November 2013 - Page 2 of 2

Posted on 11/11/201309/08/2020 by Lucy

Best Homemade Beauty Products: Recipes

Fair Ivy receives tons of submissions each week from artists and handmade businesses, looking to get their products featured as one of our monthly surprise packages. We thoroughly enjoy perusing each and every submission, and have found that over the years we’ve gotten very familiar with handmade and homemade beauty products. And now we’re hooked!

If you aren’t a subscriber to Fair Ivy’s handmade surprise packages, you still may be interested in buying or making some handmade or homemade beauty products on your own. And we’re here to help!

One of our absolute favorite creators of handmade beauty products is Mickey Cho from Fabled Soap Co. She’s been a featured artist with her gorgeous soaps on Fair Ivy both in August 2013 and October 2013, and we’re sure she’ll be showing up a ton more. However, she doesn’t just make soap and lip balm. Check out these wonderful homemade beauty products she creates:

Bath soak sample set

Homemade laundry detergent

Soap Samples – Handmade Old Fashioned All Natural Vegan

Alright, enough of our gushing about how much we love Fabled Soap Co—onto some recipes!

Our favorite homemade beauty products recipe sites:

The Daily Green: This lists 10 different types of homemade beauty products and the recipes to make them!
Refinery29: This site focuses on the thrifty aspect of homemade beauty products—it’s true, they can be really cost-effective!
Babble: List of recipes, with great photos
Keeper of the Home: Along with recipes for what ingredients to use, this page tells you what ingredients you should specifically AVOID using. Very helpful!
Wellness Mama: With just 7 ingredients, make 20+ different items!

If you have any of your own favorite recipes, please send them along and we’ll post them here!

Posted on 11/07/201309/08/2020 by Lucy

Last minute Christmas shopping: It doesn’t have to be stressful

Last Minute Christmas Shopping: We all do it

It’s the classic tale: we think we have so much time until Christmas rolls around, only to realize we don’t….and thus begins the panic. Perhaps we can’t get enough time off work to shop, everything we want is sold out, we have too many friends (what a terrible problem to have!), or we just can’t face the horror of the shopping mall war zone during the holiday rush.

It doesn’t have to be painful.

I’m not here to tell you not to procrastinate, since we all know we’re going to do it regardless. What I CAN tell you to do is to find a gift idea that makes last minute Christmas shopping kind of….fun, and quite a breeze.

First of all, there is the super fun and easy way out.
Since YOU feel stressed about last minute holiday shopping, it goes to follow that OTHER people feel the same way. Talk with your friends and family early and feel people out—if you find that your best friend also hates last minute Christmas shopping, create an agreement together that neither of you will buy each other gifts, and instead you’ll go out on the town together, or get your nails done, or some other sort of treat. This also avoids the problem of getting someone something that they will never use—this way, you both get to enjoy an experience (oh, the memories!) and you know your money is well spent!

If that doesn’t work, there is always the ACTUAL last-minute gifts
Obviously I always tout Fair Ivy as a great last minute gift, because who doesn’t like receiving multiple surprise gifts every month? They’re handmade and they all already come hand-wrapped. We even have a little gift notice you can print out to let the recipient know the surprise gifts are on their way—so you can literally buy a subscription on Christmas morning and they can start getting excited about the future surprise gifts they’ll be receiving.

Ok, promo time over. Beyond actually BUYING something, here are 4 lovely last minute gift ideas that we fully endorse:

Make a lovely dinner for someone. Or invite a bunch of people and knock them all off your gifting list at once! If you can’t do this before Christmas, why not handmake a really cute coupon that they can redeem at any time (perhaps with a week’s notice)?
Buy two tickets to go see a band you know they like, that is upcoming a few weeks or months after Christmas. Memories can’t be beat!
We don’t usually like recommending gift cards because they don’t feel very personal. However, we do like travel gift cards! Most airlines or train operators sell these, and you could even make a cute little handmade card with recommendations for where they could go.
Our favorite gift this year: With so many of our photo memories stored digitally nowadays, we start to appreciate the tactile once again. Take the time to print out a photograph of a cherished memory you share with a loved one, frame it, and hand-write a note about what the shared memory means to you. We know your loved one will cherish it as well.

We hope this post will help dispel some last minute Christmas shopping blues. As always, feel free to contact us to help you with gift ideas—we specialize in finding handmade gifts that fit your recipient to a tee.

Posted on 11/03/201309/08/2020 by Lucy

Dead sea bath salts surprise

We love luxurious bath products, and these dead sea bath salts from Paradise Bath Boutique drew us in immediately. The were sent as one of our September monthly surprise packages, and came in one of three different scents—Eucalyptus Spearmint, Lilac and Peach. Pictured below is the lilac-scented version.

Dead Sea Bath Salts - Monthly surprise packages from fair ivy

We love that there were actual dried flower petals mixed in with the dead sea bath salts.

Interesting fact: This item was not originally scheduled for September, but after a different hand-maker had a bit of a last-minute emergency and had to cancel, Cindy from Paradise Bath Boutique stepped up to the plate and we couldn’t have been more pleased. She wowed us with her dedication, commitment and extremely quick turnover time (she had less than 1/10 the time of most of our surprise gift package artists)! We couldn’t have been luckier to have such a fantastic hand-maker on-board our surprise train.

Dead Sea Bath Salts - Monthly surprise packages from fair ivy

deadseasalts

Be sure to check out Paradise Bath Boutique’s store for her other wonderful surprise gift items that would make unique birthday gifts for women, and would be especially great pampering gifts to give to yourself!

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Do you want to receive a gift box every month? Or wait—make that THREE gift boxes every month! Be sure to head over to our options page to sign yourself or someone else up. Every surprise gift is handmade and comes hand-wrapped, along with an informational note card straight from the artist, to let you know about their process, business and background.