Donna Maria's Handmade Beauty Connection
March 7, 2005

1. HBN Update: Welcome New & Renewing HBN Members!!
2. Feature Article: The Rise of the Fizzy Bath Bomb
3. Handmade Beauty Recipe Of The Week: Easy Bath Bombs
4. Beauty & The Business Trivia Question: win some essential oil!
5. Handmade Beauty Product Review: Sample Pack of Skincare Products by HBN member Spirit of Beauty

5-Year Renewing Members!

All this year, HBC will highlight members who are renewing for their 5th straight year of membership! Our 5-Year Renewing Members joined HBN in 2000 and have this week renewed their memberships for a 5th year without interruption. I am eternally grateful to all HBN members, but especially these who put their faith in HBN in the early days when there was no track record and no one was sure it would last. I'm excited to say that HBN has lasted and so have these members! Please visit their websites. Be inspired and buy something new and delicious just for you!

Oasis Wellness, Inc. | Drew and Martha Gandley | New York
* Oasis Wellness opened in 1996 as Oasis Massage Center. Client demand for their hand-blended massage oils led to their Oasis Wellness product line, featuring therapeutic blends of quality essential oils. They offer oils, lotions, facial scrubs and masks, candles and of course their best-selling Oasis Salt Glow Kit, a must have for any at home spa enthusiast. Their massage oil makes a great bath oil and body oil and mixed with 100% Dead Sea salt, it makes a great salt scrub or bath soak. It comes with a mixing dish and scoop so you can create whatever handmade beauty goody you fancy at any given time.

New Members

Jersey Thyme Farm | Patrice Buck | South Carolina
* handmade goat milk beauty products

Gaia's Breowan, Inc. | Michele Winslow | Massachusetts
* handmade products, including a body butter for women who have had Cesarean section births

beautycrewCANADA| Michele Duivenvoorden | Ontario Canada
* beautycrew offers hand-crafted, custom blended cosmetic workshops to make your own lip stick, lip gloss and lip balms plus foundations and mineral makeup in our exclusive custom cosmetics beauty blending bar and colorlab.

The Soap Dish, LLC | Rebekah Bailey | Indiana
* raw ingredients for making soap, lotion, hair care products, and various other bath and cosmetic items

Michangela's Earth Soaps | Angela Kerchansky | Pennsylvania
* natural products using exotic butters, nutritive oils, essential oils & Dead Sea Minerals

Learn more about our members and their exciting activities by visiting their Web sites through HBN's Online Member Directory, now with 4 ways to search: (1) by state/country; (2) by member business name; (3) by keyword search; or (4) using our new alphabetical listings.

"Plop! Plop! Fizz! Fizz! Oh what a relief it is!"

Sound familiar?! Of course we all know this as the words to a famous jingle used to advertise an over the counter medication to help with indigestion. But handmade beauty junkies like me could just as easily apply the tune to the way it feels when we slide into a warm tub full of water after a long day giving ourselves to jobs, kids, spouses, etc. And while bath salts, essential oils, scented soaps, gels and other delicious goodies help improve the experience, there's nothing like a dropping a bomb of colorful, fragrant effervescence into the tub to make things more interesting. For those of you who don't know, bath bombs are rounded mixtures of citric acid, baking soda, scent and color which effervesce when dropped into water. While I'm not convinced that history really reveals beyond a reasonable doubt who actually made the first bath bomb, HBN member Lush Cosmetics' owner Mo Constantine takes credit for it at the Lush website. Many manufacturers, including Lush, add moisture-rich oils like shea butter and cocoa butter for added skin soothing benefits. Others add dried herbs and flowers for texture and glitter or mica for sparkle. (The bath bomb photo pictured at above left is courtesy of Essential Wholesale. Used by permission.)

