I made the pillow box myself out of 280gsm Kraft card, and I'm really happy with it. Maybe needs a little tweaking here and there, but overall I feel it's a good place to start.
Visually strong, yet very sensitive(much like the perfect man!), Smoke and Mirrors is the latest artisan creation from Simply Angelic. Made with 100% olive oil, with added coconut cream to boost the lather and further enhance the moisturising qualities of this soap, Smoke and Mirrors boasts an impressive array of natural ingredients including oatmeal, cocoa, cinnamon and charcoal powders respectively.
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| In the mould |
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The aroma of this very masculine soap comes from a carefully selected blend of pure essential oils including cedarwood atlas, patchouli, clary sage, sweet marjoram, and lavender(yes boys, there is a smidge of lavender in there, but don't worry, there's nothing girly about this scent at all.)
Having just washed my hands with a small sliver I took from the end of the loaf, I keep getting a faint waft of the fragrance as I type, and I have to say it is very lovely indeed.
Found this lovely blog that I thought might be of interest to my followers, as we're all creative people :D
Kreativling
It's really inspiring, with many great ideas for all kinds of excellent arty projects.
Another fantastic find is here at
Arctida . Her handmade jewellery is stunning, the photography inspired, and quality of the overall blog content means that you're sure to keep returning time and time again.
For those of you with Etsy stores,
Craftcult offers many Etsy related applications and widgets to increase exposure for your handmade goodies. I haven't had a proper chance to look around the site yet, but it looks very interesting indeed.
Happy wanderings my friends, feel free to comment and add your favourite places on the web.
You've been there yourself, right? You suddenly become inspired;an idea takes hold and you have no idea where it's taking you, or indeed what the outcome will be, but you just HAVE to find out.
Well, that happened to me today. My clary sage essential oil that I'd ordered arrived *hoorah* and I set about trying to create a smokey, masculine blend for the men in our lives.
I picked out some other oils that I believed would be suitable(namely lavender, sweet marjoram, cedarwood atlas, and patchouli) and added a drop here, a smidge there, until I was happy with the blend. As I do with every experimental blend I create, I mixed the oils into a tablespoon of vegetable oil and put it to one side to enable the scents to marry together.
Later on I began running myself a bath, and as I hadn't used a face mask for a few weeks, decided to conjure one up using a very simple base of bentonite clay, and cornflour.
I use bentonite as my skin has a tendency to be a little temperamental, and bentonite absorbs the excess oil without being too harsh, and the addition of the cornflour means that when the mask is mixed into a paste it is ultra smooth and easier to apply.
Anyway, I digress.
I wanted to add a few drops of essential oil to the mask, but couldn't decide which to choose, until I spied the premade blend I'd made earlier in the day. All the oils I'd used were skin friendly, so why not? I added a teaspoon of the blend to the clay mix,followed by enough water to make the mask into a smooth paste. It smelt divine(not at the top of my list of priorities as the mask is meant to be of therapeutic value rather than for scent alone, but it does help!) and so I retired to the bathroom to have a soak and try it out. I applied the mask to my face, massaging the clay gently onto the skin until I had an even layer on, then sat back while the mask did it's work.
Having waited 10 minutes or so, I cleaned the mask off and examined the results. Wow, wow, wow! My skin felt SO smooth, and looked really healthy. I can't stop stroking it!
I think I may have stumbled upon a recipe worth testing and developing into a saleable product to add to the Simply Angelic range. I love these little discoveries, how they shape us and our future.
Woohoooo, I am officially an happy bunny.
