Science Fiction Double Feature

Minus the science fiction, anyway.

I’m in two places for the price of one! So to speak. Belle at Paper Girl Productions makes really awesome stuffed animals — not just your run-of-the-mill Gund bears but truly unique pieces, some of which I can’t even identify as to species. Some really, really awesome stuff, though.

She’s also running a couple of wonderful features. One’s at her main online shop — a Holiday Gift Guide with a plethora of awesome things to choose from! I’m honoured to be among such luminaries as Belly Babies and WhiMSy Love.

She’s also done a feature at her blog — she’s chosen only twelve shops from her Gift Guide, and I’m one of them! Once again I’m in wonderful company.

Check it out!

Etsy Challenge — Please Vote!

Etsy Challenge, in its own words:

Welcome to The Etsy Challenge. Here Etsians compete in 12 different categories each week. The winners of each category will compete the following week for the Weekly Grand Champion.

This week my Lark’s Spicy Footy Salve is taking on all comers! Well, okay, it’s up against four other pretty awesome things in the Candles/Bath/Body category.

I’m not gonna win if y’all don’t go and vote for me. I can only vote for myself once, after all! Please go here and add to my tally:

http://etsychallenge.blogspot.com/2008/09/929-candlebathbeauty-challenge.html

If I win, next week I’ll be in the Weekly Grand Champion challenge, so I’ll need your votes again. I’ll let you know, and thanks for voting for me!

Doll Down Makeup Remover

So my friend Christine (whom I have mentioned here before) suggested I should create a makeup remover. How does one create a makeup remover, I wondered? I had no idea; in fact didn’t know you were even supposed to use the stuff. The last time I wore makeup (some five years ago, for my sister’s wedding) I removed it with soap, hot water and scrubbing.

Hoo boy, was that the wrong approach.

The skin around your eyes is some of the most delicate skin on your body. Most of the time, you shouldn’t even wash it — even gentle soap has a chance of being too harsh.

A makeup remover should be gentle, moisturizing without being oily, and have some cleansing action without being harsh. I did a bit of research, whipped something up, tested it (once I found my makeup), and voila! Doll Down Makeup Remover, for when you’re all done being all dolled up.

It’s made of a blend of canola and grapeseed oils — moisturizing without leaving you greasy. To this I’ve added a couple of essential oils, but only a touch: your eyes are sensitive.

Tea tree oil provides a cleansing action on its own. It’s antibacterial, antifungal, anti-anything that could get into your eyes and make you unhappy. And geranium oil is renowned for its ability to balance both dry and oily skin. I’d say that covers most of us.

To this I’ve added vitamin E oil, as a natural preservative and for its beneficial effects on skin as a whole.

To use, put a bit of makeup remover on a cottonball or tissue. Wipe the oil onto your eyelids and let it sit there for a moment — long enough to brush your teeth, perhaps. With a clean cottonball or tissue, wipe it back off — your makeup will lift off with it.

That’s the last of my massage and other oils for a while, I think, unless I get another idea (or someone suggests something I can’t resist). Somehow I nearly always wind up with five of whatever I’m doing. There’s something about that I’m sure…

Also, helpful kitten is helpful.

Ma Cobb’s Joint Liniment

I’ve been wrestling, recently, with a pair of conundrums.

The first is the Big Damn Crafters September Challenge, that being Jayne:

Maybe you want to try your hand at a Jayne hat since you’ve never made one. Or maybe you’re gonna make something else that Ma Cobb may have sent her baby boy at some point in his adventures (maybe a gun cozy?). Or maybe you can come up with something that would have caught Jayne’s eye in a market place.

Jayne don’t wear jewelry. Jayne’s mom wouldn’t send him jewelry. I can’t even see Jayne stopping in a marketplace to buy his mother some jewelry. And I can’t knit, so the Jayne Hat was right out.

I had no idea what to do, and was considering bailing on the challenge entirely.

