Lush Disappoints Me Again

But this time it's not because they have discontinued a favorite product.

I realize Lush is one of those "socially conscious", green companies. Most of the stuff they support is inoffensive to me. I have no problem with cutting down on wasteful packaging. I don't believe that cosmetics should be tested on animals. (I have no problem with medical research, meat, leather or even fur, though.) I think it's great that they buy certain ingredients in such a way that it helps Africans be more self-sufficient.

But I am really offended by this. Even if I supported the cause, I would find it tasteless. And I can't help but wonder what these radical Muslim men would think of their pictures unfolding in the bathwater of naked infidel women.

Apparently, this is not for sale on their American site. However, it is on the British company's UK site. Ugh!

I have bought stuff from the Lush UK site before...products discontinued or not available yet in the US. I guess I will have to not order from them anymore. (Especially since several items in my last order were all broken up -- I know these guys are trying to reduce packaging, but geez...)

As for Lush in general...well I have figured out how to duplicate several of their fragrances with my own fragrance oils. I can make my own soap. I can make pretty decent bath bombs. I still haven't got the bubble bars figured out, but I will eventually. So I can make many of these things myself. I've got a lot of Lush stuff, so I won't need to buy anything from them for a while. I'm pretty offended by this whole thing, so I don't know if I can buy from them again.

(Via Kathy Shaidle, who succinctly points out the utter silliness of this whole thing.)

Update (3/17/08): Yesterday, I got a referral from Lush Australia going straight to this entry. Interesting. Again, let me sum up -- I love Lush's products, but I don't like the politics. I think they should choose causes that don't offend a good portion of their American customer base. I'm not saying I will boycott them (I'm not really a "boycott" person). But I am saying that this puts a damper on my wanting to spend my money on their products. I need to get back into my soapmaking hobby anyway, and making my own stuff instead of buying from others is a good excuse to do so.

Also, another conservative blogger, American Princess, blogs about this. My favorite comment from one of her commenters is this one from someone named Anthony:

After my battalion spent a year at Gitmo, I'd ask Lush to send us some bathing gel to wash off the things that were routinely thrown on us by the detainees.

That's what I'm talking about! :-D

A Bleg of Sorts -- I Need Some Information

I know that some people are sensitive to fragrances. I would like to hear from people who have this sensitivity. Specifically, I would like to know to what extent you are sensitive to fragrances -- particularly when it comes to bath products:

• Can you not tolerate any fragrance at all?
• Can you tolerate fragrances as long as they are not heavy? That is, would you be able to use very lightly fragranced bath products?
• Are there certain fragrances that you can tolerate, but others you cannot? For example, I have a friend who gets awful migraines if she smells anything too heavy and "perfumey". However, she is just fine with more natural, essential oil based fragrances like patchouli, cinnamon and lavender.
• Can you give me any other information about sensitivity to fragrance not covered above?

I would like to make some bath things for people who are sensitive to fragrances, so that's why I need this information. Thank you in advance to anyone who helps me out with this.

Update (8/13/07): I'm closing the comments for this post, but if you would like to contribute some information about this, feel free to email me at the address on the sidebar.

The Craft Show

I did alright with the craft show Saturday. I sold a few things and brought a lot home. However, the other people who were there did about the same. I got a lot of complements and one lady who bought a bar of soap from me (she was also participating in the show and was the only other woman close to my age -- just about all the other women were senior citizens) told me that I needed to sell my stuff on the Internet. I told her that I plan to do that eventually. In fact, I signed up with Etsy.com a few weeks ago. (Etsy is a site where you can buy and sell handmade crafts.) I haven't set up a shop yet, but I plan to in the (hopefully) near future.

I managed to sell most of the Christmas soap I had left. Strangely enough, I didn't sell any of the Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap I recently made, and that is usually the most popular soap. Perhaps this is because it's not "summery". I had planned on making some more soap and other bath things with summer/tropical themed scents, but as you know from the previous post, I just wasn't able to do it.

I've Gone and Done It...

I rented a table to participate in a local craft fair in a couple of weeks so that I can sell my soap and some other bath things I've been making. If you're interested in my adventures in all that bubbles, you can check out my Vox blog Wrapped in Bubbles. Lately, I've been making things like shower gel and bath butter as well as soap. I've also experimented with making foaming bath bombs (I never got a chance to post about that over at the Vox blog, but I will eventually.) I need to make decent looking labels if my main PC will hold up long enough. (I've been having some problems with it.) I made some lip balm too, and while it turned out okay, I don't think I will do it again. All that wax is so messy to clean up.

