Skincare is more than anti-aging, vitamin c, anti blemishing, anti wrinkles. Customers come in asking for products that can do the above. Often, I thought to myself, actually it is more than just anti-aging. A close friend told me all the anti-aging hype is just brain washing, most importantly it is about feeling good about yourself. I agree with her. To me, it is about taking time off each day to love yourself. To take delight and feel good from the aroma of plants and flower essence at the beginning and end of the day is a luxury treat. If just the sight of flowers in a room can immediately make a person feels better, how much more can the essence of it works on you. It is about feeling good and celebrating your right to indulge in yourself (minus the calories, of cos).

 

I like the scent of skincare products with natural aroma, my picky trained nose can tell the difference between synthetic fragrance and natural scent. Synthetic fragrance are so sweet that it makes me feel ill while the soft scent of natural plants transport your senses to another realm.

 

Take time now to see the products on your dressing table in a different light. Some of my favorite products that works on skin and mind are BALM BALM rosehip miracle serum, suki facial lift ultimate firming cream, MADARA Deep Moisture Fluid and Pure Lochside Revitalizing Face Oil.

 

Smell deeply and feel deeply.

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19 June 2010

The meeting with the people of MADARA started with the sound of clicking bottles: A toast to MADARA’s latest addition: MADARA 100% Clean Drinks!

MADARA has launched a new line, radically different from skincare, in Latvia, a fashionable range of 100% clean soft drinks

MADARA 100% Clean Drinks come in 4 flavors, Betty Rose, Anna Mint, Richard Berry and Ralph Pumpkin. As with all MADARA products, the design are top notch with emotional given to it. Looks classy, fashionable and you may even think that it is a cocktail drink if you have not tried it. Drinking alcoholic drinks along the streets is an offence in Latvia and they told us a story about a girl whom was stopped by the police when they saw her downing a bottle of MADARA soft drink while walking. Now that is really a story! Ha!

 

I like the idea of giving “human” names to the drinks. It gives the drink “character” and makes it “alive”. Trust MADARA to think of this.

After all the usual introduction of program and lunch, we were brought to tour MADARA manufacturing factory. The most exciting part of the whole trip! An exclusive preview into the making of MADARA skincare. No one (out of Madara’s staff circle) has seen it before. Pure Tincture will be the first to bring you through this.    

The manufacturing hall resembles a clean room. We had to cover our head, feet and wore special coats to enter.

The first stop is the measurement cum storage area where raw ingredients such as beewax, cucumber extract etc were kept in neat jars, boxes etc. All these ingredients come from five specially eco-cert approved organic farms in Latvia. It is the very ingredients that made up the uniqueness of their products, ingredients from the Baltic Region! We were told that it was scientifically tested that they found higher concentration of menthol in the peppermint grown in the Baltic region, than peppermint grown in other region.

These farms are under strict ECOCERT regulations to ensure correct farming techniques and methods. The raw harvested plants/flowers are brought to another company for extraction of its potent bits before storing it in jars like this.


 It is in this room that these ingredients are measured in the right amount before putting it into a special mixer.

This gigantic intimidating looking machine is the mixer where EACH and EVERY product is mixed and made from. The ingredients are heated to the right temperature (never above 100%) to allow even mixing of ingredients. See how the inside of the machine looks like. It reminded me of a milk shake though. :)

 

After the mixing, it is vacuumed sucked into a big container like this.


From this big container, the mix is injected into individual bottles. What the lady doing is blasting high velocity of air into the empty bottle to ensure that it is completely clean and dry. These bottles will be injected with the content then capped tightly. For moisturizers, the cap is a special cap that will not any more air to enter. Products will go though an automated stamping of expiry dates before this lady pack it into boxes.

 

There are a total of 30 types of products in MADARA range. Roughly one batch of it will be made once a month. Each batch is at least 200kg to 330kg which is equivalent to xx number of bottles per month. For faster moving products such as the Deep Purifying Foam, it can sometimes be made at least 2-3 batches per month.

For the hair products, it is made from a different, more compact-looking machine. This wonderful machine made one bottle of hair products every 2 seconds!  These new hair products will hit Singapore shore in July 2010. No more bad silicone coated hair days from now.

Packed products are kept in a warehouse with temperature between15 - 25degree before shipping out to the respective retailer stores.

Also all products have to undergo rigorous testing to ensure stability (i.e. no separation) even in the roughest environment such turbulence test and temperature changes test.

That’s all for now. I will be posting on Madara’s concept stores next.

