Anna's EsSCENTials Bodycare

A new floral herb for this year's soap.

It’s that beautiful time of the year…early May, warm breezes, spring flowers and all the best hopes for the fun to come.

At Anna’s EsSCENTials, I’ve been planning something all winter, and I’m on my way! I started creating my herbal flower anti-aging soaps last fall, and two are done. See Karma & Hibiscus and Calendula & Mango for details.

The third in the series I could not do, however. The herbs I needed were NOT AVAILABLE here from any of the herb vendors I could find. So, I ordered some herb plants for this soap, and they arrived this week. One of the ginger plants is shown above.

This is pretty exciting stuff. Now I’ve just got to grow the herbs all summer and harvest them in the fall. Maybe the third anti-aging herbal flower soap will be done before Christmas.

Just a reminder, in case anyone needs it, that two Kentucky teams play next weekend in the NCAA finals…and, also in case anyone needs it, Anna’s EsSCENTials has two fantastic soaps called Kentucky Go Big Blue! and Go Big Red! So choose your poison and enjoy the big games!

Sometimes I take a batch of soap out of the mold and am moved by the delicate swirls and colors, the enticing aroma, and the feel of the soft, smooth edges. I cut the slab into bars and more of its beauty reveals itself. It’s an amazing thing…all those happy accidents! It makes me feel a little like an artist.

Today I finished a new batch of Lavender Rosemary and Lavender Patchouli. In addition to the soap studio smelling amazing, it’s always a pleasure to work with a new batch and in fact, is just a teeeennsssy bit like giving birth. There’s that hopefulness when you begin work with the ingredients and finally they come together with whatever little inspiration you might have during the process that makes each batch unique. Then there is the magic that happens when the ingredients interact and produce something entirely different from what you start with. And there is always the surprise 24 hours later when the batch comes out of the mold. It’s hard not to feel very personal about each batch, and they’re all slightly unique.

This latest Lavender Rosemary batch produced several logs that had such a beautiful light blue swirl that I had to try and photograph it before cutting it into bars. Sometimes I wish I could just take the log and sell it like that. It seems a shame to cut it up. However, this log is cut and on the drying racks. And…tomorrow is another day!

Kentucky Crafted: The Market 2012 is in the books now, but it was pretty wild and even what you might call “hair-raising” for a while. It started out soggy…lots of rain to load and unload the booth in…then came the tornados which devastated parts of Kentucky and came close to both the convention center and my own place…and then it was cold, followed by four or five inches of snow and finally, a 60-degree day. And that’s only the weather!

Inside the convention center, things seemed to be going well until we all got herded to the storm shelters for safety. After that was over, the first public day of the show brought something like 7,500 people through the convention center on the first day. I heard people were lined up around the block to get in, and between opening at 10 a.m. and mid-afternoon around 3 p.m., it was so crowded you had to fight your way through the aisles. Sales were good as well, and if it had kept going at that pace, I worried about running out of soap.

Actually, my anti-aging herbal and flower soaps were very well received, and I vastly underestimated how many of them to bring. My good buddy, Bill, brought reinforcements so I could restock the shelves. My friend Veronica stayed with me during the busiest of the times, and I am ever so grateful.

By Sunday evening when we closed down, I was really ready to head home. It was a good show, and although this year’s venue moved to Lexington from Louisville, we were well-received. I expected sales to be down given the fact that people would have to get to know Anna’s EsSCENTials’ products. But they were just slightly above last year’s sales, and that meant a whole lot of one-bar sales. If I can muster the energy to do the show for the next few years in Lexington, I think I can hope for those one-bar sales to turn into bigger numbers.

The organizers of the show did a remarkable job of advertising the show and making us all comfortable in the new space. And now that it’s all over, I can look back with pleasure at sharing space with so many great craftspeople and artists, who seem to get better every year. My jewelry-making friend, Ann Klem, and I shared a lot of dinners together and even some funny stories we’re still thinking about whether to tell. Her work just gets more beautiful all the time. We were also just beyond the food aisle, and that is always good.

