Cooks' Hand Wash

I love cooking but hate having smelly hands after chopping garlic and onions. So I have created a new essential oil blend: Sicilian Lemon, Fennel & Peppermint, to put in our hand wash. I have also sourced these lovely 500ml aluminium bottles which look great in the kitchen. The label is a special heavy duty matt silver one which is impervious to water and grease, so it is perfect to stand by the kitchen sink.

The kind people at Montezuma's, our local organic chocolate producer, are letting me put a small bar of chocolate in a gift box with a jar of our organic chocolate moisture mousse and a chocolate votif.

Montezuma's is based in near Chichester, a twenty minute drive from Petworth http://www.montezumas.co.uk .

I am not at all sure how I am going to cope with having bars and bars of chocolate surrounding me in the run up to Christmas!

My lovely customers, Babes With Babies, have asked me to create two hand lotion and hand wash sets: Happy Hands organic lavender and Cleanse and Care pink grapefruit, geranium and lemongrass. It's so long since my children were babies that I forgot how often a new mum has to wash their hands. Lavender is perfect as it contains natural anti-bacterial properties and is great for soothing and healing. The citrus zing of the Cleanse and Care set is great for tired mums.

Our hand wash is made from plant derived cleansing and foaming ingredients which are very gentle and do not dry out the skin and our lotion contains organic shea butter and olive oil to moisturise and protect the skin from anti-oxidants.

I love working with Babes With Babies, they always appreciate the work involved in creating bespoke labels and always come up with inventive ideas for product names and gift sets.

Petworth Festival Window Competition

The Petworth Festival has sponsored a window competition for all the shops in Petworth. I made a linen night shirt play the french horn, but unfortunately this was not enought to win.

Petworth has the most amazingly inventive shopkeepers who have a brilliant sense of humour. I am always striving for the perfectly beautiful window, where my colleagues just know what will tickle a judge's fancy.

The winner was Guilt Lingerie. Georgina created two fantastic windows using the music 'Ain't Misbehaving' and 'Air on a G String'. Last year she put the front have of a Morris Traveller in the window during the Goodwood Revival festival.

Second place went to Tiffins Tea Room. Nicki and Jackie used tea cups as musical notes. They always theme their windows according to local events.

So I am planning my Christmas window well in advance and hoping my lovely colleagues run out of ideas!

Pink grapefruit can make you look younger!

Our pink grapefruit, geranium and lemongrass lotions and washes have been best sellers this past week. The refreshing fragrance has been a hit in the hot weather.

I have just found out that the person who did a study on Pink Grapefruit that suggested the fragrance made women appear six years younger has taken a patent out on it.

The inventor is Dr. Alan Hirsch, director of the Smell and Taste Treatment ath the Research Foundation in Chicago.

His study showed that middle aged models wearing pink grapefruit were thought by men to be six years younger than their actual age.

Other scents were tried but had no effect including broccoli, pumpkin pie, banana, cucumbers and spearmint leaves!

It doesn't work the other way around. There was no effect on a woman's perception of a man's age. We can't be so easily fooled.

Try out the theory with our pink grapefruit, geranium and lemongrass products. They smell wonderful - a citrus, zesty and zingy- so they will make you feel better even if you don't apperar to look younger.

Lavender, my favourite essential oil

A Petworth resident brought in this lovely bunch of lavender yesterday. I wanted to photograph it before I hang it up to dry and it loses it's vibrant colour. Unfortunately this type of lavender is unscented and not used to make my favourite of all essential oils.

I love lavender, not just because it smells so wonderfully soothing and uplifting, but because it is probably the most useful of essential oils. Unlike many others there is good scientific proof that it has real benefits for the skin and the body. You can read about the proven benefits of lavender oil in our Lavender e-book.

One of my customers came bought a jar of our lavender cream for her daughter who is a professional violinist. She was suffering from excema-like symptoms on her hands. She has recently reported that the cream did the trick. We have many customers who buy our lavender oil to help them sleep. It's really good when we we get such good feedback.

