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A Publication of The Handmade Beauty Network
ISSN 1530-9630 | Volume 6, Issue 40
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1. HBN Member Update: Welcome New HBN Members!
2. Handmade Beauty Recipe: Emu Heel Balm
3. Handmade Beauty Trivia Question: win some soap!
4. Handmade Beauty Product Review: Warrior Queen Cleanser
5. Feature Article: The Waters Of Life

Last Week's Question: I am native to South Africa. I smell good and taste good in a water infusion. I have a ruddy-red color and I am an exceptional natural herb to use on the skin. What are my botanical and common names?

Last Week's Answer: rooibos (Aspalathus linearis)

This Week's Question: I am youthful and beautiful. I am the spokeswoman for Padres Contra El Cancer, a non-profit organization that educates Spanish-speaking families affected by cancer. I was a smash hit in Washington, DC, on September 14. And if that wasn't enough, I recently landed a multi-million dollar contract to serve as the face of one of the world's best known cosmetics brands. While I may be associated with the word, clearly, I am anything but desperate. Who am I?

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

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!

I don't know what it is, but lately, I've been getting lots of products with chocolate in them. Knowing that I'm not a big choco-holic, I think some of you must be trying to convert me. My resistance is weakening and to see why, you can enjoy my review last week of cool choc-o-product Cupcake Chocolate Scented Mask. You can also check out a great recipe for Aztec Chocolate Lip Balm. But if you're not into perishable chocolate and you don't like to DIY, you can let "inky" do all the work for you with her Warrior Queen Cleanser.

In case you didn't know, inky is Leesah B., a UK transplant now living in New Jersey and making lots of cool stuff. Warrior Queen Cleanser is not your typical foaming bath product. It comes out of the bottle slow like honey, and it's thick and rich and feels great going on the skin. Made with 70% organic ingredients, including oats, buchu leaves and shea butter, Warrior Queen Cleanser is thick and foaming -- and on the warpath to clean your skin. The chocolate/mint combination is yummy and additional skin loving ingredients like coconut milk and soy protein leave skin feeling great. The mint makes it stimulating while the chocolate makes it comforting -- a nice combination for anytime but I especially like it in the morning.

Warrior Queen Cleanser is also available in Ginger Sweet Coconut and there are lots of other products at inky loves nature, including moisturizers, body scrubs and hair products.

I stopped drinking water from a tap years ago. I'm sure there are still some places in the world where the water tastes fresh, clean and sparkling. Bowie, Maryland, is not one of those places. So like many of you, I have my water delivered once a month in a truck. DrinkMore, our water company, is really good about sticking to it's monthly delivery schedule. Unfortunately, my husband and I could do a better job of putting out our empty 5-gallon water bottles and when we forget, sometimes the water company won't leave new water because they want their old containers back first. So last week, another busy week in the Johnson household, we forgot (again) to put our bottles out and we ran out of bottled water. You'd think that since we have about 10 faucets in our house, each of which dispenses water (even if it's not the best tasting), there'd be no cause for panic. If you thought that, you'd be wrong. So we pretty much dropped everything to go and buy some water so we wouldn't have to drink faucet water with dinner.

I'm sharing this not so stimulating water story to set up the point of this week's feature article, the point being that for an aromatic enthusiast like me, hydrosols are like the water in the bottles. Just like I cannot drink tap water because I have been spoiled by the wonderful water in a bottle, I also cannot make a beauty product with plaint water. No, not me. I need a hydrosol. When it comes to adding natural scent to a handmade beauty product, especially if you want to add an exquisite scent on a budget, you can't beat a hydrosol. Plain water can't hold a candle, period.

Hydrosols, sometimes called hydrolats or distillates, have many benefits. Extracted from plant materials through the distillation process, hydrosols were once omitted entirely from the discussion of aromatherapy. Essential oils were the stars of the show and hydrosols were considered only tangentially if at all. Two books changed all of that: 375 Essential Oils and Hydrosols by Jeanne Rose and Hydrosols: The Next Aromatherapy by Suzanne Catty. Sure, hydrosols had been discussed in books before (one of them Making Aromatherapy Creams and Lotions by Yours Truly and available here), but Rose's and Catty's books provided thousands of new insights. In fact, Catty's focus entirely on hydrosols was unheard of before that point. (You can enjoy my review of Catty's book here.)

If you're making some recipes that call for water, you will enjoy substituting hydrosols for all or part of it -- I guarantee it. Not only will you enjoy the aroma, but you'll benefit from the therapeutic effects -- both on your skin and in your psyche. Hydrosols contain tiny micro-droplets of essential oils so they are a true aromatherapy product. However, since they are suspended in tiny quantities in the water, the hydrosol itself is far less concentrated than the corresponding essential oil. As a result, most babies and persons with ultra-sensitive skin can use hydrosols liberally without worry. Hydrosols can be used "neat," that is without being diluted, as a skin toner. For my summertime oily skin, I like to use equal parts of yarrow, cypress and rosemary mixed with a little bit of lavender. In colder weather when my facial skin tends to dry out, nothing beats the beauty and power of rose hydrosol. Rose Alba is my favorite, but Rosa Damascena is also nice (and a bit less pricey). It's even better mixed with a bit of sandalwood hydrosol.

Witch hazel hydrosol is great for oily skin. For babies, neroli and Roman chamomile are wonderful to use. When my son was a newborn, he suffered from a gastro-intestinal illness which made it difficult for him to rest or sleep for long periods of time. When I spritzed his room a bit with a combination of equal parts of neroli and Roman chamomile hydrosol, he rested better. I sometimes put a teaspoon of neroli hydrosol into his baby bath and it calmed him greatly. I'm not sure it made him sleep more, but it calmed him so the bathing process went more smoothly for both of us. Other hydrosols you should try include helichrysum and melissa (anti-inflammatory) and ylang ylang (for acne and the delicious smell).

So while you can make a perfectly nice handmade beauty product using plain distilled water, real pleasure (and enhanced skincare benefits) come from using hydrosols, and the sooner you can get your hands on some, the better! For dozens of recipes containing hydrosols, visit MakeYourCosmetics.com, where you'll also find suppliers of the hydrosols themselves.

Best & Success!!
Donna Maria
Editor, The Handmade Beauty Connection
The Handmade Beauty Network | www.handmadebeauty.com