So now it’s back to the soap studio. I have found myself low on too many kinds of soaps, and with spring coming on, that’s a dangerous place to be.

Good Karma for 2012 with Anna's new "Flower & Herbal Anti-Aging Soaps

Our newest soap for the spring is out of the molds and onto the drying racks. It’s called Karma & Hibiscus, and it’s meant to bring good things into all our lives. Karma is the second in a series of three soaps in our new “Herbal Flower Anti-Aging Soap Line.”

I’ve been planning this handmade artisanal soap for a while. The important difference in this special soap is that it is made with an infusion of herbs and flowers specifically chosen for their skin-care properties, and especially anti-aging ones. Because of its anti-oxidant qualities, hibiscus is one of the primary ingredients. However, there are others. From Asia comes an herb called Fo-ti, which is valued for its ability to protect skin from free radical damage. This wonderful, mysterious herb has been touted for centuries in the East for its anti-aging properties.

Have you heard of an herb called cleavers? It is excellent at providing relief for skin inflammation, eczema and psoriasis. It also has the wonderful ability to tighten skin as it loosens with age. Licorice is another herb with skin healing properties, relieving sunburn and insect bites, as well as being an anti-inflammatory.

There are oils that are also especially helpful in anti-aging formulations, and one of those is avocado oil. We used a helping of that as well as shea butter and mango butter, along with our tried-and-true friend, olive oil, to give this soap a deeply emollient quality.

And what does it smell like, you ask? Karma is a work in progress (which means the soapmaker intends to tweak it until she’s satisfied), but in its first iteration, I’d describe it as soft, relaxing, deeply sensuous and alluring. This blend is comprised of: Patchouli, Orange, Lavendin, Pine, Lemongrass, Elemi, and Gardenia Extract. It takes only a little imagination to decide this complex blend truly is the bearer of some excellent karma.

The wonderful thing about being a small artisanal handmade soap enterprise is that we can do the research and come up with products that are uniquely effective. We have no huge advertising budgets, and our soaps are packaged simply (but attractively we think). We distribute them and even do most of the sales ourselves (with the occasional help of some really good friends). The bottom line is that we can prepare amazing products at a fraction of the cost of commercial products. And I maintain we offer quality far beyond what those commercial manufacturers even dream of.

So thank you to all of Anna’s EsSCENTials’ friends and supporters. We hope you enjoy this latest addition to Anna’s herbal flower anti-aging soaps. We’ll have it ready to go at the Kentucky Crafted: The Market trade show in Lexington March 3-4.

Kentucky Crafted: The Market 2012

KENTUCKY CRAFTED: THE MARKET
Lexington Convention Center
Lexington, Kentucky

Saturday, March 3, 2012                     10 a.m. – 8 p.m. EST
Sunday, March 4, 2012                       10 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST

It’s that time of the year again…and Anna’s EsSCENTials will be a vendor again at this very popular trade show. It’s a long four days…five if you count set-up. The first two days are for wholesale buyers on March 1-2. The second two are a free-for-all, with thousands of people jamming the aisles, tasting samples of goodies, looking at the amazing crafts produced by Kentucky artisans and enjoying the stage shows. It’s a great opportunity to see the best-of-the-best Kentucky has to offer.

There are plenty of accompanying pre-show jitters. WHAT have I forgotten this year? I’m going to introduce my new soap, Karma, with essential oils from Anne-Marie Faiola of Brambleberry. This is one I’m really looking forward to! Watch for it to appear on this web site as soon as it is ready for photographing. And there may be another surprise or two in store at Anna’s booth #318. So stop by if you can. Go to http://1.usa.gov/Market2012 to purchase tickets and view a complete program of Market activities.

This year's special treat—Anna's Winter Skin Care Serum

My friends this year can thank my mirror for a special skin-care serum I developed before Christmas. It was one of those “oh no!” moments looking into the mirror and not recognizing the face that looked back that did it. I made for the soap studio and brewed up a batch of what came to be known as “Winter Skin Care Serum.” I took it home, tried it for a week, christened it worthy, and gave it away for Christmas to friends and supporters of Anna’s EsSCENTials who made their way to the studio.