From a business perspective, as many HBN members will tell you, bath bombs can be manufactured with a very small financial investment and relatively little time once the creation process is mastered. "Margins are good enough on these items that they become a pure profit center once you have the formulation down and don't vary from it," says Dennis Fioravanti*, co-owner of HBN member Essential Wholesale. "The temptation is to [add new formulations with different ingredients and colors] every time a new customer makes a suggestion, but you have to hold you ground on what is working for you." The fact that bath bombs are so easy to make, color and scent makes them a particularly low investment item to add to an existing line of successful products. "Bath bombs sell well because they are colorful and fragrant," says Lori Kimble* of HBN member the Scent Shack. Plus displays of bath bombs are visually appealing to shoppers in retail stores, almost like a beautiful display of assorted produce in a grocery store. Arranging small baskets together piled high with the bath bombs gives this effect.

Sharon Kinnear* of HBN member Botanical SkinWorks says that color is a key sales point for bath bombs and she tries to associate each color in her line with the aroma/fragrance. She also adds mica for additional interest and mixes everything together by hand wearing gloves to prevent the citric acid from drying out here skin. "Mixing the ingredients, including fragrance and essential oils, by hand brings out the color of mica," says Sharon. Sharon uses a popcorn baller (pictured at left) to make her bath bombs.

Bath bombs are for children of all ages. "My children absolutely adore them," says Debbie Bilezikian* of HBN member Monave Mineral Cosmetics. "I often use bath bombs to entice them into the tub when they'd rather not take a bath. Since they are boys, this is a typical challenge. I prefer bombs containing lavender essential oil since it really helps calm them down for evening slumber. If you make bath bombs with mica that is coated with oxides instead of dye, you add pleasing colors without putting possible toxins into the bath water. Pearlescent micas looks so pretty...pastels are perfect for children, and if you make kid-size bath bombs the size of golf-balls, that will add just the right amount of fun and fizz." Lori Kimble of The Scent Shack says that making bath boms are a great craft project for children. "They make bath time interactive without some of the synthetic ingredients found in some bubble bath products," she says.

With a rather high margin and so much fun, it's no wonder that fizzy bath bombs are a popular addition to many small company product lines and a great addition to bath time fun for kids of all ages!

* Dennis Fioravanti is co-owner of Essential Wholesale, a supplier of ingredients and base cosmetics products. Lori Kimble co-owner of The Scent Shack, a supplier of soap-tested fragrance oils and other ingredients. Sharon Kinnear is the owner of Botanical SkinWorks where she manufactures natural skincare products. Some of Sharon's bath bombs are pictures at right. (Photo used by permission.) Debbie Bilezikian is the owner of Monave Mineral Cosmetics, a retail and wholesale supplier of mineral make-up including eye shadow, foundation and blush. Each of these companies is a long standing member of HBN and each is featured in our book, The Handmade Beauty Cookbook: Do-It-Yourself Beauty Recipes & Secrets From Members of the Handmade Beauty Network. Lush product can be purchased here.

Easy Bath Bombs are a fun recipe to make those wonderful fizzy things that effervesce in the tub! This recipe is a "quick make" so you don't need fancy molds or spritzer bottles. It makes a super kids craft project! (The bath bomb photo pictured at left is courtesy of Essential Wholesale. Used by permission.)

When you visit MakeYourCosmetics.com, it's easy to buy the ingredients you need by clicking on our Selected Supplier links:

Essential Wholesale: pure essential oils, over 200 cosmetic bases, hundreds of carrier/fixed oils such as meadowfoam, cranberry, jojoba and shea butter plus a new Short Run Private Labeling Program!

Bramble Berry, Inc.: over 105 different fragrance and essential oils (including their exclusive "Energy" and "Relaxing"), all soap tested, soap molds and unscented soap bases!

SunRose Aromatics: pure essential oils (many organic), carrier oils and other aromatherapy products, each carefully selected for quality. Check out their new Perfumer's Emporium.

The Scent Shack: fragrance oils and soap supplies. Fragrance oils are pre-tested in cold process, melt & pour soap, and candles, and test results are listed at the Web site. Scents tested by soapers for soapers!

From Nature With Love: over 1,600 ingredients and supplies, including cosmetic ingredients, spa supplies, bath accessories and packaging supplies!

Last Week's Question: In their book Aroma: The Magic of Essential Oils in Foods and Fragrance by Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson, Mandy Aftel and Daniel Patterson suggest a few different ways to maximize the enjoyment of essential oils in food products. One of the ways is to subject the essential oils you will use to a process which causes their flavor to be fixed so that when the oil is used in a recipe, the flavor from the oil in the resulting food product is full bodied. The process involves diluting the oil in a particular type of medium. What is that medium?

