Samphire Soaps in St Kilda | Cause

Samphire Soaps

Locality: St Kilda

Phone: +61 412 077 685

Address: 12 Beach Road 5110 St Kilda, SA, Australia

Website: http://www.deltaenvironmental.com.au

Likes: 135

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• Beauty, cosmetic & personal care
• Environmental consultant
• Beauty
• cosmetic & personal care
• Cause

25.01.2022 Daniel, who makes Mallee Magic Foamwash, will be working with me on expanding his range to include a Woolwash and a gentle Cream/Castile/Body/Everythingwash (name to be decided, along with packaging, after we develop the product lines).

25.01.2022 People often ask me how I make laundry powder from my homemade soap. It’s pretty simple - I grate up a 60g saltmarsh stain stick which is a very strong coconut oil soap, and add 500g of washing soda (sodium carbonate, or soda ash - the stuff they used to make at Osborne on the Lefevre Peninsula), with 25g bicarbonate of soda and 15g of citric acid, and a couple of caps full of lavender essential oil. Mix it all well, and you are good to go. I use half a washing powder scoop per load of laundry (about a tablespoon). A little goes a long way.

25.01.2022 You all know Samphire Soaps is allergic to waste - and most of you know the Reduce-Reuse-Recycle triangle is a great way to minimise your waste. Reduce - buy less stuff, or reduce packaging on things you do buy. Samphire Soaps’ naked soaps and solid bar shampoo soaps fit right in, here. Reuse - use reusable things like our beeswax wraps rather than cling film. And if you buy online from us you will doubtless have noted we reuse wrapping paper! Recycle - put your washed tins... and bottles, and your plastics and paper, in the appropriate recycle bin so that local industries can reclaim as much material as possible. But there are lots of other waste minimisation strategies that can add colour and joy to your life - Make and Mend, Reclaim, Upcycle... Make and Mend is a personal favourite. Spinning, knitting and sewing are wonderfully relaxing crafts. Traditional mending techniques like Boro Sachiko, darning and invisible mending are satisfying to master. Here at Samphire Soaps our Grow Free friends help us Reclaim bulk storage containers to house our liquid soaps. Giving things a new life by Upcycling is also rewarding, and often beautiful. Boomerang Bags sewn from reclaimed material, painted decorations on old kitchen wares and product tins that would otherwise head for the tip, see things return to use as serving bowls and small storage. A clever idea turns an unused mathom, an old Lazy Susan, into a handy wool swift to speed more making. Why don’t you share some photos of your waste minimisation tricks, in the comments? I’d love to see them! See more

23.01.2022 How to photograph your local Shrubby Samphires for next month’s Great Southern Bioblitz on iNaturalist... looking forward to seeing your pictures!

21.01.2022 Need some soap? Every little action helps...

21.01.2022 New line for Samphire Soaps AND for Daniel’s Mallee Magic. Wool wash! Traditional eucalyptus goodness for all your delicates. Daniel’s Mallee Magic lines are all available from Heart of the Parks at Tintinara. Samphire Soaps are available online on Facebook, or phone an order (0412077685) and drop into St Kilda to pick up.

19.01.2022 The migratory shorebirds are coming back to the saltmarshes of Gulf St Vincent, for the summer. And tomorrow I’ll be in the soap lab, making another batch of local seawater Marseille-style Savon de Mer. I’ll wave at the birds as I wander down to the tidal creek to get a bucket of seawater.

16.01.2022 Cutting bars of calendula soap today.

13.01.2022 Coco-olive cold process liquid soap paste starting to gel under its blanket, while the Castile (100% olive oil) cold process liquid soap paste is starting its long journey of dilution. Evening adventures in the soap lab...

11.01.2022 In the office end of the soap lab. I’m spoilt today. Special delivery of lunch by the best bloke. Who tells me that it smells great in here today . I’lll take the positive comment and try to ignore the sneaking feeling I have that he is comparing it to days when I am testing the sulfide content of mud in the other end of the lab...

09.01.2022 Over on the right is my usual White Tulip caustic soda for soapmaking. Empty. I normally buy this in Coles. It is reassuringly labelled as perfect for soapmaking and the checkout operators at my local don’t bat an eyelid when I buy a half dozen. But everything changes with coronavirus. After visiting more Coles than I knew existed, all completely empty of White Tulip, I tried Bunnings. Only one of their products was the requisite strength, and I suspect if I had tried to ad...d even one more to my basket the staff member who found it for me may have gone from wobbly to alarmed. It will all be converted to nice bars of soap in no time at all. The big bucket of potassium hydroxide at the back was the generous offering of a friend who knows I will use it to make liquid Castile soap for use in pump packs and foamies. Thanks Gaby! With your wonderful hand sanitiser, and my soaps, we will get this virus well and truly on the run. See more

08.01.2022 Been busy in the soap lab - new batches of calendula tallow soap, and two types of gardener soap (a tallow version and a vegan one). The empty curing racks were growling at me for spending all my time making liquid soaps!

06.01.2022 The curing rack is starting to fill up again!

05.01.2022 Lots of seawater marseille soaps ready to fill up the curing racks till Christmas - peppermint/rosemary and lemongrass/rosemary.

02.01.2022 A high-bubble liquid soap that will be especially good in foamies - coconut, olive and castor oil. Even the mother soap (freshly diluted from the soap paste I made a fortnight ago) is crystal clear...

02.01.2022 Coco-olive soap paste maturing in a tub, while the already diluted Castile liquid soap is sequestering to become clearer and even milder, in a couple of Jupiter Jars. Grandson Daniel’s stock of liquid soap for making Mallee Magic Foamwash is keeping them company. Daniel sells his foamies from The Heart of the Parks at Tintinara (https://www.facebook.com/HeartoftheParks) sadly closed at the moment in response to the coronavirus.

01.01.2022 Finishing the day with a batch of sailor soap and cutting up the gardener soaps. The bloke is right. It DOES smell amazing in here!

01.01.2022 Busy with botanical fieldwork in the samphires this week, but check out the bar of homemade soap on the sink! Taking Covid-19 handwashing on, in style, out in the swamps!