Anyway, I'm going to be busy. I'll write about my progress on the Vox blog when it comes to making stuff to sell.

Soap and Bubble Bars -- Recent Progress

Here's some of what I've been up to with making soap and bubble bars. Photos are included. As always, you can click them for a larger view.

• I've tried making some bubble bars, and while they make a tremendous amount of bubbles and smell great, I still have to figure out some things. Some have turned out too hard and dry, whereas others have turned out too crumbly and fell all to pieces when I sliced them. I sometimes get whiffs of a faint, detergenty odor when I use them. I had problems with colors changing or fading with some of the bars. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if I just need to find or concoct another recipe. Here is the recipe I'm using (I found it here):

  
  

  • 5.25oz Baking Soda (about 2/3 cup)
  
  
  • 5.25oz Sodium Lauryl Sulfoacetate (SLSA) (about 2/3 cup)
  
  
  • 2oz Cream of Tartar
  
  
  • 1oz Glycerin
  
  
  • 1oz liquid surfactant (I use Cocamidopropyl Betaine.)
  
  
  • 1oz fragrance oil
  
  
  • Colorant
• I came up with an almost dead-on imitation of the Lush Blue Skies Bubble Bar scent and made soap with it. I hope I can replicate it again, because I kind of lost track of how much of the different fragrances I used (it consists of patchouli, frankincense and cinnamon, in that order). I think I know in general how much I used of each, but I'm not sure. I think it went something like this: 1 TBSP patchouli essential oil, 1 1/2 to 2 tsp of frankincense oil (which is expensive stuff, BTW) and 1/4 tsp of cinnamon fragrance oil (I probably could have gone with a little less, like 1/8 tsp). I used a hemp oil soap base and it turned out really nice. Now, I can enjoy my Blue Skies bubble bars with soap that matches! (The soap looks green in the picture because the hemp soap had more of a greenish color than it usually does. I added some blue coloring to it, but you can't really see that in the photo.)

  
  

• I made some really awesome Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap. I used Sweet Cakes' OMH fragrance oil, two pounds of their goatmilk soap and two pounds of their honey soap. I mixed the goatmilk soap with about 1/4 cup of colloidal oatmeal (purchased from Well Naturally), poured it in a loaf mold, let it set for about five minutes, and then poured in the honey soap. I pulled a knife through to slightly mix them enough to get a nice marbled effect. Then, after the soap hardened, I sliced the loaf with a crinkle cutter. It came out wonderfully. I think the next time I make it, I will use a little more colloidal oatmeal -- maybe 1/3 or even 1/2 of a cup. This is my second batch of OMH soap. The first batch was almost as nice as this one...it didn't look quite as pretty. The main differences were that I used one pound less soap, a little more colloidal oatmeal, and the honey soap I used was from a different company, so it was a much lighter color (which means the marbling effect was not nearly as dramatic).

  

  
  

• One thing I tried with the bubble bars was to make an OMH version of it, with colloidal oatmeal, whole milk powder and honey powder (all purchased from Well Naturally) added to it. I thought it was going to come out awesome. Looking at this picture, you can see why I thought so:

  

  However, I ended up disappointed with the result. It was very crumbly and fell apart when I tried to slice it. Also, the white in the bar didn't stay white and turned a kind of putty color, which ruined the swirl design (the oatmeal, milk and honey fortified part of the bar was a tan color that was supposed to swirl with the white part of the bar). As I mentioned earlier, I have had problems with the color changing in some others I have made as well. This is strange because some I've made did not change to a putty color.

Here are some more photos of soap and bubble bars I've made --

Rice Flower & Shea with embeds:

Two-tone layered Sandalwood soap:

These are the Cranberry Spice and Lilac bubble bars respectively. They did not change colors:

These are the Pink Sugar bubble bars. Like the OMH bubble bars, they ended up turning into a putty color for some reason. They also turned very hard, which makes them more difficult to crumble and dissolve:

Baths, Soap and Soapmaking

I have always loved bath stuff -- cool soaps, wonderful bubble baths, shower gels, etc. When people say that they don't know what to give me for a present, I just say, "Give me some bath stuff!"

