Excuse me it has WHAT in it?!?!

I asked family and friends to tell me what their favorite bath and body products are.  I got a great list and some of them are surprisingly not full of chemicals.  Those few, however, are incredibly expensive.  One brand, Lush, which I absolutely love when I get it is as a gift; is crazy expensive.  My favorite product is their Chai shower gel.  Anyone who knows me knows I have a love affair with Chai.  I don't love it enough to spend almost $28 on a 16.9 oz bottle of shower gel though.  Not happening. 

I had a hard time locating ingredients online for some of the products which is a bit infuriating. If a company makes a medication,which is a chemical, they are required to give people access to every single ingredient in that medication.  Why is the same not true for personal hygiene products?  Some of these things we assume are safe contain some pretty nasty chemicals.  Of course every product has an ingredient label on it that you can read if you have a PhD or a dictionary handy.  As a consumer I feel like I should be able to get online and research what ingredients a product contains prior to purchasing it.  What's the point in me stepping in your store if I'm allergic to most of the ingredients you put into your products?

Okay back to the point of this little post.  One of my personal favorites, at least before I made my own, was Aveeno Active Naturals Body Wash with Fig and Shea Butter.  It smelled amazing.  The figs were a great exfoliant and it had the word natural in the label so there couldn't be THAT many chemicals in it right?  Wrong.

Here are the ingredients straight from the packaging:  (so glad I saved the empty bottle to put some shampoo in)
Water, Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Glycerin, Sodium Lauramphoacetate, Cocamidopropyl betaine, Ficus Carica (Fig) Fruit Extract, Butyrospermum, Carthamus Tinctoria (Safflower) Seed Oil, Mauritia Flexuosa Fruit Oil, Fragrance, Sodium Benzoate, Sodium Citrate, Styrene/Acrylataes Copolymer, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, Polyquaternium 7, Tetrasodium EDTA, Citric Acid (may also contain)

Some of this is self explanatory, but I'm going to take you through ingredient by ingredient.

Water.  If you don't know what water is by now, turn off your computer, go to the sink and experience it.  It's great.

Sodium Laureth Sulfate:  You'll find this in pretty much any soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, conditioner and all kinds of other stuff.  This is actually a salt and a surfacant/detergent.  It is what makes those big foamy bubbles we all  love to lather up with.  Sadly it makes the same bubbles that lather up our laundry soap, our dish soap and *pause for effect* TOOTHPASTE!!  Yes this crap is in your toothpaste.  They put soap in toothpaste.  I know our teeth need to be clean, but do they really need to be cleaned by detergent?  This is the ingredient in toothpaste that makes orange juice taste like butt after you just brushed your teeth.

Glycerin:  This is a naturally occurring alcohol compound that basically gives body washes, shampoos and gels their "gelly" texture.  It's perfectly safe and in fact you will find it in a few of my products and soaps because it is not toxic at all and can help give products a silky feeling.

Sodium Lauramphoacetate:  Say that second part 5 times fast.  I dare ya.  If you can do it and pronounce it correctly I will give you $1. So what is this stuff?  Kind of like the first Sodium ingredient we encountered it is a surfacant/detergent.  I guess they want us to be REALLY clean. It also boosts bubbles and foam.  If it makes more bubbles it can't be all bad right?  Bubbles are not evil after all.

Cocamidopropyl betaine  This product already has 2 surfacants in it.  Why would it need another?  Well, apparently it does.  This is an artificial surfacant derived from coconut oil and Dimethylaminopropylamine.  Don't ask me to spell or pronounce that ever again.  The reason they add this is to help condition skin.  Your poor skin will need it with all the detergent in this product.

Ficus Carica (Fig) Fruit Extract:  Fortunately this one is exactly what it sounds like.  Fig extract.  I can guarantee no Fig Netwons were hurt during the extraction process.  *Time for Fig Netwon break*

Butyrospermum:  Upon first glance I thought this had something to do with sperm.  Turns out I was wrong.  Whew.  It's a fancy name for Shea Butter.  You'll see that on my ingredients list as well, but I promise to just call it what it is.

Carthamus Tinctoria (Safflower) Seed Oil- This is a vegetable oil.  It comes from the Safflower which is related to the Sunflower.  It's a good emollient and moisturizer.  This is not an oil I use at least as of right now.  If I find a use for it I would definitely not be opposed to giving it a shot.  I love Sunflower Seed Oil though. 

Mauritia Flexuosa Fruit Oil  Oil derived from the Mauritia Flexuosa flower which can be found on the Moriche Palm.  This oil is rich in beta carotene and there has been some research showing that it may be able to filter and absorb the cancer causing UV Rays from the sun.  I've not seen this oil with any of my suppliers, but it's definitely one I'll look into more. 