Once word got out, quite a number of people managed to snag a jar, and, I am happy to say, there were rave reviews. That’s always satisfying.

I made enough to sell some also, and in the spring I’ll try for a lighter version for warmer weather. In the meantime, I’ve been using it twice a day, morning and evening. And look at a few of the ingredients—Wow. For starters, it has a base of sweet almond, hemp, avocado and olive oils. Then it has both shea butter and mango butter mixed into fresh-brewed green tea and green tea extract. It has wheat germ oil, emu oil, neem oil, rose hips and carrot seed oil, fractionated coconut oil, marine collagen, glycerine, horsetail, vitamin E, and essential oils of rose, neroli, clary sage, sandalwood, plai, rose geranium and high-altitude lavender. Plus a few other secret ingredients.

Well, if you’ve ever researched skin care ingredients, you’ll know what a powerhouse list this is. Now it’s true that if I don’t like a product, I don’t make or sell it. I just don’t have the stomach to do that to customers and friends. But I have to say even I am impressed with this little gem. In my imagination it has removed five or ten years already!

It was a dark and stormy night…but I made it home from Louisville and the benefit there for the Portland Museum, navigating through driving rain, heavy traffic and slick roads. I was just itching to make it back to Owen County where things move a little slower and I’m a little more comfortable.

But thanks to the staff at the museum, we had a table full of cookies and punch and other goodies, and people to help vendors load and unload our cars. The rains came down all day, which kept the crowds down, but knowing this was the last event of the year for me made everything OK. I am really really looking forward to having a two-day weekend for a couple of months.

Here in Owenton, the Owen County Arts Council held a holiday sale in the courthouse with a number of excellent artists setting up. My friend, Sandy, sat at a table for me, and it turned out really well. Everyone said the event was well-attended and people had a good time. Luckily, the rains held off here until after the parade took place.

I can hardly believe our year of markets and festivals is finally over. It’s a long haul. And of course this also means winter is really close, when mentally I’m still back in late summer. However, I’m got my wool socks on, and I’m not sure what’s a more reliable forecaster of winter than that!

This Sunday I will have not one but two holiday shows to cover. (Watch Sharon run.) Luckily, my friend Sandy Bush will sit at a table for me at the Owen County Arts Council show in the Owen County Courthouse during the annual Christmas parade. It’s the first Christmas show for the arts council, and I hope it is a smashing success. Last I heard there were 19 artists available to show their work.

I will be at a benefit holiday show to raise money for the Portland Museum in Louisville, KY, on Sunday, along with my good friend, Veronica, and her luscious breads and baked goodies. This is an annual event, raising much-needed funds for a wonderful neighborhood museum that highlights the history of Louisville and especially this area of the city. Neighborhood museums are almost a thing of the past, and this event is especially important. There is a large group of artists signed up to attend and lend their support, so it also should be a good time and good event.

Unfortunately, the rains are due to return to water-logged Kentucky on Sunday but who knows. We’re pretty hardy people here. It may turn out to be grand.

I’ll write a bit next week on how things turn out. Come on out, everyone. Local artists can use your support, and it will be a chance to purchase locally handmade gifts for the holidays. I’ll have my handmade Christmas soap there along with other special gift items. See you there…or somewhere!

This year's muscle & joint massage cream for Lucarroll is finished.

Every year I am privileged to make a special batch of my muscle and joint massage cream for my friend and massage therapist, Lucarroll Craig. Our tiny town is so fortunate that she takes time to help us with the sore backs and muscles and all the rest. Lucarroll is a talented therapeutic massage therapist, and has a growing clientele in this northern Kentucky area.

So I am privileged to help provide her yearly holiday gifts for her clients. And she tells me they often ask for more during the year as well. That’s great news! Actually, this massage cream has a special ingredient, an herb from Thailand which has been used for many years there to relieve muscle and joint pain.

This year’s batch is finished, and I’m off to deliver it! Lucky clients, Lucarroll.