Soap Stories

This is our second Field Museum collaboration! (You can read more about the first one here.) To celebrate the most famous dinosaur in the world, Sue the T-Rex. The current Sue exhibit contains an olfactory element.  And the Museum asked me to create something so visitors could take those smells home with them.  To develop the scents I did a deep dive into the Cretaceous period and learned about ancient plants that would have been in Sue's part of town. I took the main notes the museum had already, of Cypress, Magnolia and Ginger, and then blended and sniffed and tweaked until I came...

I don't usually name a soap something other than what it smells like, or by the tree or flower or place that inspired the scent or design. This month however, the name, "Hello, Love" seemed like the perfect thing. That and, "Cedar and Lavender with roses but it doesn't smell anything like roses," didn't fit on the label :) It's February, so of course there's Valentine's and all the pink hearts and cards and roses abound, (some would say, ad nauseam). But celebrating Love toward ourselves or others is always a good idea, and I've always wanted to make a soap with...

November 18 - 20 I got to set up shop all weekend at Chicago's Millennium Park Market. I was there with 30 other vendors, over 22,500 Art Market attendees, 5 live music performances, and tens of thousands of “cool” people (Saturday was COLD!) who attended the 109th Annual Chicago Christmas Tree Lighting – just outside the market! The mood was festive, the soup was hot, the music was lovely, and I got to meet people from all over the globe. This was my second year in a row selling here and it is quickly becoming one of my favorite markets. And lotion...

Some of you may have noticed the yummy citrus August release bars have yet to be available for sale. I have them. They just need labels printed. I think I even wrote the website description weeks ago. But my world broke 2 weeks ago and everything is just...behind.  I lost a dear friend and neighbor. Someone I thought would always be there ripped from our lives in milliseconds, kind of loss. Her name and any family specifics have been omitted here to protect their privacy in this public space. But so many of you have become dear friends to me, so I wanted...