Fragrance  This ingredient always makes me giggle when I read it.  Really?  Something that smells good has fragrance?  The word "fragrance" or "parfum" on a product label represents an undisclosed mixture of various scent chemicals and ingredients used as fragrance dispersant such as diethyl phthalate.  Diethyl Phthalate is an ester of phthalic acid.  It does NOT occur in nature and when burned the fumes are toxic.  What bothers me is this product has all these great natural oils in it.  Why not let those be "fragrance" enough?  If you're going to add artifical fragrances then there should be full disclosure as to what they contain.

Sodium Benzoate Another salt.  Body wash is supposed to moisturizing right?  Why so much salt?  This one acts a preservative and anti-corrosive.  So it helps keep the other bad stuff from hurting your skin so much.

Sodium Citrate-  This is basically citric acid.  It's a natural preservative.  I don't like how at the end it says it "May Also Contain" citric acid.  If it has sodium citrate in it then it does.  Stupid labels.

Styrene/Acrylataes Copolymer- Still trying to figure out why this is in a body wash.  This is a polymer which by the way contains acrylic.....not such a nice chemical.  The purpose of this being in bath products is so that it creates a film on your skin.  This film is what leaves you smelling pretty after it has been rinsed.

Hydroxypropyl and Methylcellulose-  These are both semi-synthetic polymer.  As far as safety goes it's not bad for you, but they add it as a stabilizer to keep all the ingredients together.  I guess shaking the bottle before use just is too inconvenient.  PS-  I use glycerin to stabilize some of my products.  It's natural and I can pronounce it.

Polyquaternium 7- If an ingredient has a number in it..........just back away from the bottle. This is yet ANOTHER Polymer and film former.  Now I know why the scent stays with me for so long after I used this.

Tetrasodium EDTA (cut and pasted because I couldn't figure out how to put this in layman's terms) EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) is a chelating agent, used to sequester and decrease the reactivity of metal ions that may be present in a product.  My question is why would metal ions be in a bath product?


If you're still awake at the end of this I will give you a cookie, no Fig Netwons though.  I ate them all.  

Now that we've had a bit of an education about what a supposedly "natural" mainstream product contains, you're probably wonder what is going to make my stuff different?  

1. You can pronounce my ingredients.  No google, PhD or Dictionaries needed.
2. Every ingredient in my products have a purpose.  When I say they have a purpose I mean that purpose is to benefit you.  I won't put something in a product just to give it a shelf life of 80 years.  
3. I won't have to write my ingredient list in micro print to fit it all on my products.

   
Without giving away my recipes here is a list of ingredients of my basic body wash.  The ingredients vary depending on what type of body wash I make, but you get the idea:
  
Coconut Soap (type of soap will vary according to recipe), Water, Glycerin, Shea Butter (sometimes Cocoa Butter or Coconut Oil), Carrier Oil (Jojoba Oil, Apricot Oil, Grape seed Oil, Almond Oil, Castor Oil, Olive Oil, Sunflower Seed Oil),  Therapeutic Grade Essential Oils

Okay the list looks a little long that's because I listed each type of emulsifier (Shea butter, etc), carrier oils and all that.   


The whole point of this post is to highlight that none of us are 100% aware of what is in the products we use and trust.  I decided to go with a product that used to be one of my favorites instead of taking from the list of others.  I did this to prove that I too, didn't pay attention.  If you see the word "natural" on the label you want to believe it won't contain anything that is bad for you.  Unfortunately that isn't always the case.

Complete Logo/Sign

I was going to wait until later to post this but I'm really excited about it.  I've spent way too much time with Photoshop today, but here it is.....this is our sign, but you get the jist.  I can't wait to get the business cards printed. 

New Beginnings

How many of you want to have the chance at a new beginning?  Go ahead raise your hands just like we did in 1st grade.  Now I'm sure one of you is waving your hand annoyingly at the computer scree screaming at it, going "Me, me.  Pick me!" just like you did in school.  I was that kid.  Sadly, life rarely gives us the opportunity for a do-over or as they say in golf a Mulligan.  I like that word.  Mulligan.  Any time something isn't going my way and I want to just start over I should have the right to evoke a "Mulligan" and redo whatever it is I just screwed up.  When someone invents an app that does that please remember that I thought of it first!

I'm 27, very soon to be 28.  I'm also inspecting my face in the mirror for wrinkles as I type this statement.  My life is far from perfect.  Some people would find the life I live absolutely miserable.  We our in debt up to our eyeballs, I have a 2-year-old who is under the impression that she is the dictator in this household and no matter what there is always something about myself or something in my life I want to change.  Well, my mama always told me "If you want something done you have to do it yourself".  She couldn't of been more correct.  If I sit around waiting to find that perfect job which will allow me to be a stay-at-home mother.........I'm going to be waiting a long time.  The reality is one of two things will of happened by time said dream job comes around.  1- Aubrey will be old enough to realize that Mom isn't fun to be around and merely being in the same household as me will bring her a great deal of embarrassment. 2- My dreams will of changed. 