The second was what to call my joint rub. I thought about plain Joint Rub or Arthritis Rub or something but almost everything else has these clever little names, and now I’m stuck with them. Tim thought up Olde Tyme Liniment and I gave that some thought, but it just didn’t seem right. Something liniment…Old Fashioned Liniment…Grandmother’s Recipe Liniment…

Ma Cobb’s Liniment…

I about had to pull over, it was so brilliant.

So today I finally put it together. A grapeseed oil base with a selection of things to ease joint pain — black pepper essential oil, eucalyptus essential oil, rosemary essential oil, lemon essential oil — plus a generous dollop of menthol crystals.

A side note: When opening a previously-sealed bag of menthol crystals, do not stick your nose in for a good hearty whiff.

Not Wise.

But my sinuses are clear now. Heck, I think my drains are clear.

Ma Cobb says, give it a try!

Leanna’s Favourite Massage Oil

Announcing the newest in my Leanna’s Favourite line of herbal products! (There are three of them now; I can call that a line, right?)

I note as I write here that I never actually posted about Leanna’s Favourite Body Spray either — so I suppose I ought to talk about both!

Leanna’s Favourite, of whatever type, is a relaxing blend of lavender and chamomile. Whether as body spray, milk bath or massage oil, it smells great and helps you relax.

The body spray is built on a base of soothing aloe vera juice and witch hazel, an astringent, so it’s good for your skin as well as your mood. Slip a bottle in your purse for when you need a quick calm-down.

If you’ve got more time on your hands and need a real dose of relaxation, a bath with Leanna’s Favourite Milk Bath is what you’re looking for. Powdered milk along with chamomile and lavender flowers make for a luxurious, comforting bath.

And now Leanna’s Favourite Massage Oil — lavender and chamomile in a base of grapeseed oil, moisturizing but light enough that you won’t be greasy afterwards — combine it with a gentle massage and I assure you you’ll sleep well and wake up feeling wonderful. If you give massages, stock up! It’ll be popular.

Get all three — on special! — for only $18! Just leave a comment when you purchase and I’ll refund the extra.

Massage oils

I’ve been promising these for a long time, but rediscovering an old friend from high school has finally provoked me into getting them done.

In all the catching up Christine and I have done I discovered that she’s pregnant. Well, I’ve been planning a Pregnant Momma Belly Rub for months now and have simply failed to get round to it. I had everything I needed, though, so I put it together and sent off a bottle to her for testing.

I use a base of grapeseed oil, which is moisturizing and good for your skin, but also light and easily absorbed so you don’t wind up all greasy. It’s infused with calendula flowers, which are awesome for your skin — good for moisturizing and healing. And I add vitamin E oil and tangerine, vetiver, and lavender essential oils — all of which help with skin elasticity. So a good rub with this stuff will moisturize your growing belly and help prevent stretch marks, too.

Whether you’re fighting to stave off the enemy or fighting to get your friend’s couch up the stairs, this is what you’ll want to use afterwards. This was inevitable, with all the folks I know who fight in the SCA — a complement to my Long Day Working bath salts. It has some of the same ingredients (rosemary and clove essential oil) but adds a number of others.

Arnica and black pepper oil aren’t really a good idea in the tub (as witness my tale here — I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader as to why you don’t want black pepper oil on your exposed bits) but work fine on the skin. (Just don’t rub it onto a cut!) I’ve also infused the grapeseed oil with ginger, calendula, marjoram and fennel seed, as these all have good effect on bruises and aching muscles. NOT TO BE USED INTERNALLY I AM NOT KIDDING.

Sold a bunch last weekend already and I’m looking forward to selling a bunch more of it over the next few weekends at SCA events. Fortunately I already have more grapeseed oil on the way!

Check it out!

New soap!

Ready at last! This soap had to cure for a good three months until it was finally ready to do, and I’m glad to be able to release it.

