The Handmade Soap Co: Lemongrass & Cedarwood Shower Gel and Lemongrass & Bergamot Body Butter

At The Amazing Blog, we value brands that care about our planet especially when their products and ingredients help to make this world a greener place. We came across The Handmade Soap Co, at our client's Supply & Buy event, where we engaged in a long chat with one of the founders Donagh Quigley.  This Irish artisan brand started in 2010 and has gone on to create some of finest natural bath and body products using only 'essential oil blends and nature’s pantry'. Donagh very kindly gave us their Lemongrass and Cedarwood Shower Gel and Lemongrass and Bergamot Body Butter to experience for ourselves.

Shower time is often synonymous for us with revving up for the start of another day. And we certainly enjoyed using this zesty and woody fragrance to stimulate the senses and help us on our way. The Lemongrass and Cedarwood Shower Gel is an amazing shower gel which cleared our heads and helped to give us focus for the day ahead. Formulated with natural and botanical ingredients including lemongrass, cedarwood, amyris, mandarin, patchouli and geranium oil; this shower gel gently cleanses the body while making it feel velvety smooth and wonderfully fragranced. 

The Lemongrass and Bergamot Body Butter was our favourite. This luxurious body butter is packed with the finest plants and botanic extracts including: Shea butter, cocoa butter, sweet almond oil, apricot kernel oil, aloe vera, bergamot oil, ylang-ylang flower oil and bergamot oil. What a list! This delicious blend makes a highly nourishing butter that pampers the skin and hydrates. The lemongrass and bergamot also gives an irresistibly fresh and zesty scent that lingers on the skin all day long.

The Handmade Soap Co's products are made with 99.7% of natural ingredients with the other 3% being only the binding agent and preservative (to stabilise the body lotions). We're happy to report that this brand is without parabens, petrochemicals and SLS. Even the card that is used for the packaging is from sustainable sources and printed with vegetable-derived ink! You can purchase the shower gel here for £10.64 and the body butter here for £17.76

Lemongrass and Cedar Wood Shampoo and Conditioner - The Handmade Soap Co.

At The Amazing Blog, we know how important it is to deep clean your hair by using a cleansing shampoo at least once a week. The reason we use a cleansing shampoo is that they work a lot harder than standard hair cleaning products and completely strip off all the pollution and dirt that can accumulate on your hair over time. They are incredibly effective and powerful, which is why they can be daunting to use! While they do leave your hair shiny and squeaky clean, there is always the worry that because of their strength they may also remove your hair of its natural oils, and then there are also questions as to what harsh chemicals are in these products that make them so efficient? It can be daunting, but luckily, we have found a great natural cleansing shampoo and conditioner set from The Handmade Soap Co. which has eased our fears entirely!

Their Lemongrass and Cedar Wood Shampoo gently cleanses hair and worked as efficiently as other chemical filled shampoo’s we’ve tested but without stripping the hair of its natural oils! Leaving our hair looking shinier and feeling cleaner! We found that the Lemongrass and Cedar Wood Conditioner was soothing and helped to calm and revive damaged hair.

With 99.7% of the product consisting of natural ingredients from plant and botanical extracts as well as being paraben and petrochemical free, we are confident that this product will help you maintain healthy and beautiful hair!  What's more, the products have a refreshing scent with top notes of pineapple, citrus and lemongrass, and a woody base scent of patchouli and vanilla making these products a treat for the senses as well as the hair!

You can purchase the Shampoo here for £13.90 and the Conditioner here for £13.90

Hand Lotion, Hand Cream, Hand Wash, Candle - The Handmade Soap Co

Winter season has arrived and whilst it’s cold outside it’s important to keep your skin moisturized. Here at The Amazing Blog we understand the bad effects coldness can have on our skin. It’s better to be stocked up and avoid getting dry skin… rough as cracked hands have never been pretty. The Handmade Soap Co is perfect to keep your skin smooth and soft for the cold seaon.

The Handmade Soap Co specializes in products from bath to body, lips and hands, from soaps to lotions and butters to balms. Not only skincare products but they also have candles and diffusers with their own different fragrances. The four ranges are grapefruit, lavender, lemongrass and sweet orange as well as a men’s collection to suit every single one. The products are handmade with care and uses natural ingredients from plant and mineral extracts to create skincare collections suitable for anyone and all skin types.