Be the first to correctly answer this week's question and win some essential oil!

Please read the contest rules here before submitting your entry. Put "TRIVIA CONTEST ANSWER" in the subject line or your answer will not be considered.

While time does not permit me to respond personally to all entrants, the winner's name will be announced in the next newsletter!

Sample Pack of Skincare Products by HBN member Spirit of Beauty
Sample Pack | $24.95

This collection of products is a great way to try a very high quality line of skincare products before investing in the larger sizes. Each product is careful orchestrated to treat most skin types and the essential oils and gentle ingredients are chosen for their ability to cleanse, tone, exfoliate and nourish the skin.

Phyto Nutrient Face Wash is a ever so lightly foaming cleanser that smoothes easily across my face to gently remove surface dirt and most of my make-up. It didn't remove my waterproof mascara but I'm used to taking that off with oil. There is no sodium laurel or laureth sulfate or other harsh chemicals to make the product lather. Organic olive oil and bamboo extract contribute to the skin soothing properties. This product smelled a bit like vanilla to me -- very warming. Other than handmade soap, I usually avoid putting cleansers that foam even a little bit on my face. This one was different though. In addition to olive oil and bamboo extract, it also contains aloe, seaweed extract and essential oils of rosewood and grapefruit. My face does not feel dry or tight after using it. I used up my sample product in about a week..

Gentle Facial Exfoliant smells just like brown sugar and honey. As if that was not enough of a reason to use it a few times a week (at least!), it also feels great going on my skin. After using the Phyto Nutrient Face Wash, I used the exfoliant every other day, not because I felt I needed it but because it felt so good and was gentle enough. I really liked the effects. It contains buttermilk, bamboo extract and sugar cane juice, but it's the jojoba beads that really make the most difference since they exfoliate effectively without making my face feel stripped.

Regenerative Toning Mist is a nice facial toner/mister. Of all of the products in the kit, this is the one is the simplest. Made mainly with hydrosols (such as neroli, linden blossom and helichrysum), the effects are both uplifting and skin soothing. Most hydrosols by themselves are great for the skin, but combine several like those here and you have a real winner. I used this every day for a week after cleansing with Phyto Nutrient Face Wash.

Nourishing Night Cream is incredible. Of course you think I'd know by now that one only needs a little bit of these types of products to be effective. Well, I guess I forgot that when I first used this night cream because I pumped too much into my palm. As I applied it, I suddenly realized that I was smelling the unmistakable, irrefutable aroma of a very high quality jasmine oil -- the real thing! Not only was I "wasting" jasmine oil by using too much of the product, but the texture of the product was such that only a small amount was needed anyway. It was too late to put it back into the bottle so I used it all over my hands, neck and upper check and back area. Other ingredients like kukui nut oil, black currant seed oil and a collection of wonderful hydrosols contribute to the great nighttime moisture of this product. I used this every day for about 5 days before my sample ran out.

Vital Daily Moisturizer is a nice cream for any skin type, day or night. Shea butter, avocado oil and virgin coconut oil combine to make a nice moisturizer. I think I could use this during any time of the year because while it's rich, it's not overbearing or greasy.

This collection of products combines high quality ingredients in a fashion that is easy to use. Each kit comes with a fold out product insert that contains detailed ingredient listings, suggestions for use, a helpful ingredient glossary to define some of the less well known ingredients in the products such as DMAE, astaxanthin and acsorbyl palmitate. The products do not contain parabens or other synthetic preservatives or synthetic fragrances. You can get your own Spirit of Beauty Sample Pack and full size products at the Spirit of Beauty website.

Visit our suite of Web sites serving the handmade toiletries industry:

HandmadeBeauty.com: the leading industry trade organization
MangoButter.com: 450+ suppliers of raw materials and packaging, updated weekly!
MakeYourCosmetics.com: ingredient encyclopedia & original cosmetics recipes
DonnaMaria.com: sound advice for your small business, Create The Life You Love™