I heard about Creekside Soap and decided to give their products a try. I absolutely love their soap. The Oatmeal, Milk and Honey soap is to die for. I also love the Lavender and the English Rose (which are not currently on their rotating roster of products). Applejack Peel is another favorite. I have also bought a lot of these soaps to give to family and friends as gifts and they loved them, too. I highly recommend Creekside Soap.

I also have heard about the products offered by a Canadian company called Lush. I tried numerous products by Lush (ordering them via Amazon.com) and have found them to be wonderful. I really love their bubble bars, which is bubble bath that comes in solid bars. You crumble some up in your bathwater while drawing your bath. My personal favorites are Blue Sky, Karma, Amandopondo, Bathos and MA BAR. I have also tried some shampoos (Big and Daddy-O), which I really like. I've bought two soaps from them so far: Rock Star and Cherry Tree Lane. I haven't had a chance to try the latter yet, but I have tried the former. Rock Star soap smells very sweet and candylike. I do find that Lush's soaps are a bit smaller than I expected. (Their products are rather pricey.)

Anyway, my great affection for bath things got me interested in dabbling in making soap and other bath stuff myself. I got started by buying a bath fizzy kit at a drug store that I go to that also sells a few craft products. At the same time, I bought a book about soapmaking, but it is mainly about making cold-process soap. (Creekside Soap is cold-process soap.) I just want to keep things simple for now, so I decided to go the melt-and-pour route instead. So, I bought the only slab of melt-and-pour soap they had.

My first experiment was a bit of a failure. I used the colorant and orange essential oil that came with the fizzy kit, which was fine except that I didn't use enough fragrance. Where I really went wrong was in choosing a mold. I didn't have proper molds, so I used some empty Altoids Tangerine Sour tins instead. Bad idea...I couldn't get the soap out without cutting it up. I eventually ended up using this failed batch to make some liquid hand soap.

I bought a couple of books about melt-and-pour soapmaking. I then went about getting some proper supplies. Some time ago, I had bookmarked a website that sells all kinds of soapmaking products called Sweet Cakes.

I have bought a bunch of fragrance oils, essential oils, colorants, molds and melt-and-pour soap bases from Sweet Cakes. Some I made for just myself and my mother. (Various floral scents such as rose, lilac and violet.) I made some patchouli and hemp oil soap for my sister and a friend of mine who loves patchouli. I also made a whole bunch of holiday scented and colored soaps that I will use as gifts. I donated some to my church's holiday craft fair (to raise money for the needy) that will be going on the next two Sundays. The holiday soaps I made are: Pumpkin Spice, Cranberry Spice, Christmas Forest and Frankincense & Myrrh (for which I used a gold soap base). I also experimented and made a few bars of a scent I created that I called Christmas Rose. I used a combination of rose, Christmas Forest and F&M. I think it turned out pretty good, considering it was just an experiment. It smells like roses with a little bit of Christmas thrown in.

I used a lot of pre-colored soaps, but I have also used colorants. This is where I have run into some problems. I bought gel colorants from Sweet Cakes and at first I had problems with the colorant creating glops in my soaps. (This was the soap I made for me and my mother to use.) I did some Googling and finally found out that this was caused by adding the colorant when the soap was too hot -- it should not be over 145 degrees. Also, I noticed the colorants fade or even change colors over time. The former problem is probably caused by not using enough. I suspect the latter is caused by, again, the soap being too hot when I added it. I now use a thermometer to measure the soap's temperature before adding the colorant, which solved the glopping problem.

I found another soap-supply place to order from called Bramble Berry. I was looking for a Rice Flower scent and they had it. (The first time I ordered from Creekside Soap, they sent me a lovely smelling sample of Rice Flower soap. Unfortunately, they are not selling it right now.) With my next batch of soap, I'm going to try and get a little fancy. Using the small bath fizzy molds, I'm going to make small pieces of soap, and then I'm going to embed them in clear soap. It will be all Rice Flower scented. Wish me luck with this project. If it turns out well, I'll post pictures.

I also have stuff to make bath fizzies. If my soap sells well at this week's craft fair, I may donate a few more bars for next week and make some holiday scented fizzies as well. Below is a picture of the holiday soaps. I donated two bars of each.

Click for larger view.