I love the nutmeg-ey scent of tea tree oil, and it’s one of the best things out there for your skin. It’s got fantastic antiseptic properties and speeds healing near as well as comfrey. It’ll help with eczema, psoriasis and athlete’s foot. The scent will help repel bugs (and is really kinda pleasant, too). Fundamentally, with tea tree oil you can’t lose.

Calendula petals add a nice bit of scrubby to this soap, and its medicinal qualities complement those of tea tree oil well. Together with olive oil, coconut butter, and castor oil, they make a wonderfully moisturizing, almost lotion-like soap.

Lark’s Spicy Footy Salve

“I like the idea of a foot salve,” Lark said to me, “but I’m not much of a fan of peppermint. I have an idea, though.”

Her ideas are usually good — she’s the one who came up with the Mulling Spices Bath Salts, which have proved popular and not-incidentally smell like God and Win.

“So what’s your idea?” I asked.

“I,” said Lark, rather predictably, “want something citrusy and spicy.”

Citrusy and spicy is something I can do. After a bunch of research and some time spent with my nose in various bottles of essential oils, I came up with Lark’s Spicy Footy Salve and, with her permission, named it after her.

Lemon oil — indeed, most any citrus oil — is cleansing and refreshing. I bet a lot of your cleaning products at home have lemon of one sort or another in them and there’s a reason why — it lifts scents and cleans like nobody’s business. Given what most of our feet are like, it’s a real good idea in a foot salve.

Ginger is great for stimulating circulation — often enough a problem in our feet, which after all are as far away from the heart as a body part can get.

Cinnamon and tea tree oils are both powerful antifungals as well as anti-anything else that might be bugging your skin. And clove oil is a mild painkiller as well as a stimulant and (fortunately for everyone else in the room) helps with the smell.

All of this in my usual salve base of olive oil, coconut butter, beeswax and vitamin E oil.

And oh, it smells so good.

Come check it out!

Salves! (Finally!)

I’m sure you remember that there were three types of containers in my teaser post of a few weeks ago (has it truly been weeks?). And I’m sure you’ve noticed that only one has so far had products properly introduced while residing therein.

Tangled enough for you?

In any case, it’s my pleasure to introduce a line of healing salves, grounded in my already-available Scratch & Dent Salve but comprising much, much more.

All of my salves are built on a base of olive oil, coconut butter (moisturizing and nourishing), beeswax, and vitamin E oil. And my ingredients are, as always, all-natural.

You’ve already got my Good Smellin Bug Stuff but what to do when the nasty things get you anyway? And there’s always poison ivy to contend with (though not where I live). A dab of Bite, Sting & Rash Salve will ease the itch and draw out the poison.

It’s a blend of a number of things — comfrey leaf, dandelion leaf, burdock root, peppermint, chickweed, and plantain. Between them they’ll ease the inflammation and swelling (which will get rid of the itch) and help draw out the toxins that are deviling you. And it just happens to moisturize and help heal the actual bite while it’s at it.

Comfrey is a wonder herb. It’s also been known as boneset, bruisewort and healing herb. It’s a sovereign remedy for skin problems of any type, being effective against bruises, sprains and swellings; easing inflammations such as diaper rash, varicose veins, and arthritis; it’ll ease eczema and psoriasis, athlete’s foot and spider bites, mild burns and scrapes.

It heals so well and so quickly, in fact, that you don’t want to put it on a puncture wound or a deep cut. It’ll heal the surface so quickly the rest might not be healed up yet, and you’ll wind up with an abcess. Once the wound’s closed and healing, though, a comfrey salve will finish the job and reduce scarring into the bargain.

As a general-purpose salve, comfrey is one of the best. If you can only get one of my salves, this is the one I’d recommend.

This one’s for you, Mom. Those cracks on your thumbs? The dry patches and rough spots? My Lavender Citrus Cuticle Salve will fix them right up.

Lemon and grapefruit essential oils are both antiseptic and cooling, so they’ll help the discomfort and keep the cracks from getting infected. Lavender oil is great for healing inflamed skin — those poor abused cuticles — and helps soothe the pain as well. And the base will moisturize and heal whatever the essential oils have left unmended.

