Month: July 2010

Enjoy the sale 🙂 Details in the post below.

Hi everyone

Just wanted to announce that Earth Alkemie will be closed from Tuesday the 27th until Tuesday August 3rd.

However the cart will remain active and while I am on vacation there will be a sale 🙂 The sale will be 10% off of products (shipping costs and tax will not be discounted) and will run from Tuesday the 27th until Tuesday August 3rd (11:59 PM EST). No products will be shipped during this time, I will be shipping (in the order they are received) after the 3rd. So orders will be shipped within 7-8 business days from August 3rd.

**Please note: I will not have much internet access for a few of those days, so it may take a few days to email you back or answer questions on the forum.

**If you order during this weekend before the 27th, I will ship your order before I close but the sale does not start until Tuesday the 27th (so orders received before the 27th will not receive the sale discount).

**Here is the code for the sale. Please be sure to use the code to get the discount (otherwise, it really delays processing of orders).

The code is:

Summer2

I also have a lot of new products! 🙂

First there are three new outdoor oils. They provide basic emollience, smell great, and also contain ingredients that I highly recommend using outdoors like citronella, lemongrass, and catnip essential oils. (I can’t make medicinal claims but I will say that these formulas are highly effective at making your time spent outdoors much more pleasant from annoying bugs 😉 ). I hope you will enjoy them. They will only be available during the rest of summer and throughout the fall (they are listed in my seasonal skin care section).

I also have a lot of wonderful makeup brushes. They are all 100% vegan, including a fiber optic blush brush (most fiber optic brushes are made with animal hair and synthetic tips. The one I carry is 100% synthetic!). They have either birch or bamboo handles, which are both sustainable woods. The full size brushes have the birch handles, and the ones in the kit have the bamboo handles. I really love these brushes, I have been using the brushes from this vendor for years, and they are some of my favorite brushes. The 7 piece bamboo kit is really cute too!

I also have a new African black soap called Ghana. I love this soap, it is really gentle and great for combination skin. I’ve been using it before my moon days to keep my skin healthy and clear. It is an ephemeral (limited edition) product. (I bought several pounds of it, but after I bought it, my vendor let me know that future batches will not contain any shea butter, so after this batch is gone, I will try their new version and if I love it, I will carry their new version too. The batch I bought contains a small amount of shea butter).

I added Ghana to the African black soap gift set. For the meanwhile I will keep the current gift sets up but will switch them sometime in late August. The gift sets are a good value as they are at least $1 off than if each of the items were sold separately.

Also see post below for info on Tropical Dreams (size change) and Alata Samina (I fixed the ingredient label).

The xiao size of Tropical Dreams is now 1.7 ounces and packaged in blue glass (it was previously 1 oz and packaged in clear glass).

I have also changed the ingredients on the labels for Alata Samina african black soap. When I bought some more Alata Samina, I realized that the ingredient list listed on my vendor’s website was different than the one I was using. I was using an ingredient list that I had gotten from a sticker on the package when I first tried the african black soap (many months before I opened my business). I contacted them and they said the one on the website was the correct ingredient list and that there has not been a change in the formula (though color can vary by a lot by batch). The ingredients are the same as the list on the sticker (but the ingredients are given in a different order), except the sticker did not list coconut oil in it (so the soap has coconut oil in it). I am so sorry for the mislabel 🙁

New update on the outdoor oils. They will be released within a couple days (just finishing up my new webpages on them, and also a couple other webpages for new goodies too 🙂 ). I am so sorry about the delay. There are three formulas (one for children–which is excellent for adults too–and two for adults), and they all smell great! I hope you love the other goodies too! 🙂

They will be packaged in plastic pumps. I really wanted to package them in aluminum but it just didn’t work out. The aluminum pumps I got from the new supplier were in horrible condition (but thankfully they are going to credit back my account for them as soon as I send them back). I am just very disappointed because I was excited about the aluminum pumps: they were the only vendor I found with aluminum bottles with treatment pumps–and not lotion pumps–at a good price. The order also took a while to get here (because of the July 4th holiday and the company is out west too) so those two factors really delayed the release of my outdoor oils 🙁

