Posted also on the forum:
April 14th is the last day of the sale! The sale ends April 14th 11:59 PM EST. The discount is 15% off of products (not including shipping and tax). The code for the sale is
Spring
Use the code during check out in the coupon box (there should be a box to enter the code in the shopping cart. Be sure to hit the recalculate button after you enter the code and shipping choice).
My newest eco living article is on anb mall’s site. This month’s article is on a few quick eco tips for Earth day/every day.
http://www.allnaturalbeauty.com/articles/eco-living
Please list more eco tips on my forum in this thread; share what you do to live more green! Thank you!
Cheers,
Li
I am going to go ahead and say use the cart. It has been up for a couple days and the few times I tested it, it seems to be working 100%. A couple people have ordered and their orders look okay (I contacted them to double check), and I haven’t had any more problems accessing my cart’s account.
Please note, my cart should send an invoice to you right after you order, please check your invoice to make sure it is right. If you did NOT receive one, then it probably did NOT go through. If you use the cart and notice any issues PLEASE contact me and let me know.
Use the following code to get the 15% discount (good until April 14, 2010 11:59PM EST):
Spring
The discount will only be taken off of the cost of products (and not on shipping costs or taxes).
Just wanted to mention it has been warm here in VA and other parts of the US so the Dreams may or not arrive in their liquid state (coconut oil is usually solid at room temperature but when it gets warm it turns into a liquid). If that happens it should resolidify once it cools down (if not, try placing it in the refrigerator for a little while).
Please read a couple posts below for more information on the sale, new sizes, and new products. Thank you for your understanding and patience while the cart was down! 🙂
Cheers,
Li
Hi everyone
Technically the cart is back up and has been up all day (but this is the second time within the last couple days I’ve noticed it’s been up. The first time it was working for a few hours and then had issues again). Though it has been working the whole day (I noticed it was up since early this morning), I had issues accessing my account this morning and also early this afternoon, though it seems to be okay now.
Though it is up, I am still a bit hesitant to suggest using it right now (just thought I’d mention here that my web site’s server has not had any issues–I use a green web host and I LOVE them–and paypal has been fine too; it’s only the cart I am worried about. I just don’t want it to mess up someone’s order). Though the cart has been working I could not access my account the few times I tried today until just now. I think the cart is working okay, since someone placed an order and it seems to have gone through. I just don’t know if it is totally fixed or not since I had issues with my account today.
Please continuing emailing me orders until I am completely sure it is working right. You can still use the cart to see the total cost and estimated shipping costs, but please just cut and paste your order from the cart into an email, and then I will invoice through paypal. Please see my entry below for more information on how to order, the new sizes, the new products, and the sale! Thank you 🙂 I appreciate everyone’s patience about the cart issues!
Hi everyone
Happy Spring! 🙂
**Since I revamped the site: for some browsers you may have to reload/refresh each webpage to see the new page (depends on the settings on your browser).
EDITED April 10th:The cart is working and has been up for a couple days. Please disregard any info on the cart not working in this post. I’m just going to leave the info up though (just for reference for the people that ordered during the times it was down). Thank you!
Old cart info from this post:
NOTE: the cart is still down (for more information, read my previous blog entries about the cart).
If you’d like to place an order at this time, please email me since the cart is NOT working. Please email me your order (product name and also size), your real name and address, the email address that is connected to your paypal account, and whether you’d like it to be mailed first class or priority mail ONLY, and I will invoice you through paypal. To protect your privacy, do not include your credit card information in your email. Thank you!
New sizes:
Sunset Cleansing Oil and also Tropical Dreams are now available in a 4 oz grande (full) size! Sunset Cleansing Oil is now being packaged in blue glass (there is no change in price for the xiao (small) size, although blue glass costs more). Also once the current batch of the xiao (small) size of the 1 ounce Tropical Dreams runs out, they will then be packaged in a larger 1.7 ounce size blue glass container (and the price will be adjusted accordingly since the new jars holds more).
If you missed my earlier blog entries, the petite (sample) vials of perfume are now packaged in a bigger vial. Also Balance toner is now packaged in plastic, with an optional blue glass mister.
New products:
Periwinkle petite (sample) and grande (full) sizes are now available! This was the color in anb mall’s Valentine’s Day sampler, and also the petite size was given as a free gift to some people in a couple of the previous specials.