I like customization. Customization allows me to “play” with my existing range to create new and different skincare. I like new things. News things create suspension and excitement in my life. The feeling I get is almost akin to opening a present. That moment of opening a gift and trying the present is much treasured. Sometimes we get bored with usng the same skincare / things and it certainty applies to me more than anybody else. During tertiary school days, I even got bored with the same pen and I had half a dozen in my pen case to keep my balance.

I customize body oil, face oil, body scrub and now I customize my daily cream moisturizer and even sunscreen. As many of you may know, I was looking for my IDEAL sunscreen. One that is organic yet with good texture, absorbs in rapidly and block off harmful rays at the same time. My existing stock of suki tinted moisturizer fits the bill but alas, it is SPF 15 and tinted. As much as I like the use it, there are days when I need stronger protection and without the tint! Time is catching up and my faithful followers are getting tired waiting for search of the PERFECT SPF 30 non-tinted sunscreen.

Well, after a long deliberation, I decided to bring in BADGER Sunscreen SPF30. Like any other organic sunscreen, it has the usual characteristics of leaving a white layer on the skin and it is a little sticky. Hmm.. well, I can tolerate that if it could delay the onset of age-spots. But it has olive oil as the 2nd ingredients, which is mildly pore clogging! Horrids.. I was thinking of pimples versus age –spots.. Which is more evil?

Finally, a solution! i decided to customize it. I pumped out some sunscreen into a separate tub and added 1-2 drops of lavender/ tea tree essential oil into it. Ah ha! That should keep my skin safe from a bumpy ride. I am on it for almost 2 weeks and all is clear and cleared. As I was writing this I caught a mild whiff of lavender in the air, it reminded me that customization is good. Now what’s next for me? Body Scrub perhaps.. I am making it from scratch. If you care to 'play" with your skincare, I would love to join you in your game. 

The best part of my job is product searching and trying them out. No matter, how many bottles I have in my beauty drawer (it is bursting anyway, one more will not hurt), new beauty products make me excited and put a smile on my face (sometimes I jump and hop if I got a new treasure).  I am usually skeptical of new products and it is getting harder to find a real great product range these days with the introduction of more complex formula and new findings from research .

So when I first came across Stem Organics, I was as usual skeptical. I have come across many brands claiming to be all organics and great but when I take a closer look at the ingredients, it is usually not so great (or clean).  But hey, Stem Organics products passed my “At First Glance” Test.

When I took a detail study of its ingredients, I am actually quite impressed. The special feature of this brand is that it contains lots of Pomegranate and Kakadu Plum. Kakadu plum, a native fruit in Australia, has the HIGHEST content of Vitamin C in the world. A whooping 100 times more than the Vitamin C content found in Oranges. Hmm….it sounds deliciously anti-aging. I will like that on my face.  Also it contains Aloe Vera as the first ingredient for all its products, not just aqua.

Other unique woo la la ingredients are Australian Bush Flower essences like Banksia and Angelsword, which bring balance to the skin. While Niacinamide, Grapeseed Extract and Beta Glucan further regenerate your skin with the antioxidants it craves.

Hmm.. how does that sounds to you?

here is another one from viva...

 http://www.vivawoman.net/2010/03/30/guest-review-pure-lochside-organic-skin-care/

cheers, Helen

Check out this blog on suki brightening cream and suki target bio-brightening serum

http://www.vivawoman.net/2010/04/13/suki-organic-skin-care-for-intensive-brightening/

 

Spring time is here.  I know that spring time is here when I see the flowers blooming in the park. Pink and yellow are the colors I see. From my home, I can see many 'pink" trees, those are the flowers crowning the trees.  Beautiful. 

 Spring time is here.  Also a reminder to me that we are way into our 2nd quarter of the year and Great Singapore Sale is coming. To us retailer,  the month comes earlier as we have to start thinking of promotion ahead.  It is also a sad reminder that the festive period is officially over.  

 Spring time is here. Time to jump start my life regime. Time to make changes in my life and start working on my resolutions. Resolutions to be healthier than 2009, to be more diligent in my skincare regime and supplement intake, to be more fashionable and take pride being a girl (or woman but  i like the term girl better) and to be spend more time with God and my family. Starting from now,  I will only allow good positive thoughts to stay in. Negative  and evil thoughts will stay OUT. 

Spring time is here. Time to move on and i am indeed moving on.From April, i will say goodbye to my shop in Far East Shopping Centre and say hello to my new cozy at Raffles Place.  In this new place, I will revamp the facial menu, improve facial techniques and ambience feel.  Bring in a new brands to increase our offerings.  I will still be as involved in the front line of the business as ever because  I really like all my customers. No...Not all are customers, in fact,  most of them are friends now. Here is a glimpse of how my new place will look like.  

