Picture, for a moment, semi-transparent bar soaps with big colored chunks in the middle. There’s a chance you’ve been given soap like this as a present. There’s a further chance the reason for the gift was your affection for natural soap. You’ve probably guessed. Almost none of these soaps are natural. No More Big Colored Chunks? Colorants are always an issue with soap. In truly natural soap, colors are derived from natural sources – herbs, plant extracts, and clays. The good news is, Read more […]
Month: November 2015
There's Still Time to Rethink Your Holiday Soaps
The Holidays occupy a special place in our memories and one of the strongest triggers for memory is smell. Wreathes and trees, cookies and favorite holiday foods. They’re as much a part of the Holidays as presents. Candles and soaps, scented for the season, can bring these memories back. While you won’t find our soaps wrapped in ribbons or stamped with Christmas trees, they’re Holiday Soaps just the same, and all for their own reasons. Keep these reasons in mind when you’re ordering our Ready Read more […]
Being True to Organic Certification. Earning Trust.
Doing business as a certified organic soap manufacturer means we live with rules and transparency every day. Certification requires us to be completely honest about the ingredients we use – tracing them back to their sources – as well as the methods we use when we manufacture our products. We undergo regular audits by our certifying agency to confirm we’re in continual compliance. Here’s an Example True soap is made with lye. Once the chemical reaction with fatty acids is complete and soap Read more […]
Alkanet – The Story of Ancient Roots
Its history goes back to at least 70 C.E. You might have seen it called Burlgoss, Orachanet, Alkanna tinctoria, or Anchusa. You might have known that tinctoria, in Latin, means “used for dyeing or staining,” and Anchusa comes from the Greek word anchousa, meaning “paint.” Use and Identification It’s called Alkanet Root. The plant it comes from has been cultivated for centuries in central and southern Europe, but it can thrive in all kinds of temperate environments. In fact, in many areas of the Read more […]
When It Comes to Soap, We Should All Be Flower Children
There’s a really nice 5-oz patchouli bar soap made in Milwaukie, Oregon that greets you on its belly band wrapper with the words “Hello flower child.” It’s a phrase that applies specifically to the patchouli soap blend, but it speaks to a larger audience as well. Not just to current flower children, but to those who should be. And in the world of soap – where synthetics prove themselves daily to be incompatible with our bodies and the environment and herbal soaps prove just the opposite – Read more […]
Foaming Liquid Soap Q & A
Foaming Soap was new to a lot of us at Botanie last year. As a result, we had some very basic questions, some of which overlapped with questions we knew we’d be hearing from our customers. What emerged from our research and questioning is the best foaming soap on the market. Today, we have four of these questions (and answers) to pass on. 1 – What makes the soap foam? It’s the pump dispenser on the top of the bottle injecting air into the liquid soap. 2 – Does soap concentration matter for Read more […]