Naturally, I hope option 2 is the one I am faced with.  Realistically I know there will come a day when my daughter will cringe at the thought of being seen in public with me.  This period will last quite a while and then one day she will realize old mom isn't so bad.  Once she realizes her mom isn't the devil and isn't out to completely ruin her social life she and I will have a wonderful relationship like the one I share with my mother.  I can tell her anything.  I may not always tell her what she wants to here, but I know that no matter what she will not judge me and she will always love me. 

I digress.  This blog is supposed to be about soap right?  Where's the soap?  Apparently it is in the soap box that I am now shamefully stepping off of.  Since Aubrey's birth I've been very conscious about the chemicals I expose her to.  Have you ever actually read the label on baby shampoo?  Scary stuff.  Laundry detergent is even scarier.  As she got older I got more savvy about what was safe and what wasn't and started making bath and body products for our little family.  This of course expanded into cleaning products as well.  After all if I don't want the chemicals on my body I don't want them on the rest of my house so I can inhale or absorb them somehow.  Somewhere along the way I got lazy and stopped making my own products.  I decided I would just buy the most natural pure products on the market and that would be that.  Then I went shopping.

STICKER SHOCK doesn't even describe what I felt.  There were little 4 ounce bottles of body wash that cost well over $10.  Who the heck can afford that?  Even if I could afford it why would I want to spend it?  I quickly became "unlazy" (that is a word as of now) and started making my own products again.  I would let family try some of our stuff but beyond that I never really made it for anyone else.  I figured if people wanted to spend a fortune on that stuff then let them.  The really sad part is some of those $30 jars of body butters have the same exact harmful ingredients as the stuff at the dollar store.  It is just worded differently on the label. 

Once 2012 was upon us I knew that it was time for me to go back to work.  I didn't want to go back to a 9-5 if I didn't have to.  I enjoy 99.9% of the moments I spent at home with Aubrey.  The other 0.01% I'm trying to figure out ways to legally ship her to other families as part of a baby exchange program.  I had to figure out something I could do that could bring in a little extra income, but that I would find enjoying as well.  Bring on the soap!  How many women get excited about soap?  Not many, but I'm weird.  After talking to more and more family and friends I realized there is a real gap in the market.  It seems there are two spectrums of bath and body goods.  On one end you have the stuff that you can afford with ingredients you can't pronounce, but you're pretty sure may be related to same thing you strip the wax off your floors with.  Then there is the illusive trendy, organic, "all natural" end of the spectrum.  I especially despise this end.  These are the companies with enough money to know how to trick you into thinking that the $20 you just dropped on lotion is going to help you because it's expensive and it just has to be better for you.  WRONG!!!

I'm going to get a list of people's favorite bath and spa products over the next few days.  When I come back I'm going to list every single ingredient in those and see if what is marketed to us as natural and healthy is really doing us any good.  

When I decided to start Bliss I did it for one reason, my daughter.  She has such sensitive skin and I'm tired of having to bring an interpreter to read the labels on bath products for her.  Granted it would give me an excuse to tote Sheldon Cooper with me everywhere I go and what woman wouldn't want that?  

The weeks ahead for Bliss are going to be full of growth and expansion.  There will be bumps, but I'm praying that those I love will help me get through those and Bliss will grow to become a stronger company for it. 

I can't promise that everyone is going to love our products.  Just like Hershey's can't promise that everyone is going to love their new M&M's.  I don't.  I loathe M&M's.  See I'm still weird.  

There are some things that I can and WILL promise you though.

I can promise you that I will ALWAYS be honest about what is in my products.

If it isn't on the label then it isn't in there. 

I will NEVER put something into a product that does not directly benefit a customer. 

I'm not going to put an additive in just so it can have a shelf life of 80 years.  Why?  Because that additive is a known carcinogen and I really hope you use it up way before then.  

I will also promise that if for some reason you don't love my product I will work with you find a formula that works for you.

Our skin is as individual as we are.  Two people with oily skin may need two completely different skin regiments.  That's fine.  I'm willing to try and find what works for every single customer.  Is that tedious?  Is it a lot of work?  Absolutely, but that is the same level of care I would want.

 

My last and final promise to those of you who have made it to the end of my mini novel.........is that I will make my products affordable.  

I hate seeing people with problem skin (eczema, acne, wrinkles, etc) be ashamed about the way they look because they simply cannot afford the products that can help them. I was one of those people as a teen.  My acne was terrible and we couldn't afford the products that actually helped.  I don't want that for anyone.  

I can't guarantee that I can make all your skin problems go away, but I can guarantee that I will try to find a way to help.