Busy Beaver

I've been busy labelling soaps and reed diffusers and making soy wax melts. I smell wonderful! The photo shows Blackberry Sage soaps with lots of little sample soaps as well, all very fiddly to label as you can imagine.

I now must go and make 50 lip balms for Showcase Bags which will be going to 50 VIP's attending the NSW Tourism Expo. This is my donation to the Hidden Treasures of the Great Southern group who are being represented at the Expo. The promotion is for the Great Southern Bloom Festival, happening in October this year.

Reed Diffusers

I recently noted an article in Better Homes & Gardens Magazine which showed how to make your own Reed Diffusers at home.

The article recommended mixing essential oils with olive oil and using some wooden skewers as reeds. This sounds like a great idea, cheap and easy, but in reality is messy and won't work.

The reasons it won't be an effective way of scenting your home are three fold and relate to the items used - olive oil, essential oils and wooden skewers.

1. Olive oil is too thick to use as a reed diffuser base, it will not be drawn up into the skewers at all.
2. Essential oils evaporate easily. They need to be blended with fragrant oils to maintain some staying power.
3. Wooden skewers do not have the channels that proper rattan reeds have, meaning that the product will not be drawn up into them efficiently enough to allow for scent diffusion into your room.

It's not worth wasting good olive oil trying to make your own diffusers. Skinflint Reed Diffuser oil is only $16.00 and is available in 6 different fragrances, including two which have essential oils in them. It's made with a 'dry oil', specially designed to allow uptake into the rattan reeds without clogging. 

You can fill your own decorative bottle or purchase a square glass bottle for only $6.50 on the Skinflint website. Much easier than mucking around with olive oil and skewers!

Fragrances

Whew! Finally sorted all these out.

New Reed Diffuser Fragrances are Lemongrass and Rose Geranium. Cotton Blossom is deleted and Apricot Freesia and Matcha Tea will only be available while stocks last. Spiced Orange has changed slightly and is now called Autumn Spice.
The range is as follows: Apricot Freesia, Autumn Spice, Lemongrass, Matcha Tea, Rose Geranium, Salty Sailor, White Tea & Ginger.

Soy Wax Melt Fragrances are Autumn Spice, Blackberry Sage, Coconut Lime, Lemongrass, Parisienne Pear, Patchouli Musk, Rose Geranium, Tayberry & Teakwood.

Sugar Scrub is now available in Rose Geranium or Lemongrass fragrances. These are packaged in a 250g clip top PET kilner jar and come with a little wooden scoop. Rose Geranium contains real rose buds while Lemongrass contains powdered lemongrass. Both are scented with pure essential oils.

Bath Salts are available in the same fragrances and are packaged in resealable bags. The 500g packet is a neat little plastic lined paper bag and the 3kg and 5kg sizes come in ziplock plastic bags so can be decanted into jars for use in hotels and spas.

Australia Post again

Further to my previous post about this Government owned monopoly, I have since found an article in the West Australian about Australia Posts huge losses.

Where are they losing money? Not from Australian postage, in fact they're making bucketloads out of that, but not enough to cover their losses from processing overseas packages.

It seems we're all shopping online overseas (maybe because postage is cheaper?) and the postal service is inundated with all those parcels. To try to rectify this, AP has put in a submission to the Productivity Commission to change the rules governing international parcel handling costs. If they are successful, expect to see an extra charge passed on to you, the consumer, on the receival of an overseas package.

In the meantime, AP will just keep putting up the prices of domestic parcels to try to make up the shortfall. Which means, that Australian online shops are going to either lose customers to the overseas online shops or bear the brunt of the cost. Consumers will turn to overseas online shops because of the wider variety, often cheaper prices and, of course, the cheaper postage.

Here's an online article all about it. Read the last line, in particular.
Thanks, Australia Post, for making it difficult to run an online business because I live in the country.

Menthol Rub

I've had quite a few requests for Menthol Rub over the past few months, so have decided to re-introduce this for a limited period of time.

The rub is made from pure plant oils - olive, jojoba, apricot kernel and neem and has added beeswax and mango butter, all fantastic for your skin. The best part of the Menthol Rub experience is it's essential oil blend - Wintergreen, Bosisto's Eucalyptus, Peppermint & Black Pepper.

This product can be added to a steam bath for inhalation or massaged into sore muscles, congested chests and sore, blocked noses. It's a great replacement for Vick's Vapour Rub which is a petroleum based product, and for Dencorub, which uses only Wintergreen oil, no other beneficial essential oils.

100g PET Jar  $17.50

July Special - Face Lotions

On special this month are both Clarifying and Enriching Face Lotions. Both products are packaged in 125ml tubes and are great value for money as they last ages.


Clarifying Face Lotion incorporates a break-through ingredient that can reduce oiliness by up to 46%!
Sebum Reg is an amazing product from the U.S. which is a botanical polyphenol-rich complex from argania spinosa kernel extract, serenoa serrulata fruit extract and sesamum indicum (sesame) seed extract. High content of lignans & phytosterols control sebum production.
For those with oily skin which may be prone to break-outs and blocked pores.

Enriching Face Lotion contains precious oils of jojoba, almond, macadamia and red raspberry which help plump the skin with moisture. Red Raspberry oil is reputed to act as a broad-spectrum UV-A and UV-B shield with a SPF of around 28.
Hylauronic Acid is included to help reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles and sun damage.
Lightly scented with a blend of essential oils, including Rose Maroc.

Normally $30.00, now on special for $24.00.
Only available at this price for the month of July.

Australia Post Hinders Online Businesses

As the title suggests, I believe that Australia Post is undermining Australian businesses that rely on online sales.

The cost of posting a parcel within Australia has risen 4 times in only 24 months. Each time it's a 10% increase.
The price of sending a small package, up to 250g,  now costs $5.00. Most packages I send come in at the 500g to 1kg range, which is now going to cost over $13.00 to send to the Eastern States and over $9.00 within WA.

I recently received a package from the US, some gorgeous push pins that I bought on Etsy. The cost of postage was $2.59 US, amounting to much the same in Aussie dollars. If I were to post the same package back to the US, it would cost me $7.70!!

If I were to buy my book club books from Dymocks Online, an Australian bookseller, it would cost around $40 for postage, if not more. If I buy the same books from the Book Depository in the UK, the postage is FREE.

Australia Post claims rising fuel costs, rising power costs and higher wages as their reasoning behind the increases. All businesses are coping with these rising costs, however, as a monopoly, Australia Post have more power than most to raise their costs without concern for lost business.


So, after just working out a flat rate for postage that wouldn't cost me too much to subsidise, I'm now going to have to increase the cost of postage once more. Postage will now cost $8.50, an increase of $1.00.  I'm not happy about it, but hope that my customers understand why I must increase the cost, which is still heavily subsidised. I don't charge for the packaging, which is an added cost that I am prepared to wear.

Skinflint products still represent great value and with a flat rate of postage, it's a good idea to order a bit more than you need or to add a couple of other products to try.