TWO New Dreams: Coconut Dreams and also Chocolate Dreams. Coconut Dreams is simply certified organic, unrefined, cold pressed, virgin coconut oil (perfect for those sensitive to added fragrances). It smells dreamy, like fresh coconuts! Chocolate Dreams is certified organic, unrefined, cold pressed, virgin coconut oil blended with many delectable essential oils and absolutes, including cocoa absolute! (note: Chocolate Dreams is a light brown color due to some of the absolutes used). It smells delicious! Coconut Dreams is packaged in a 2 oz xiao or 4 oz grande size PLASTIC container. Chocolate Dreams is packaged in a 1.7 oz xiao and 4 oz grande blue GLASS jar.
Brand new: Earth Alkemie’s Buttercremes! Rich, creamy butters with fragrant essential oils and absolutes. Try Vanille Lavande Buttercreme or Uganda Buttercreme (which is the unscented version). Vanille Lavande Buttercreme and Uganda Buttercreme are made with certified organic EAST shea butter which is silkier and lighter than regular west shea butter! Certified organic east shea butter is rarer and harder to obtain than west shea (therefore more expensive). East shea butter is higher in olein than west shea. My Vanille Lavande Buttercreme is rich in natural vanilla, floral lavender, and lemony notes, with a touch of pathcouli. It smells amazing! 🙂
Butterfly Terra Elixir. I mentioned I was going to release a Luna Elixir (which will still be released soon!) but Butterfly Terra Elixir was begging to be released! Butterfly Terra Elixir is made with several berry seed oils, which are potent antioxidant powerhouses (some of the best sources of antioxidants and nutrients in the plant kingdom). It also contains orchid extract, an exquisite antioxidant. To make it even more amazing, I have added a couple other luxury and nutrient rich oils, including marula! I have added helichrysum essential oil (which has a spicy curry like, honey scent), which is one of the best ingredients to use in skin care in my opinion (for clarity; it helps the skin look amazing. It is a very potent anti-inflammatory too so very soothing). Use it to help improve skin clarity and also give your skin a super antioxidant boost! This is a potent blend; use only a few times a week, or once daily.
Hu perfume. It’s finally available (yay!): my limited edition perfume inspired by the Year of the Tiger! I have blended two kinds of jasmine absolute with rare carnation absolute and violet leaf absolute as the heart notes. This perfume is sultry, sweet, and heady, but not too heavy! I love this scent so much! If people love this too, please let me know and I will consider making it a regular scent (all of these absolutes are some of the most expensive absolutes, so it costs a lot to make this perfume–my perfumes are made at the eau de parfum concentration so the absolute/essential oil/etc concentration is much higher than a skin care product. Jasmine sambac is the only one I currently use a lot of so I buy that one in larger amounts (half an ounce to an ounce), but if people really love Hu, then I will start buying the other absolutes in larger amounts too so I have the ingredients to regularly make it (it will cost several hundred dollars to keep 1/2 ounce to an ounce of all of them regularly in stock at the same time, hence why I initially only made small amounts of it and made it a limited edition perfume). Though if it does become part of my regular line, then I’d need to work on making perfumes for the other chinese astrology signs, LOL!).
In addition to the release of my new sizes and products, I am having a sale! All orders will receive 15% off the cost of products (the discount is only on the products, and does not include shipping costs and/or taxes):
The sale will run until April 14th 11:59 PM EST. I decided for only this one sale that orders that were placed last week (starting March 28th) will get the discount too. (So discounts will be given for all orders that were placed March 28th until the end of April 14th). I am going back just this one time, since I’ve been promising to release new products for a while.
Website updates:
Last but not least I have updated the site and reorganized the categories. There are a few new categories and also sections (where I list all the uses of each product under each category. I hope this makes it easier to figure out all the uses of multi-use products such as Tropical Dreams and Uganda Buttercreme!). You can find links to the Dreams listed under many different sections (including body care. Links are also in the spot treatment and hair care sections since some–not all–of the Dreams are recommended for those uses too). Buttercremes are also listed mainly under body care, but Uganda Buttercreme is also placed under eye care too.
The Legends are now listed under gift sets (there are two Legends gift sets, and the link to the info page about the Legends is on the gift set page). The gift sets are good values since they are a little less expensive than if all the items are purchased separately, plus it comes in a pretty bag! There is a new section called ‘Ephemeral’ which are the limited edition products (currently only Hu and Karite soap are listed there). I am still taking pictures of some things. Thank you for your patience! 🙂 Please let me know what you think about the new reorganization!