 

 

 

 

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Hidden danger behind epidemic of male infertility

SOME 17 pupils from Ai Tong School in Bishan recently had to seek medical care for abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea.

The illness was initially thought to have been caused by snacks they ate at a class party. It has now been ascertained that phthalates on a China-made toy that they had handled just before eating were the real culprits.

Phthalates are chemicals used to make plastics flexible. The specific ones found on the toy were dibutyl phthalates (DBP) and diethylhexyl phthalates (DEHP). The United States government has classified DEHP as a 'probable human carcinogen' while the European Chemical Agency calls it a 'Substance of Very High Concern'.

In the 1950s, it was adding DEHP to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to render it flexible that made it more convenient to store and transport bags of blood for use in transfusions. Now phthalates are widely used to enhance fragrances in perfumes, nail polish, hairsprays and deodorants, as well as in lubricants and wood finishers.

That 'new car smell' comes from phthalates vaporising from the dashboard if the vehicle has been in the sun. In the cool, they recondense as an oily film on the inside of the windscreen.

A US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) survey last year of the levels of phthalates in our environment revealed that exposure to the chemicals was extremely widespread. Expressing concern over this, the US authorities stressed that DEHP was especially likely to cause serious problems in the development of the reproductive system in male babies and little boys.

The phthalates threat has acquired a fresh urgency because of a startling new insight into their mode of action. Conventionally, toxicologists consider what level of exposure to the agent in question is low enough to count as acceptable risk. The first dose to not elicit a response is used to draw the line. Logically, if a high dose elicits no response, then doses lower than that should not either. Thus testing doses below that threshold was deemed unnecessary.

But this is to assume a higher dose necessarily elicits a higher response, whereas it was shown in 2006 that low doses of phthalates can cause larger effects than higher doses. If so, what are considered to be dangerously high doses, cannot predict what might happen at low doses.

What this portends is that foetuses exposed to very low doses of phthalates may suffer far greater harm than we think possible based on safety standards established in the past using high dose studies. Such standards must now be deemed invalid.

Though somewhat counterintuitive, this phenomenon has also been observed in the endocrine (hormonal) system, where complex mechanisms are involved. Phthalates, in fact, act as hormone disrupters. In particular, DBP and DEHP disrupt aromatase, an enzyme that is crucial to the metabolism of sex hormones.

In sum, phthalates act as anti-androgens (or anti-male hormones). In pregnant women with levels of phthalates far below those conventionally thought to be toxic, male foetuses are 90 times more likely to have demasculinised genitals. Even the masculinisation of the brain in such foetuses is hampered.

In 2003, a Boston study confirmed that men with phthalate exposure had fewer sperm, which also tended to be weaker and more often deformed.

There is now an epidemic of male infertility in industrialised economies. Two common male birth defects seen are undescended testes and hypospadias (a penile deformity), both linked to low sperm count and testicular cancer in adulthood. All four conditions are related to disrupted hormone signalling during crucial periods of foetus masculinisation.

When all four conditions are found, the male patient has testicular dysgenesis syndrome, which is increasingly common in developed nations. In these countries, where phthalates are ubiquitous, it is disproportionately women of child-bearing age who are most exposed. A CDC survey had already uncovered this fact in 2000.

Soft PVC products contain over 40 per cent of phthalates by weight. PVC is widely used in packaging, mats, milk bottles, toys and so on. There is also a lot of skin contact with phthalates, especially in women's use of personal care products like cosmetics, perfumes, soaps, shampoos, lotions and deodorants.

Children are directly at risk too. Phthalates that escape from PVC flooring and mats are breathed in, especially by those who spend a lot of time indoors. Baby powder, shampoo and lotion are particularly pernicious too. But toddlers chewing on softened plastic toys accounts for most of their exposure, according to Dutch and Danish studies.

Unfortunately, it is hard to avoid phthalates, for they are rarely listed on the ingredients label. However, 'fragrances' may be a proxy term.

What you can do is microwave your food in pyrex instead of plastic. When using plastics, avoid those with recycling codes 3 and 7, which tend to contain phthalates.

The Health Sciences Authority has opined that phthalates in personal care products like soap are permitted here provided their amounts stay within the allowed levels. It said earlier in the year that 'to date, there is insufficient scientific evidence to establish that they cause any health risk'.

It might be opportune to revisit those limits as soon as possible.

