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SmellyBlog

Sugar, Oil, Salt...


Using pure and simple ingredients for making nourishing and uncompromising bath and body products. To avoid the whole notion of needing to use powerful synthetic preservative and emulsifiers, I've avoided using any water altogether in these products.

Instead, using light-weight yet moisturizing natural oils such as jojoba, virgin coconut, avocado, tea seed, rice bran and shea oils, I've concocted a simple line of body and bath products that I love using and wanted to share with you. Fractionated coconut oil helps to improve these nourishing oil and create an oil base that is fast absorbing and that leaves the skin silky and moisturized for more than a day, yet without clogging pores or feeling greasy at all.


Anointing oils, highly fragrant and act like a perfume for the entire body, leaving it moisturized and nourished but non greasy. I'm really excited about sharing these oils with you, I've been experimenting with a few types of oil bases (mixtures of various nourishing oils, along with the fractionated coconut oil to give it a non-greasy finish that is the natural equivalent of a "dry oil". Not all perfumes are suitable for body products. I chose the ones that incorporate beneficial oils to the skin. My personal favourite so far is Song of Songs, which stays on the skin the longest (24 hours later, when I bathe again, the warm water releases the scent yet again from my pores!). White Potion is more delicate and releases the scent better on the skin than from the bottle. The salycilates in the tuberose tend to get camouflaged in the oil bases and remain dormant. They won't wake up until they hit a warm living skin... The Tamya tropical oil is really fun. I am hoping to package it in a spray bottle rather than a pour-bottle. It really feels like a "dry oil" and the scent is very light and refreshing. Megumi is the newest addition. I created a vetiver base first (there was a gentlemen who kept requesting a vetiver body oil), and I felt it really needed a little extra something, which is the jasmine as in Megumi. The spiciness is due to the addition of ginger and cardamom, which are less irritating to the skin than the allspice in the perfume formula. It's a very warm, woody and sensual scent with a light jasmine tough that makes it feel more perfumey.


Sugar scrubs are my favourite way to exfoliate. A good sugar scrub should be easy to work on the skin and my personal preference is for scrubs that exfoliate as well as moisturize and nourish the skin. It saves that step of applying a moisturizer after bathing, which to me is a huge bonus as it saves time! Most of the sugar scrubs I like are quite messy in the bath tub, which although requires more frequent cleaning of your tub (which is never a bad idea), is a lot of fun in the process. Scrubs that in addition to the sugar have exfoliants such as ground nutshells or coffee beans are among my favourites... the sugar itself dissolves in the water. The ground nuts and shells should be large enough to not stubbornly stick to the surface of the tub.

I made my sugar scrubs with both white and brown sugar, and added exfoliants such as cacao nibs and ground coffee, in a carrier of vegetable glycerin and nourishing oils. after using them you don't need a moisturizer, and the skin is left exfoliated, soft and non greasy.


Bath salts, a pure way to unwind and cleanse the body from toxins. Although these are not by any means new products (I launched them on Mother's day 2009) - I just created a larger size packaging for my bath salts, and will change the collection a bit. The Lavender, Licorice & Vanilla bath salts are a very slow seller so I will likely discontinue them and will replace them with a Vetiver scented bath salts. I found some really neat bath salts that I'm excited to use - Ancient Canadian Sea Salt from Manitoba!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Coffee Please


Coffee Time, originally uploaded by Nuran's.
My morning started with coffee, which is unusual. I walked up to the barrista at Blenz on Robson and asked for 400gr ground coffee, with the highest caffeine content. She looked at me puzzled (I usually order tea, and when I do order a coffee, it's always decaf). As it turns out, coffee that is light or medium roast has more caffeine, something I never knew (or cared to know) before. I got an organic, fair trade medium roast from Machu-Pichu, which smelled and tasted deliciously of moccha, and took off.

I totally lucked out with my very first trial of Guilt sugar scrubs, I think I nearly nailed it down in the first try. Which is not the case with my other "victim" - the Finjan Sugar Scrub, where coffee is used for its cellulite-busting caffeine, along with grapefruit essential oil.

On my first trial (done about a year or so ago) I used real Turkish coffee which already had some cardamom in it. It smelled delicious, looked like the muddy bottom of a Turkish coffee demitasse ready to be read you the future, and it had this wonderful cocoa butter, shea butter and virgin coconut oil in it. Unfortunately, it did not work: the butter solidified and formed crystals on the top of the jar (kind of like the white stuff you see on old chocolate bars), which of course wouldn't matter once you scoop out your scrubbing dosage. But therein lay the bigger problem: Turkish coffee, while it smells fabulous, is ground quite finely. It becomes into a sticky fine paste that refuses to leave the skin even if scrubbed with loofah, completely defeating the purpose of its presence in a sugar scrub. And this is why I got the coarsely ground medium roasted full of caffeine beans from Machu-Pichu.

But my new sugar scrub encountered other problems beside the coffee grounds: this time around, I became a little too adventurous and rather than sticking to my modified formula from last time, I decided to add a little bit of this (honey) and a little bit of that (Turkey red oil) and ended up with something that was a little too liquidy and swallowed all the fragrance of the precious oils I've added in there - Rose Maroc, jasmine from India, cardamom CO2, orange and grapefruit oils. I finally was able to adjust the consistency by adding more sugar, and getting the fragrance right by using rose geranium. I now know that I should forego the Rose Maroc next time (it just gets lost in the coffee!). And also I should use a lot less Turkey red oil, and in any case, I suspect the one I have is a little too old, so it's time to buy new supply! But I'm on the right track, and pretty close to figuring out the desired consistency, as this sugar scrub really left my skin feeling softer, though I suspect the Turkey red oil is a little too drying (all the more reason to use less).
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