Take care!
Cheers,
Li
So the cart is still down 🙁
I just loaded a new webpage, and tried the new host name for my cart (that was supposed to fix the problem) on that webpage and it is still not working. So then I tried the old host name (since I noticed the old host name was working for a few hours yesterday, but I am sad 🙁 because it is not working again). I am anxious to get my new revamped site and the products up, so I am going to go ahead and get my new revamped site up now. Once it is up, customers may email me their orders (please just send me a list of the products you wish to order, and also your real name and address) and I will invoice through paypal for payment. I am very sorry for any inconvenience this has caused!
If my cart company does not fix this problem within a couple more days I will look for a new shopping cart. (Though they were updating us every few hours on their forum at first, there hasn’t been any new updates in a while, so I am kind of frustrated right now. It is not just my cart that is down but thousands of people’s carts are down 🙁 ).
Thank you for understanding! I am going to upload the new revamped site now, and after it’s up I will post another blog entry about the new special and also the new sizes and products.
Hi everyone
Now that they’ve posted more information on their forum, I will probably be switching my cart links to the other host name (I had thought if I switched, then after it got fixed, then the new links wouldn’t work after the original got fix; this isn’t the case, it will still work fine afterwards). So I will be updating the site with new cart links, so the revamped site will go up sometime today, most likely tonight when I have a few hours (I will be loading each page one at a time to check not only the cart links but also will be editing all my new webpages and also product links etc. I’ve revamped my site a bit so lots to check).
After I update the site, I will be posting here again; after the revamped site is up later today, please be sure to refresh/reload your browsers (to make sure the most current version of the site is popping up).
I just wish my cart company would have emailed everyone or posted on their main page; if I hadn’t tried to access my account last night I would not have known (this has apparently affected thousands? of sites–or however many sites are on that one particular server; only one of their servers has an issue, the rest are fine). They posted on their forum that they could not email 20,000 users since their mail server would have been blocked for spamming, but they could have at least posted about it on their main page, instead of just their forum, since there are a lot of people that don’t know.
If you notice another company’s cart not working, please email the company because they may not even know it is not working.
Thank you so much for your patience and understanding! 🙂
As noted in my previous entry, if you’d like to order now, please email me orders until my revamped site is up. Thanks.
Hi everyone
The server for my shopping cart is down 🙁 (so my cart is not taking orders right now. I noticed it was down a few hours ago when I was trying to access my cart’s account. I just thought it was my internet connection at first or for some reason was taking too long to load (so was timing out), but it is still not working and I just checked my cart company’s forum and saw that others also are having problems). According to my cart’s company they are trying to fix the problem but it may be a while before it is back up. They didn’t specify how long ‘a while’ is so it may be back up in a few hours, it may take a couple days. Update: They have switched to a different host name for the cart so I can now view my account, and are still working on fixing the original host name. If they can not get the original host name for my cart back up, I will have to redo the links to my cart for my whole site using the new host name 🙁
If you’d like to place an order now you may email me your order (please include the email address that is connected to your paypal account) and I will invoice you through paypal.
If you have placed an order last night or today (so friday or saturday) please contact me, in case it did not go through (since I may or may not have gotten it).
I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused, they are fixing the problem as fast as they can. Thank you for understanding.
I was going to get my new revamped site up a few hours ago but can’t do that until the cart is fixed 🙁
Just wanted to mention that I am going to have a special once I get my new site up, and was going to give everyone that ordered this week the special too 🙂 I decided a few days ago to do this special because I wanted to thank all of my customers for their patience in waiting for the new sizes, new products, and revamped website. I’d only mentioned the special to one customer so far (yesterday morning) but just wanted to mention it here on my blog too so everyone else knows too. I will reveal what the special is once my new site goes up, but that won’t be until the cart problem is fixed.
Hi everyone
I have (randomly) selected the winners from the 2nd certified organic drawing. The winners are TS and LT; they will each receive one grande (full) size 80% certified organic elixir. Congrats to both! (I just used their initials to protect their names; this announcement will also be posted on the forum too). TS and LW I will be contacting you shortly!
Cheers,
Li
One of my customers just asked me about the use of sodium benzoate in cosmetics on the forum, so I decided to post my answer here too. She also asked about grapefruit seed extract (but I don’t use that in my line but to read my long response on that ;P please read the rest of the post).
