The humble mason jar has been on a serious come-back for a while now. What used to be solely reserved for people like my Granddad, and his case loads of preserved peaches, (literally case loads! I now have an aversion to tinned peaches because of the sheer amount of preserved peaches we used to have to eat in my childhood!), are now considered a fashionable.
I find myself being served cold drinks in mason jars virtually everywhere I go. You can’t go for five minutes browsing Pinterest without being bombarded with ideas on how to use mason jars in every which way other than what they’re originally designed for. So I thought I’d jump on that bandwagon!
The month of May has officially been dubbed “Mason Jar May”
For the next four weeks I’m going to set about attempting four different projects using various styles of mason jars. I stress the word attempting, because like any crafter will know grand ideas sometimes don’t come out as awesome “in the flesh” as they do in your head.
Stay tuned for my first project Mason Jar Ribbon Holder
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning.
We will remember them.
Lest we forget.
The year is now a quarter of the way over and I feel like I’ve barely gotten past Christmas! I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing long weekend over Easter. I’m hoping for a few days of sunshine so I can tackle the overgrown forest that my garden has become!
We’re closing at 4pm on Thursday 2nd April, and will reopen at 8.30am Tuesday 7th April. Any orders that are received before 2pm Thursday will leave on the courier today and be delivered Tuesday.
I hope you all have a wonderful Easter (maybe taking a little time to do some candle or soap making!)
Take advantage of our four day Easter Sale with 10% store wide.
Use coupon code Easter15 during checkout to receive your discount.
Sale starts Friday 3 April and ends Monday 6 April – sorry no back orders available. Sale does not include items already reduced.
It’s been a crazy few months around here to say the least! With our move out of the portacom and into our new shop we’ve got a lot more space so our product range has slowly been expanding. I’ve found space is kind of like money – the more you have the more you use until you get to the point where you don’t know how you managed to survive before!
If you aren’t able to come in and visit our shop don’t worry because we ship all our products nationwide, and ordering off the website is super easy!
Here are a few new things we’ve got in store now… keep an eye out because I’m expecting a lot more new products to arrive in the next month or so, it’s exciting stuff!
Preserving Jars
8oz Quilted Jelly Jar
Our new range of preserving jars are absolutely stunning. At this stage we have three different styles; The Quilted Jelly Jar, Jam Jar and Weck Tulip Jars. They have nice thick glass walls and are used by professional candle makers throughout New Zealand.
The Jelly and Jam jars are made in the USA and the Weck jars are made in Germany so the quality of this glassware is exceptional.
You can use them in other crafts too, they’re not just for candle makers. You can of course use them in preserving your jams and relishes, they’re also great to store chocolates and treats for wedding favours. I’ve made a mini terrarium with a Weck Tulip jar which is a lovely addition to my chaotic desk! Keep an eye out on the website for the tutorial.
Milky Way Molds
Loving Hands Soap Mould
I’ve been searching for a range of soap moulds for quite some time now. There are so many out there, mostly made in China, but the quality is questionable to say the least. Finally I settled on a well known and trusted brand – Milky Way Molds.
They’re designed and manufactured in the USA and are used by hobbiest to professional soap makers all around the world.
The moulds are made from sturdy PVC plastic and can be used for making soap, wax melts, chocolate, or even to mould plaster and clay! If you take proper care of them they will last for many uses. They are real value for money.
I have new styles arriving every few months so check out our soap moulds page for any new stock.
Candle Tins
After a long, long wait we’re pleased to announce that our 6oz silver candle tins are finally back in stock!
You’ve all been so patient waiting for these to arrive back in. My shipment landed in our store this afternoon and I’ve had a busy day unpacking the new stock. I’ve got plenty of these tins so hopefully we won’t run out any time soon.
I’ve gone back to the tin design with the three little feet on the bottom and the raised lid.
Fragrances
Since moving inside to our new shop space I’ve been able to start buying in new fragrances again (see what I mean about the more space you have the more you use!) Our newest fragrances are Beach Daisies, Pineapple Jasmine, Fresh Ginger and I’ve got Fresh Peach and Black Tie winging their way to New Zealand right now.
If you’ve seen a fragrance somewhere else and I don’t have it listed, flick me an email and I’ll see about adding it to our line.
We will be discontinuing some of our fragrances in the next couple of weeks. We find some fragrances just aren’t too popular and I’d rather free up the space to add new scents.
We can still get these fragrances in, but won’t be keeping them on the shelf so if you’d like to order them in the future a minimum size of 300ml will apply.
I’ve recently received a big shipment of beeswax sheets and wanted to come up with a creative way to use them that wasn’t just a boring old rolled beeswax candle… enter the beeswax flowers!
