May Monoi Offer!

We love Mono de Tahiti!  It's such a wonderfully user-friendly botanical oil that's suitable for use on all skin types.  It appears in many of our products, but it's also lovely on its own.

Try using it as a wonderful melting massage or bathing oil, or to smooth dry patches of skin, as a complete hot oil hair treatment (or applied to just the ends to tame frizzy hair), or perhaps as a light pre-moisturing facial oil, or as a natural alternative to night creams...the list seems endless!  Since it's made from coconut oil it's even suitable for use on oily, acne-prone skin types since it's absorbed into the skin without leaving any oily residue.  But we've also seen good results on drier, more mature skin, sensitive skin and on troubled skin conditions. 

But best of all Monoi de Tahiti smells just heavenly!!  It's made by macerating Tiare flowers in pure coconut oil, so smells like gardenia blossoms.

So as a special treat for customers during May, we'll add a FREE rollerball of Monoi to any UK orders placed on the Natroma or Natural Soapworks websites valued at over £25!  There's no need to quote any offer codes at the checkout, we'll automatically add your free gift to your order.  We hope you enjoy using your Monoi!

April Opening

We'll be operating reduced opening hours during April 2012. This is partly due to the Easter Bank Holiday, and also because some building work is scheduled within the workshop shortly after Easter. Our reduced opening days are shown on the right, and we apologise for any inconvenience that may be caused.

The building work may lead to a short delay in dispatching website orders, so we will contact customers if the dispatch of their order is likely to be delayed by more than 48 hours.

Gift ideas for Mothers Day

We've been busy creating some new hampers for the Natroma website, which would be lovely for Mother's Day!

These pretty Lily Hampers have an unsual fluted design and are wrapped with pretty Spring inspired two-tone organza ribbons topped with luxurious lily flower decorations. They're available in two options: one is filled with just bathing products (including bath bombs, organic fizzing butter melts and a bath salt sachet) and the other contains a mixture of handmade decorated soap slices and bathing products.

On The Natural Soapworks hamper page, we also have a wide selection of soap and bathing products all packaged in luxurious hampers.

So we hope that both of our websites have some nice ideas for Mother's Day gifts.

Ruskin Glass Centre Spring Fair - Saturday 10th March

This weekend there will also be a Spring Craft Fair at the Ruskin Glass Centre, so as usual we'll have a range of gift hampers available. We'll also be pleased to gift wrap items while customers wait thoughout the day. In addition to our handmade natural skincare items, we also have candles, crystals, jewellery, oil burners, decorative tea light holders and other gift ideas that would make lovely Mothers Day gifts. The event will be open between 10am and 4pm on Saturday 10th March, so we hope local customers enjoy the day!

Natroma launches New Mum pregnancy range!

It's been a long time since we last posted....sorry, but we've had a really busy start to the year! Our thanks to everyone who's placed orders on the websites, or popped into our shop to pick up supplies and have a chat. (We'll try to keep things more up to date from now on!)

Behind the scenes we've been working on a brand new Natroma range, especially for new Mums or Mums to be. There’s a great deal of myth and fear surrounding the use of essential oils during pregnancy, with various lists of ‘banned’ essential oils circulating on the internet. We often speak to anxious pregnant ladies who've heard bad things about one essential oil or another, and after they've left us we usually shake our heads in disbelief over the latest horror story!

Sadly many of these stories circulate without any sound reasoning or clinical evidence, so it’s little wonder that new Mum’s often feel confused by the contradictory information and may even decide that it’s safer to avoid using any aromatherapy products during their pregnancy. We think this is so sad, since correctly formulated aromatherapy products and professional holistic therapy, can provide comfort and support during what can at times be an anxious (and sometimes difficult) chapter of a woman’s life.

So we're launching our New Mum range to provide user friendly, luxurious pampering aromatherapy products that can be enjoyed throughout normal pregnancies. The range has been formulated with knowledge and care, and we hope that women will feel confident in using the range. Wherever possible we're using organic ingredients with therapeutic essential oils correctly diluted in lower concentrations than usual (typically at or below 1%).

We're making no medical claims about our pregnancy products, but they have been carefully formulated to take into account the growing body of evidence that essential oils can support a variety of health issues. For more information visit the New Mum Pregnancy page on the Natroma website.

Christmas Order Deadlines

Thanks for all the Christmas orders this year! We have been so busy, visitors to our shop have been amazed by the empty shelves. As we often joke at this time of year - we need more elves!

Rest assured, we'll continue to work around the clock to re-stock. There is currently only a handful of bath bombs and bath melts available (every year we have sell outs!), but more are being manufactured today and tomorrow to make sure last minute hampers can be made up. So fingers crossed the shop will be looking less bare later on today, and there will be plenty of fragrant options!

Deadlines and dates:
Website orders - the last date for receiving these is Sunday 18th December. We intend to ship orders received by this date on a first class Royal Mail service, to try to ensure they arrive on time but this cannot be guaranteed. Large orders will be shipped on a next day courier service. Hampers are all being shipped on a signed for service, so please ensure someone is at home to receive parcels.

Ruskin Shop - we'll be open every day until Christmas Eve between 10.30am and 4.30pm. The exception is tomorrow 16th December (sadly we have to attend a family funeral), so we'll be open 10am - 11am and after 2.30pm - 4.30pm on that day. We'll be open between 10.30am - 1.00pm on Christmas Eve.

After this, we'll be closed for 2 weeks - to recover! Our websites will continue to accept orders, but these will not be processed until after we return to work on 10th January 2012. Sorry for the inconvenience of this longer than usual close down, but we'll definitely need to re-charge our batteries after this year!

We're off to the Frost Fair!

Phew! We've been so busy in the last few weeks, with a fantastic evening shopping event and Christmas Craft Fair at the Ruskin Glass Centre last week. It was wonderful to meet so many new and old customers, so thank you for popping in to buy your Christmas gifts!

This week, we're off to Shrewsbury to set up our stand at the Frost Fair. This is a fabulous event organised at the National Trust's Attingham Park each year. There's a huge number of craft and food stalls and once again we're in the largest marquee. It's one of our favourite events each year, so we hope to see you there between 2nd - 4th December 2011!

This means that our shop will be closed until Tuesday 6th December 2011. Website orders will still be accepted as usual, but they won't be dispatched until after we return on the 6th. We'll be processing orders in date order, as they arrive, but there's still plenty of time before Christmas.

Natroma Holistics at the Ruskin Glass Centre

Quite a few new customers to our Ruskin Glass Centre shop are surprised to find that The Natural Soapworks is run by Holistic Therapists. Our specialisms are Clinical Aromatherapy and Sports Massage Therapy, and even though we're usually busy making natural skincare products we enjoy giving massage treatments and the satisfaction that comes from helping our holistics clients.

Sadly we know what it feels like to be rushed out of a treatment room because the next person has arrived, so we wanted to offer a tranquil setting for our therapies. Our treatment room was purpose built and luxuriously appointed to provide a relaxing and soothing environment. We also only offer limited appointments each week, to ensure that clients don't feel like they're on a massage production line! But we can be flexible about offering evening appointments outside of our normal opening hours if required. We can also attend sporting events and offer on-site corporate staff therapy packages for local businesses. We're also pleased to have made arrangements for a Reiki Master to visit us each week, and she'll be offering appointments most Thursdays.

We've added a new page to The Natural Soapworks website which gives more information on the Holistic Therapy treatments we can offer in our luxurious Stourbridge treatment room. Please ring us on 01384 399451 to discuss your requirements and arrange an appointment with a therapist.