From my post on the forum:
Edited to add what how I define a broad spectrum preservative (which was in the gfse part of my post on the forum): I personally define a preservative that is ‘broad spectrum’ as something that kills a wide range of bacteria as well as fungi AND keeps it fresh for long periods of time, anywhere from 7 months to a year, or for synthetic preservatives up to 2 years.
I only use sodium benzoate in one product so far (Balance toner) and that is part of the preservative geogard ultra (which is an Ecocert approved preservative). I think the amounts of sodium benzoate in geogard are safe to use (sodium benzoate is used in a lot of foods). My opinion is that sodium benzoate applied TOPICALLY in very small amounts and not used all the time* is safe (topical versus ingested sometimes have the same effect and sometimes the effects are different).
(*this is one of the reason I stress rotation so much, since most things are safe in very small amounts but in high amounts, or used over long periods of time, can be toxic. Even something as ‘benign’ as tea tree essential oil can be toxic if used incorrectly and for too long).
I use geogard to preserve my hydrosols/toners for a couple reasons. Though hydrosols have a pretty good shelf life on their own (they are sterile straight from the distiller) and in theory have a shelf life of anywhere from a few months to a year or so (depends on the plant and also the methods of the distiller), once people handle them, they can get easily contaminated (many people handle them before they get to me, and then I handle them before I give it to my customers). So they can be good for months or they can go bad in a day.
I think it is very important to test skin care for bacteria and fungi, so I test every batch I make for my business with simple bacteria and fungal tests (which is not as good as a lab can do, but still at least a good indicator. Not every small hand crafter tests their products but I do). Though you can sometimes tell something has become contaminated, you can’t always tell by looking at it.
From my experiences with helping friends, family, and also dozens, maybe hundreds, of people over the last several years on forums, I’ve come to realize that although I am anal ;P in how I handle my personal cosmetics (using them up fast, refrigerating when needed, not storing in the bathroom, trying to handle them carefully, etc) not everyone else is as anal as me. So for my customers’ safety I decided to use a preservative in my toners. Though there are a few synthetic preservatives I will use (like cosmocil) I prefer using as natural as possible so that’s why I choose geogard (most people define geogard as ‘all natural’, personally I define geogard as somewhere between ‘all natural’ and ‘naturally derived/synthetic’ but closer to natural than synthetic).
A good read, my ecoliving article on anb (all natural beauty) mall’s site on what is natural.
Also my article on what is organic
To make a long story, very long ;P there are very few truly natural or ‘more natural’ preservatives that have been challenge tested and shown that they are truly broad spectrum preservatives (many like some essential oils can kill bacteria but they are not broad spectrum). Geogard is one of them, another is leucidal. Both are pretty new to the market (Geogard has only been available within the last few years. Leucidal is very new, only started seeing that a few months ago). I will be using leucidal in another toner probably (I need to test it for longer to see if I like it as much as geogard or not).
Geogard is considered to be Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS), probably one of the safest preservatives out on the market now.
For sodium benzoate some people with really sensitive skin may be sensitive to it (key word may. Many people with sensitive skin can use sodium benzoate with no problem). Sodium benzoate is used in many things from vinegar/salad dressing, soda, and cough syrup. I am more concerned in the amount in soda since many people drink a lot of soda daily! Most of the concerns in foods are when high amounts of sodium benzoate are combined with other substances (like artificial colors or ascorbic acid, etc). Very small amounts are considered to have no adverse effects when ingested.
The small amount in geogard for a topically applied product; I think it is safe in that amount, applied to the skin. I’ve read that the Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel considers Sodium Benzoate to be safe when used in (topically applied) cosmetics at levels at 5% or lower. In cosmetics, Geogard is used in way lower amounts, between 0.75% – 2.0%. Geogard is made with mostly Gluconolactone (first ingredient) and also Sodium Benzoate, so the amount of Sodium Benzoate is very low in it.
I think it is wonderful that you (my customer) are researching things 🙂 Though I think sodium benzoate (when used in the correctly amounts) is relatively safe in skin care (it’s much safer than using many of the synthetic preservatives out there), others may disagree and don’t want to use it, and that is okay. That is one of the reasons why I am looking into other preservatives too, and if I end up liking leucidal as much as geogard I will add that to a different toner (so far I like it). Geogard will remain as the preservative in Balance toner though. There are other natural/more natural preservatives I am experimenting with too. I may come out with herbal extract only toner (so preserved with grain or grape alcohol) one of these days, but shelf life on those would be much shorter than preserving with geogard or leucidal so I am thinking about it.