I love using beeswax because it’s a 100% natural product that can not only be used in candle making, but an important ingredient in balms and other skin care products. Beeswax is made by honey bees when they are gathering nectar and is used to build the honey comb in which the nectar is stored. Our beeswax sheets are made from 100% pure beeswax that have been filtered to remove all impurities ensuring the candles will burn cleanly, then they are coloured with special dyes so we can have nice vibrant candles.
How to make Beeswax Flower Candles
I chose to make a my candles with 50:50 beeswax and soy wax. You can of course make a 100% beeswax candle, but I find adding soy wax to the beeswax makes a softer candle that doesn’t burn as hot.
Measure out the beeswax into the melting pot and place in the double boiler to slowly melt. Once the beeswax is nearly melted, add the soy wax. Soy wax has a much lower melt point than beeswax so it doesn’t take much to melt the wax and for your mixture to become completely liquid (approx 70 degrees).
Melt the beeswax then add the soy wax
Step Two:
Remove the melting pot from the double boiler. If you would like to add essential oils, fragrance or colour do so at this stage. Make sure you mix them in well. I prefer to leave my candles 100% natural and keep the sweet honey smell of the beeswax.
While your wax is cooling, prepare your glass jars by attaching the wick to the centre of the jar using a wick sticker. Hold the wick in place by using an icecream stick, bobby pin or peg.
Secure the wicks to the centre of the jar
Step Three:
Once your wax has cooled to about 60 degrees pour carefully into your jars. Fill the jars about 3/4 of the way – you need to leave room for your beeswax flowers to go on top! Set aside to harden.
Pour the wax into your jars and set aside to harden
Step Four:
You can use any colour beeswax sheet to make your flowers. I went for more of a “succulent” look for one candle so I used green and natural colours, but for the other candle I made calla lillies so I chose vibrant pink and red.
If you’re good a freestyle cutting, great! But if you need a little help print out the flower template from the PDF up top. Place the template over the beeswax sheet and cut around the lines using your craft knife. I cut the larger flower out of green and natural beeswax, and the smaller flower out of ivory beeswax. I also cut just the petals of the smaller flower to add a little extra dimension. You can be as creative as you like here, using as many colour and shape combinations as you fancy.
Use a ball point pen to cut a hole out of the centre of each flower.
Cut the beeswax using the PDF template
Step Five:
Slide each flower over the wick and gently stick down onto the candle. Bend the petals up slightly to create extra dimension. Once you’re happy with your flower trim the wick to 1cm above the flower and you’re done!
Layer the beeswax flowers
I’ll be sharing the tutorial on how to make the calla lily flowers soon, but in the mean time, I hope you have as much fun making these as I did!
I’ve got a shipment arriving with a bunch of new essential oils and I need to clear some space on my shelves. Take advantage of a massive price reduction!
50% off all sizes of Lavender Essential Oil
Lavender essential oil is excellent for burns and sunburn, and useful for skin inflammation. Which makes it a great addition to have in your skin care range in these hot summer months!
Stocks are limited at these prices so be in quick to avoid disappointment.
* Offer expires 28 February 2015 or while stocks last
Due to the increasing cost of importing and the falling US Dollar we’ve unfortunately had to increase our prices slightly on our range of soy wax. We’ve tried to limit the increase as much as possible so hopefully this won’t have too much of a negative impact on you.
The new prices are effective immediately, however we’re offering a special 10% discount on our most popular GW464 wax for one week.
During checkout use coupon code wax10 to receive the discount.
I mentioned in my post before Christmas that we’ve outgrown our little portacom which we had in the car park for the last year or more. So we’ve had to move!
Luckily we didn’t have to move very far… we’re still at the same location (22c Portside Drive, Mt Maunganui). But we’re now located insidethe main building. Access is via the rear entrance by the white trellis planter box. There’s plenty of parking in the yard, or on the street.
Dad and I worked right through the Christmas holidays building and fitting out our new shop. I hope you love it as much as we do!! Here’s a sneak peak…
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It’s still a work in progress so please bear with me. In the coming few weeks and months you’ll see a wider range of products from new glassware, wood wicks, fragrances and a range of different oils being stocked now that we have more space to put them!
We’re open Monday to Friday from 8.30am – 4pm. We’d love for you all to come in and see our new shop so feel free to pop in for a look.
It’s that time of year again! The shops are crazy, traffic is worse and I still haven’t finished my Christmas shopping!
As many of my regular customers know, we’re in the middle of shifting our shop into the main building – thanks to all your support we’ve outgrown our little portacom! We’re putting the walls up now and planning for the roof to go on next week. I’m hoping (fingers crossed!) that we’ll be ready to open the new shop when we come back to work in January.
