Our products make great gifts for anyone who is interested in maintaining a healthy body. In addition all our products are Vegan appropriate. What does that mean to be vegan appropriate?
It means that we not only use no animal products in our beautiful lotions, face creams and other products, but that we do not use products made by animals, such as bees’ wax, milk or lanolin.
Why does anyone maintaining a vegan life style care about what is in the lotion they apply? Because all the ingredients pass through the skin into the blood stream. This usually happens in half an hour to forty-five minutes. Who would have guessed that the skin, an important organ to our body, does not act like plastic wrap and create an impenetrable barrier?
In fact the skin lets through all our wonderful oils and essential oils. The skin acts as a barrier to some toxins and things like poison ivy and germs. But it receives and passes on many oils and ingredients from cosmetics.
Bees wax is one of the ingredients many Vegans try to avoid. It is a difficult one to avoid, because it is so convenient in lip balm and in deodorant. Singing Flower Studio uses candelilla wax instead. Have you ever heard of candelilla wax? The sap of the plant Euphorbia antisyphilitica was originally believed to be a cure for syphilis, thus its species name. But though it didn’t work out for that cure, it is a useful plant that grows in Texas, New Mexico and Mexico. It is a wiry plant with tiny white flowers at the top that gradually turn pink near the bottom. Leaves come out at first on the branches and then drop off. It’s big advantages in these areas, is that it needs very little water and it will survive to 15 degrees Fahrenheit, a perfect species for high elevations where it is cold and, of course, for an arid area. It is so tough it will even grow in containers. To see pictures go to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.
The plant is boiled to melt the wax off the outside of the stems. This wax is then collected from the water and is used as a hard wax that has many purposes. We use it as an ingredient in products that require wax such as our lip balms and deodorants.
Carnauba wax is also used to make some cosmetic products, but we do not use it very often. It comes from the palm tree Copernicia prunifera. This Brazilian palm tree produces leaves that are coated in wax. The leaves are laid in the field to dry, where the wax turns to a powder, which can be harvested and sold. This is another wax that can be substituted for bees wax.
Milk and lanolin are products that can just be avoided by using fine carrier oils from plants such as Sweet Almond Oil, Jojoba Oil and Cocoa Butter. Goat’s milk is used by some companies in soaps, but we make a soap that is closer to Castille soap, because it is high in olive oil. Olive and coconut oils produce a mild foaming soap for our soaps and shampoos. We avoid all products made by or from animals.
We love the pure fragrances of essential oils and fragrant plant waters. Our products do not use artificial fragrances or other harsh chemicals. We have started using leucidal liquid from radish roots as a preservative. We keep our products fresh and plant derived for all our customers. These products are great gifts for everyone.