Source: The Straits Times, by Andy Ho, Senior Writer

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Just last week, I had the most amazing training Skype session with the Scottish people from Pure Lochside. Finally, I got to meet Fiona Tutte, founder of Pure Lochside and her trainer Laura.  Fiona, a wonderful lady, with more than 16 years of aromatherapy experience, started with a brief story on how she got started. She decided to start her own line when the products she customized for her clients worked so remarkably well on them. Encouraged with her efforts, in March 2007, Fiona finally creates Pure Lochside products with a unique holistic outlook resulting in an exceptional range of luxury organic skin care.  Mind you, her products are 99.9% organic with remainder 0.1% made up of vitamins.



I love the smell of her products, the way it looks especially the Spritz bottle and it works so well (some other bottles are hopeless!).



Her products are jam packed with a powerful concoction of anti-oxidants extracts such as organic Frankincense, Sea Buckthorn, Arctic Cranberry, Argan Oil, Rosehip Oil, Pumpkin Seed Oil, Vit E and A. This potent mix of oils in high dosage (highest dosage possible) make its products very effective not just for the skin but also for the mind.  While the anti-aging properties work against the free radical on your skin, the aroma of the products works deeply to relax your mind. You can literally feel the tension easing away.



The training session went on in length on each ingredients, why it was included, what it is used for and how it should be used. Armed with insiders’ information, I am now even more confident to recommend her products.



My favorite product got to be the Revitalizing Face Treatment Oil is a heaven-sent for those suffering from hormonal skin problems. Laura, the trainer, explained that it contains a good percentage of Rose Otto, a highly prized essential oil which helps to balance hormones and skin, rejuvenates, regenerates and uplift emotions. Retinol Palmitate helps to fight signs of ageing by increasing the production of new skin cells and plumping the skin. End result is radiant and stress-free skin. Bonus: my husband and kids love the way I smell each time I apply this wonderful oil.



Judging from the way, Laura explained about the Organic Sugar Body Scrub, I can easily guess this is her favorite product. The sweet warming scent is often mistaken as Vanilla extract but in fact, it is Benzoin essential oil, which treats eczema. Another plus point is….O.K. you got to hear this, Laura has professionally explained that sugar instead of salt as it is less cutting and kinder to the skin. Microscopically-wise, salt grain has a jagged edge while sugar grains are round, thus making it less harsh on the skin. If you use salt to scrub on the same spot, your skin will turn red while sugar will not cause that. Try it yourself.  O.K. another vote to use sugar instead of sea salt is that our earth is actually quickly depleted of another natural resource sea salt. Hmmm...



Oh, did I tell you that the Siberian Ginseng Eye Gel which contains Ginseng Extract (2nd ingredients in the list!), besides tightening the skin around the eye area, helps to combat dark circles too.



Experience the Power of Pure Lochside’s Products and its Purity today.

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One of the daily things that bugs me is the amount of trash we dump.  I really hate to think about the amount of things we throw away each day and where it landed up in.

To make myself and the earth feel better. I started an in-house program last year that collect used bottles from customers. After collecting all the bottles, we will separate it into useable and recyclable. Reusable goes to our basin for sterile cleaning and re-use. Recycling goes to the glass recycling bins. This is so much I can do for glass bottles. How about plastics and paper bags? Well, besides re-using them to collect trash, the presentable ones will end up as carry bags for customers.

Recently, I came across an website that that states that 80,000 tons of flexible plastic packaging are manufactured each year in Indonesia and for every one ton of manufacturing, there’s 30 tons of waste. As we know there are no safe disposal methods for flexible plastic, it may accumulate and then sit in a landfill forever. This is gross fact and it is suffocating the earth.  And because there are no traditional recycling techniques for this type of plastic it has little resale market value.

The XSProject Foundation acquires the plastic from trash pickers before it piles up in toxic landfills. XSProject is the brainchild of visual artist and environmental activist Ann Wizer, who conceived of this initiative in the mid-90s while living in the Philippines.  The non-profit XSProject Foundation was established in 2004 with the aim of increasing environmental awareness and helping the trash picker communities by providing assistance for daily needs, schooling, etc. It also bring to our attention the huge number of invisible populations living in poverty – the very people who live with our trash.  Oh, these poor kids and women. The collection of bags originally started with a tote but the line has expanded into everything from makeup purses to laptop bags, even including some made from old billboard designs.

Well, who knows, I may start bringing this range in to Pure Tincture.  In the meantime, continue reading and before you throw away that plastic container/ bag, stop and think again.