Botanical Earth

I received an early holiday present this year - our Hemp Lip Balms were part of a GreenDAY segment for the TODAYShow.com !!  Journalist Marisa Belger (a self proclaimed natural-beauty addict - talks about all the benefits of hemp goods and recommends her favorites - and our Lemongrass & Tea Tree Hemp Lip Balm is her favorite - yeah!  Read the full article here.

Because of the feature and the on-line link from the MSNBC site, we have been selling EVERYTHING HEMP!  This morning we sold out of our Hemp Toiletries Bag and I’m running low on a lot of our Hemp Soaps.  Once people understand the benefits of hemp and that you are not going to become “drugged out” by using it, they totally love it.  For those still concerned about THC in hemp, no worries. 

I’ve used and eaten Hemp products for over 15 years and passed every FAA required medical test with flying colors.  If you want to learn more about how hemp is processed for food, textiles and oil check out one of my favorite info spots at TestPledge.com . 

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This year I’m thrilled to include Flora and Fauna Letterpress cards!  Christine Brandt  is the clever indie stationary/card designer behind this artful biz located in California. 

What’s Letterpress and why is it so amazing?  Here’s a quote from Flora and Fauna’s site - “ Letterpress is the oldest printing technique, in which a raised surface is created from lead type, wood type, or polymer plates. The raised surfaced is inked, and paper is placed upon the inked surface with great pressure. This creates the lovely debossed surface unique to letterpress printing.”

One of the other reasons I love her work is that she went on a mission to find an antique Vandercook letterpress that she restored/rescued from a salvage yard.  How eco-friendly is that??  You can read all about it and see pictures on her About page.

The cards have such a lovely understated quality.  The paper stock is actually 100% cotton, so totally tree-free. The color and detail is not reflected in my picture taking skills.

Now when you order one of our gift baskets, you can select your favorite card.  Or if you order gift wrapping for your order, we’ll include one of her cards either filled out with your message, or blank so you can write your own message.

Ms. Brandt was kind enough to send me some extra cards in my order and I love those too.  You can expect to see her birthday and thank you cards being offered too throughout 2008 ~ yeah indie designers!  Check out her site at http://www.floraandfaunapress.com/

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The new Patchouli Citrus Soy Milk soap is now available.  We cut it the other day and it looks great!  With the earlier cold weather, the soy milk base is a nice creamy white and it really contrasts great with the red clay chunks.  The colored chunks are heavily scented with patchouli and citrus essential oils.

Originally, the soy milk line was solid color soaps, but I wanted to do something to make the stand out.  The chunking just gives it a more artistic look than just the solid bar - I hope everyone likes the change. 

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With our switch over to completely vegan body care formulas, one of the other new additions to the Botanical Earth product line is our new Olive Oil Lip Balms.  With so many of our customers having extremely sensitive skin, or allergies to nut oils, I wanted to create something just for them.  The new formula lip balms are made with only organic virgin olive oil, castor oil, candelilla wax and vitamin e as the base. Currently there is an unscented one and tingly mega mint. 

You’ll still be able to have our popular hemp lip balm!  It’s just now offered in a variety of blends which is new.  I switched the organic shea butter to organic cocoa butter because of the texture the shea butter can develop when heated and slowly cooled.  I like the cocoa butter better myself - so that’s the benefit when you own the business!  After much searching, I found some wonderful organic vegan chocolate that when blended with chocolate absolute from France makes a great cocoa lip balm. 

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We’re going vegan Feb. 1st!  Botanical Earth’s entire product line will be handcrafted using only vegan quality ingredients.  I have wanted to do this for a while, but it took some time to ensure our formulations were as close to previous ones as possible - if not better. By going with vegan ingredients, we are replacing beeswax with candelia wax, honey with black molasses or organic maple syrup.

So for the rest of the month of January while supplies last, I have added our herbal balms on clearance, plus we have a couple of soaps and scrubs which were always vegan.  To check out our specials, go to our main site at Specials

On Feb. 1, I’ll post more about the change.

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“What’s your favorite soap?” is a question I am asked quite a bit.  It’s simple, really simple….the Calendula Herb Unscented Soap.  Fragrance-free, bright cheerful color and large bubbles - it’s my favorite everyday facial soap.  Being around essential oils and herbs all day long, it’s nice not to smell anything first thing in the morning. 

The Calendula soap is the first one of Botanical Earth’s soaps to undergo the change in formula to eliminate palm oil.  Palm oil is a highly popular soap making oil for hand made soap.  It’s a realitively inexpensive oil, and many soap making books consider it a filler oil….I don’t view it as that.  Palm oil has a great syngergy with other oils and creates a wonderful hard soap. 

The problem I have found in my search of knowing our ingredient sources, is that I can not find a verifiable source of palm that does not damage rainforest land in either South America or Asia.  It’s the palm oil controversy.  As the saying goes “all actions create a reaction” so while organic palm oils is great to use in handmade soap, damaging Malaysian and Indoenesia rainforests to plant organic/or non-organic palm trees in order to jump on the organic band wagon, isn’t what I want to use.  There’s been a campaign going on for a while to stop the destruction, and when I asked my suppliers all said, yes, we care and don’t buy from sources that are in that region….but none of the suppliers that I could afford to buy from would put it in writing….so if you aren’t willing to do that, do they really know?  Or are they just talking the talk?

Some of the worlds top Orang-utan researchers have complied a report, The Oil for Ape Scandal, on the effect of palm oil plantations have caused. Quite a bit of the debris from these plantations is tossed in rivers, While one would think it’s “organic” and would be fine trash, it breaks down and throws off the natural eco-systems of very fragile native lands. 

Now there’s two sides to every story and I understand these plantations offer local people jobs and that is vitally important in developing countries.  Here’s an article (in pdf) on the American Palm Oil site from one Mayalasian doctor’s view on people and palm.  There’s also a section on their site about sustainablity which is good to read.  I also realize my stopping the use of palm until I can find a reliable source isn’t going to change much…but it makes me feel I am keeping to Botanical Earth’s policy of “simply be”.  When I can find a source that respects people, animals and land - I’ll use them - I love working with palm oil, I just need to find better verifiable sources. 

For those that wonder, because soy bean oil is another one that is reputed to harm Asian land - we source our organic soy bean oil from beans grown here in the United States.   

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I will be the first to admit it has taken FOREVER for me to make up our Pure Patchouli Hemp Soap but it’s finally ready to offer.  After 4 weeks of curing, it’s listed now on the site for sale.

And for those of you that have asked about the picture of the Patchouli Citrus labels having a mint leaf on bottle - it’s not a mint leaf but a patchouli leaf!  Patchouli essential oils is distilled from leaves.  Because of the questions, I am going to add a section on each essential oils we use too. 

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