% the work. The Hard Way is like baking a fancy Julia Child cake recipe, but The Easy Way is more like making a cake mix.
The Easy Way uses professional unscented product bases (also called "cosmetic bases") that are specially manufactured for this purpose. These bases are made with natural ingredients, such as shea butter, avocado oil, aloe, and goats' milk, so you still get high quality skin care, the same as if you had made the bases yourself with The Hard Way.
Quickly Make Lotion, Shower Gel, Shampoo, Scrub
You can get unscented bases for almost any liquid product you can think of: body lotion, massage cream, bath oil, shower gel, bubble bath, salon-quality shampoo and conditioner, body scrub, hand soap, and face wash.
Customize High Quality Unscented Products With Your Own Ingredients.
To these basic products, you add your own fragrance, color, and other special ingredients, such as silk proteins and botanical extracts. You can even experiment with natural anti-aging ingredients such as carrot seed oil, green tea extract, and collagen. These ingredients are what makes your products unique!
Just Like The Professionals
If you compare three bottles of shower gel from Bath and Body Works, The Body Shop, and Origins, you will see a lot of similarities in their first few ingredients. That's because they're all taking a basic body wash and making their own improvements on it, just like you can with The Easy Way.
Free 8-Page Report Gets You Started
There's no need to reinvent the wheel (or a basic body wash.) If what you want is to quickly and easily create your own bath and body products, The Easy Way is the method for you! If you want to get more information, I have written a quick 8-page PDF with a recipe and photos. To read it, just send a blank email to productreport@excellentlivingguide.com, and it will be emailed to your inbox. You must be able to receive attachments over 1MB (it's 1.1MB.)
About The Author
Katherine Durkes is an experienced teacher of bath and body. She runs a popular website on how to make bath and body products, as well as the Yahoo Group "Home Bath & Body." Her first e-book, "The Fast Guide To Making Bath Bombs (& Fizzies)" has over 10,000 downloads and has been featured on About.com and in Ready Made Magazine.
Source: http://www.articlecity.com/articles/women/article_2439.shtml
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Book: Crafts and Craft Shows
Have you ever gone to a craft fair and thought you would like to sell your crafts by this method? How would you get started? What do you need to know? Well, I found a book titled, Crafts and Craft Shows...How to Make Money by Philip Kadubec, gives you a honest look at making money at craft shows. It covers marketing yourself and your product, pricing your product, selecting your shows, business operations, booth set up and displays, dealing with customers and overview of the craft business.
Even though I never intended to start selling my bath product in this particular way, this book really opened my eyes to what is all involved in selling craft products in this manner. I would strongly recommend this book if you are interested in starting your own crafts business.
If you are interested in reading this book, I found this book at my local library. The print date is in 2000, so I am not sure if it is still in print for you to purchase, but you probably can ask your local bookstore to see or check out Amazon.com.
Book: Crafts and Craft Shows...How to Make Money by Philip Kadubec. Published by Allworth Press, New York in 2000. ISBN: 1-58115-060-1.
Even though I never intended to start selling my bath product in this particular way, this book really opened my eyes to what is all involved in selling craft products in this manner. I would strongly recommend this book if you are interested in starting your own crafts business.
If you are interested in reading this book, I found this book at my local library. The print date is in 2000, so I am not sure if it is still in print for you to purchase, but you probably can ask your local bookstore to see or check out Amazon.com.
Book: Crafts and Craft Shows...How to Make Money by Philip Kadubec. Published by Allworth Press, New York in 2000. ISBN: 1-58115-060-1.
Classes I Recommend
If you are interested in learning in making other bath and body products, I recommend taking Lori Nova's Making Natural Perfumes, All Natural Baby Products (products can be used on adults too!) and All Natural Spa Facial Products.
These classes are offered at her studio in Point Richmond, if that is too far for you, she does teach these classes through DeAnza College's Community Education (http://communityeducation.fhda.edu).
If you are interested in any of her classes, I recommend signing up early because they do fill up fast. For example, I wanted to take her Making Mineral Make-up class at DeAnza College on 3/31. I was going to sign up on 2/28 and I called before sending my check and the class was full. So, it is best not to wait until the last minute. I know that is hard sometimes because you find out about the class at the last minute.
I will be venturing out to her location to take some of her other classes which she does not teach at DeAnza. And I will report to you on my experience.
These classes are offered at her studio in Point Richmond, if that is too far for you, she does teach these classes through DeAnza College's Community Education (http://communityeducation.fhda.edu).
If you are interested in any of her classes, I recommend signing up early because they do fill up fast. For example, I wanted to take her Making Mineral Make-up class at DeAnza College on 3/31. I was going to sign up on 2/28 and I called before sending my check and the class was full. So, it is best not to wait until the last minute. I know that is hard sometimes because you find out about the class at the last minute.
I will be venturing out to her location to take some of her other classes which she does not teach at DeAnza. And I will report to you on my experience.
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