Because of the chaos of moving from the portacom into the new shop I unfortunately won’t be able to open during the Christmas break for pick-ups. I will however still be sending out website orders.
Important Dates
Wednesday 17 December
8.30am – 6pm (Late night!)
Thursday 18 December
8.30am – 6pm (Late night!)
Friday 19 December
8.30am – 4pm (Last day for South Island courier deliveries)
Saturday 20 December
CLOSED
Sunday 21 December
CLOSED
Monday 22 December
8.30am – 4pm (Last day for North Island courier deliveries)
Tuesday 23 December
8.30am – 12pm
Wednesday 24 December – Sunday 4 January
CLOSED (no orders will be sent out)
Monday 5 January – Sunday 11 January
CLOSED (all online orders will be couriered out)
Monday 12 January
8.30am – 4pm (normal hours resume)
I’d like to take this opportunity to say a massive THANK YOU to all my lovely customers. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate each and every one of you! It really means the world to me that I have so many loyal regulars that have stuck with me over this last year. I’ve enjoyed meeting new faces and chatting with the old ones! I hope you all have a wonderful and safe Christmas and I look forward to seeing (or emailing!) you in the new year.
It’s getting so close to Christmas now we’re fast running out of shopping weekends!
After many requests I’m now happy to say I’ll be open from 10am – 12pm for the next two Saturdays (6th & 13th of December) for anyone who wants to collect an order, or just pop in for a bit of shopping
If you’re looking for a good stocking filler we’ve got loads of candle and lip balm kits in store which have been flying off the shelves over the last few weeks!
This is by far one of the most popular soaps I ever sold. I think people love it because it’s 100% natural. I don’t add any colours or fragrances, which makes it a perfect soap for people with sensitive skin. The oatmeal makes a lovely exfoliator too!
If you’ve never made cold process soap before, I recommend watching Anne-Marie’s beginner guide to cold process soap making videos. They’re a great resource and a must watch for newbie soap makers.
I have a custom size wooden loaf mould which my Dad made for me that I use for most of my soap making. It makes 13 x 140 gram (approx) bars of soap. The total oil weight for my mould is 1200 grams, when you include the water, lye, fragrance etc the total size of my soap loaf ends up around 1850 grams.
In order to adapt my recipe to fit your mould, I’ll include the percentage of the ingredients so you can calculate the exact weight of the oils you’ll need to fit your own mould. If you make any adjustments to the recipe below, make sure you run your recipe through a soap calculator to ensure you use the correct amount of caustic soda. I recommend this calculator.
163.8g Caustic Soda
396g Distilled Water
30g (3 scoops) Goat’s Milk Powder
1/2 heaped cup Oatmeal (ground)
45g Manuka Honey
Preparation
Before we can get on with making the actual soap, we need ground oatmeal. You can buy it already ground, but I like to do it myself. That way I can control how fine the oats will be – the chunkier the oats, the more exfoliating your soap will be.
Making ground oatmeal is simple. Just add your regular breakfast oats into a food processor and blitz until you get the desired consistency! I do a few cups of oats, then just store what I don’t use in an airtight container for next time.
Oats – before and after
Step One:
Slowly and carefully add the lye to the water and gently stir until the lye has fully dissolved and the liquid is clear. Set aside to cool.
Step Two:
Combine the coconut, olive, canola, rice bran, palm oils and shea butter, heat in the microwave or stove top until the oils are melted.
Combine and melt the oils
Step Three:
Add the honey to the oils. If your honey is too firm, pop it in the microwave for 15-20 seconds until liquid. Blend until combined.
Add the honey to the melted oils
While I’m waiting for my lye and oils to cool, I usually tidy up a bit and line my mould if I haven’t done so already.
Step Four:
Once the lye water and the oils have cooled to about 50 degrees (I like to make this recipe at a cooler temperature because it heats up a lot due to the milk and honey!) Add the milk powder to the lye water and mix very carefully with the stick blender until fully combined. You’ll notice the lye starts to turn a horrid yellow colour and smell pretty awful, don’t worry this is normal!
Step Five:
Add the lye water/milk mixture to the oils and stick blend until medium trace.
Add the lye to the oils and blend.
Step Six:
Once at medium trace, add the oatmeal and combine using a spatula.
Step Seven:
Pour into the mould and tap down to get rid of any air bubbles. I like to sprinkle the top of my soap with oatmeal for decoration.
Put your soap away to cure before cutting in 24 hours. Do not insulate this soap as it will heat up a lot due to the milk and honey! Cure for 4-6 weeks then enjoy!
Note: This soap can smell a bit funky for a while because of the goat’s milk, but don’t worry this will eventually go away and you’ll be left with a lovely natural bar of soap that’s excellent for your skin 🙂