I contacted my regular supplier and their aluminum misters were not lined (I only like lined aluminum for safety/leaching reasons). I contacted two other suppliers (that I sometimes use) and theirs are lined, but they are west coast companies (so the bottles would have taken 1 1/2 to 2 weeks to get here and the shipping costs are also much higher). I think I will sample the aluminum misters from these companies (to see if the misters are compatible with spraying oils and other liquids for future products) but it is too late to get them for the outdoor oils (at least this year. Hopefully by next year I will find aluminum bottles!)

So I decided to go with PET (#1 recyclable) 2 oz plastic treatment pumps (most companies package their outdoor/bug oils in plastic pumps or misters. I usually don’t like packaging my cosmetics in plastic, but PET doesn’t react really with essential oils, and for short term usage I am okay with plastic). The plastic pumps will arrive sometime this week (I got them from my regular/favorite supplier so it should arrive in only a few days).

There are three formulas, but they are all only available in one size: 2 ounces.

I am offering an optional 2 oz amber glass pump bottle for the outdoor oils too. The amber bottles are the same design as the blue glass bottles I use for Sunset cleansing oil (they are the same ones I used for Sunset before I switched to blue glass). They will cost $0.60 more than the outdoor oils packaged in plastic (since glass is more expensive than plastic bottles). Please email me if you want the amber glass bottles (and I will invoice you through paypal for them). I only have a handful of the amber glass pumps, so if I run out I will package them in blue glass (and adjust the price accordingly since they cost more than the amber).

I can’t wait to release my outdoor oils, and hope that everyone will enjoy them too. They will be available the rest of the summer and throughout the fall (probably until the end of october or so).

I’ve been wanting to release my outdoor oils for a while now but they keep getting delayed. Basically I’ve been waiting for my supplies (I ordered everything the beginning of the month or earlier, but because of the July 4th holiday there have been delays in getting everything here). I just got back in town today (a few day trip) and inspected my supplies that just arrived. The bottles/pumps were in horrible condition 🙁 so I just contacted the company. The essential oils (I had run out of a couple that I use in one of my outdoor oil formulas) finally arrived too (I ordered them 2 weeks ago; I forgot that when west coat companies use ups ground it can take a week and a half to get here, and with the holiday that delayed them even more). The essential oils were excellent, I am very pleased with them (I tried a new-to-me, but well respected, company for them). So I can finally make the last essential blend now (the other blends are done) 🙂

I need to order other bottles for the outdoor oils. I am really upset about the bottles I just got, because I was trying a new supplier for the bottles since they had lined aluminum pumps at a great price, but they were in such appalling condition.

I need to contact my regular supplier and see if the aluminum spray misters they carry are lined or not (they do not have treatment pumps, only lotion pumps, hence why I brought from the other company). If they are not lined, then I need to figure out if I am going with plastic or glass. I hope my oil blends are thin enough to use with the spray misters!

I am so sorry for the long wait 🙁 It will be a few days until new bottles from my regular supplier arrives (I have not used their aluminum bottles yet but I trust them because of their great customer service and their bottles are usually great and they get here fast).

I also got some other goodies to put on the site, but need to take pictures (not telling what they are! 😉 ). But they will be put on the site in a few days.

I just raised prices for the xiao (small) sized 5 ml Solaris Elixirs (please read why I increased prices in this post). Please note, I have not raised prices for the xiao (small) sized 5 ml Luna and Terra Elixirs. Currently prices for the grande (full) size Solaris Elixirs are the same.

Thank you to all that took the poll on the outdoor oils. I am going with aluminum bottles (I decided on pumps instead of the spray bottles).

As soon as I receive the bottles (and some essential oils I ran out of) I will be releasing the new outdoor oils. I will also be releasing several other new products so please keep checking back 🙂