The two hand lotions we received included the Lemongrass & Cedarwood which has a strong scent that leave your hands smelling gorgeous for hours, it is a light liquid creamy formula for your skin to absorbs it and keep your working hands feeling soft throughout the day. The second hand lotion was the Grapefruit & May Chang which has a fruity fragrance, really nice refreshing scent, easily absorbed to keep your hands moisturised.

Each range has their own stamp and signature which we at The Amazing Blog, really appreciated and even more liked the idea of this packaging. The next product we received was part of the Lavender range: a Hand Cream infused with a combination of lavender, rosemary thyme and mint. The lavender and mint are quite overpowering in a good way as it really shines through and smells so gorgeous it makes us want to eat it.  

The Hand wash from the Lemongrass and Cedarwood range also has a strong fragrance like its hand lotion but it compliments it really well. It is refreshing to use and we advise you to use the hand lotion after as their combination leaves your hands feeling smooth and soft with a lovely scent.

Finally, you can never have too many candles in winter time, when it’s cold and raining outside the best thing to do is cosying up in the sofa with a warm blanket, a hot cuppa, watching television and of course with nice scented candles… As each range has their own candle and diffuser it really adds more value and a unique touch to each collections. We tried the candle from the Sweet Orange collection an we loved it.

These are the perfect products to stock up for winter time and would make lovely gifts too. You can purchase the Lemongrass hand lotion for £14.95 here , the Grapefruit hand lotion for £12.95 here, the Hand cream from the Lavender collection here for £11.95 and the Hand wash here for £12.95. Last but not least, you can purchase the Sweet Orange candle here for £15.95.

Soaps - Friday Favourites

Here at The Amazing Blog, we think that your bathroom should be the most luxurious room in your house, and once you add one of these lavish liquid hand soaps to it, it sure will be.

The first option is Olivos Liquid Soap, which is made with 100% pure olive oil obtained from the Edremit region in Turkey. We love that it has no additive colours, yet it still has the olives tone because of the oil within the formula. The liquid soap leaves your hads feeling nourished and youthful all day, also it is free of all parabens. The bottle has a chic gold and black deisign which will add a touch of luxury to your bathroom counter.

Get this sleek black and gold 500ml bottle of luxurious liquid hand soap here for €9.50 (Approximately £8.08)

Another paraben free selection of hand washes we chose to review is from is by AA Skincare. the range includes a selection of four individual scents; Peppermint & Ginger, Lime & Clary Sage, Sage & Ylang Ylang, and Cinnamon and Spearmint. Our teams’ personal favourite is the Lime and Clary Sage, a perfect mixe of sweet and soft! each of the different combinations have different characters; soothing, calming, uplifting, and invigorating which you can shoose to cuit your mood. The bottle is a simple 250ml pump, allowing the contrasting fragraces to do the talking.

What mood do you choose? They can be purachsed here for £5.94.

our next suggestion is the Willow Tree Lane Organic hand and body wash by Willow Tree Skincare. It has a beautiful natural summery scent as it is made with cedar, lemon, and rosemary. It's vegan friendly and organic and it is imported from Australia. The simplicity of the bottle design may not be the most extravagant, however the sweet smell and smooth skin that it leaves can't be beaten. The formula now contains Kelp, a known natural anti-inflammatory and anti-bacterial, removing all of the dead cells from the skin.

Grab this multipurpose soap that gently hydrates all skin types here for £16.31.

The next brand we recommend you trying is the brand Swedish Handmade, as it specialises in handmade beauty products. Our favourite product from their range is the Lux Handmade Soap, straight away when opening the lid it is oozes with the smell of the strong garden rose fragrance, the scent is gorgeous and refreshing it’s a great first impression.

Overall we were really impressed by the brand Swedish Handmade, as they’re unique selling point focuses on their natural ingredients here at the Amazing blog.  The product is really good for our skin; this soap has several key ingredients such as coconut oil, olive oil, sunflower oil, grape-seed oil, water and rose oil.   These combinations of ingredients are everything we need in a product to help our skin stay in good condition and keep our hands soft.

If you love natural hand made products just as much as we do you can purchase this product here for £10.