Inspired by my Minty Footy Spray, this salve is for those whose feet just won’t stop cracking and peeling. I never used to worry about dry feet — until I moved to the desert; and now? Now it’s a matter of self-defense.

Peppermint and spearmint essential oils serve to cool the skin and relax tired foot muscles, and will also ease itching and irritation. Tea tree oil is a great antifungal, antiviral, and anti-anything else that might be growing on your feet. It’ll also help moisturize and heal the cracks.

I’ve been using it less than a week, and my feet are worlds better. It’ll do the same for you.

You’re all familiar with my Scratch & Dent Salve. The only change to its formula is the addition of the coconut butter, making it even more moisturizing and good. The jar means I can give you even more, too, at an ounce and a half instead of an ounce.

Five to choose from (and another one on the way, thanks to Lark) and all good stuff. Check them out!

Also, gratuitous kitten picture. I know you were all waiting for this.

And that’s all for now!

A Dirty Secret

I’ve just returned from spending a weekend camping with my kitten. I will freely admit it: This was an insane action (I did, however, get a vet OK first). It all went very well and he had a wonderful time and now I am home and exhausted.

So far I have:

– bathed with Long Day Working Bath Salts
– sprayed my face and shoulders with Ease the Burn Sunburn Spray (since, alas, I forgot about sunscreen)
– coated my feet with Minty Footy Salve
– put Scratch & Dent Salve on all the kitten scratches (he gets up much earlier than I do, and got bored in the tent)
– put Bite, Sting & Rash Salve on a spot between my toes where I think there might be a splinter, but I’m not flexible enough to find out
– sprayed basically the rest of my body with Minty Footy Spray just on general principle

And you know what? The stuff works.

I hear you saying ‘Of course it does; that’s why we buy it from you.’.

I’m going to tell you a dirty little secret.

I don’t really believe that anything I make is going to work.

–

Okay, that’s overstating the case some. And simplifying things. But fundamentally, it’s also true.

I do the research — on the internet to start, I’ll admit, because it’s easier and quicker to Google than to dig through the indices of a dozen books looking for something, but I’ll verify what I find online in at least two of my books before I actually add it to a recipe. I check prices at several vendors whose products I trust — I want to put the best ingredients available in my products, but I also want to keep them affordable. I mix and remix and take notes and compare scents and test everything on myself and on anyone else who’ll stand still.

I sell them, and people buy them, and they rave. I’ve gotten passels of good reviews and testimonials and feedback. I had several people come up to me this weekend and tell me how much my sunburn spray helped (I wasn’t the only one fool enough to fail the sunscreen test, alas).

And still there’s a little voice in the back of my head telling me I’m a hack.

The only reason my stuff helps people, it tells me, is the placebo effect. Or perhaps they’re just being nice. My Aunt Ann is hardly going to say she doesn’t like my chai lip balm and that the scratch & dent salve she got from me doesn’t work, is she?

…yeah.

Then I use something on myself, and likely as not the next words out of my mouth will be along the lines of ‘holy $%*^, this stuff works!’. Promptly followed by either blank stares or laughter depending on who’s around. (Tim laughs at me.)

Really, Jenna over at Balmbastic isn’t gonna say nice things about anything she doesn’t really like. I’ve seen her. She’s perfectly willing to say your stuff is awful if it is. She’ll say it nicely, but she’ll say it.

The many soon-to-be-brides who’ve bought custom lip balms have no reason to sugarcoat their opinions, either. I shan’t say anything about the pickiness of brides as they’ve all been wonderful to work with, but still, one wants everything to be just right for one’s special day.

And the people in my camp, who used (and praised) my sunburn spray, would have been in too much pain to say nice things if they didn’t mean them — judging by the varied shades of red involved.

So it’s got to work. And in fact, when I try it on myself, it does work (I’d be in a lot more pain right now otherwise).

…so why am I always so surprised?