There is much anecdotal evidence saying that lavender is very good for healing burns so when my son, who hasn't experienced sun-burn (or indeed sun) for many years went to the beach this week and came back like a lobster I applied our lavender and rose geranium lotion liberally. Hopefully the lavender will soothe his burnt skin and the organic shea butter and olive oil in the lotion will help prevent peeling.

The lavender oil we use in our products is organic and from Provence in the south of France. It is extremely versatile and blends well with many other oils. Some of my favourite combinations are:

• lavender and rose geranium
• lavender, tea tree and patchouli
• lavender, lemongrass, peppermint and tea tree
• lavender and rosemary.

It is also very 'well-behaved' ulike our organic rose geranium oil which needs to be added with care or it will 'curdle' our lovely body and hand wash base. So all-in-all I can't praise lavender oil highly enough.

The Benefits of Shea Butter

Thirty percent of the body's vitamin E is found in the skin. This is because it is an anti-oxidant and the skin is the part of the body that is most exposed to oxygen.
Why is this important? Well, oxygen is very reactive
and if it is left unchecked it will break down the skin's tissues leading to premature aging.

Vitamin E prevents this by absorbing the oxygen itself and so protecting the more vulnerable tissues. There are 4 different forms of vitamin E - each one
suited to a particular type of environment in the skin.

Natural sources of vitamin E are also made up of this range of slightly different forms of vitamin E, whereas synthetic vitamin E used in a lot of skin creams and vitamin supplements tends to only be in one form.

One of the richest sources of vitamin E is shea butter. All our lotions and creams contain it and we have written a Shea Butter E- Book which gives a lot more detailed information about the wonderful properties and benefits of this natural moisturising ingredient. Our shea butter is organic and is collected by a community of women in Ghana so you can benefit your skin and rural families.

New range of organic damask rose skin care

I am finalising our new range of organic damask rose products - cream, balm, body oil and rose water.
I have sourced organic rose oil and rose water from Bulgaria. This single source of roses is grown by the Nikolaev family. Apparantly the communist regime confiscated land which was left overgrown and was only returned about 10 years ago.

True rose oil is a complex combination of tea-like heart and base notes with floral overtones; quite different to the synthetic fragrances we are all used to. It is very soothing and excellent for dry and mature skin.

To make rose oil you have to pick the rose petals early in the morning before the sun drives away the precious fragrance. The petals are distilled and the oil separated from the water which becomes rose water. Rose water retains some of the rose oil. Our rose water is strongly fragranced showing that it contains a good quantity of oil.

Rose oil, or rose otto as it is called, contains retinol which has anti-wrinkle properties. Our rose cream can be used on the face, neck and decollete.

New Essential Oil Blends

I have been busy creating three new uni-sex essential oil blends to add a bit of spice!



Italian Bergamot, Cardamom and Pepper

Pink Grapefruit, Juniper and Cedarwood

Sweet Basil, Lemon and Vetiver

Bergamot, Cardamom and Pepper has a delightful orangey, sunny top note followed by the spicy pepper (from green peppercorns for a more subtle fragrance) and the exotic cardamom.

My second blend had Pink Grapefruit giving it a rounded fresh, zingy fragrance with the clean, haunting smell for Juniper and a musky Cedarwood to follow. I prefer Pink Grapefruit ordinary Grapefruit as it is more fruity and less harsh.

Finally I just love the uplifting fragrance of Sweet Basil, not to everyone's taste but I can't get enough of it. It blends beautifully with lemon; fresh and clean. Vetiver adds a subtle base note.

With smart, new silver and black labels these blends should prove popular with both sexes.

Organic Chocolate Moisture Mousse

Despite initial scepticism, I am now in love with my new Organic Chocolate Moisture Mousse. I wasn't at all convinced that putting chocolate on your skin is anything more than a gimmic. However cocoa apparantly contains anti-oxidants, more in fact than green tea or red wine. Anti-oxidants protect the skin from the aging effect of free radicals caused by sunlight.

Inika Mineral Cosmetics

I decided to stock Inika Mineral Cosmetics in my shop and they have proved extremely popular. The colours are stunning and the foundation is remarkable. I especially like the mascara. The best thing about them is that they are completely natural.

www.inikacosmetics.co.uk