Southland Soap

You, just as you are

3/25/2013

I know we sell hair color here, albeit natural, but one our biggest ideas is to work WITH what you have vs. just trying to change your hair color because you're unhappy with yourself AS YOU ARE NOW. Henna is great for that, enhancing and enriching your current hair color to one you love even more.
In that line of thinking, I'd like to give you a link to a wonderful blog written by a beautiful human being.
Anna Guest-Jelley is the founder of Curvy Yoga and you really should check out her writings, her videos and her program. I'm on her email list and am delighted each time I get a new email from her-something I can't say about the majority of email lists I'm on.
Here's the link to the blog post and video with a very deep question to think about today: http://www.curvyyoga.com/ftcm/can-you-accept-your-body-want-to-lose-weight/

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How much is that?

3/24/2013

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How many times have you wanted to mix up some henna for your hair, but you don't want to do the quantity listed but rather a custom amount?
Then, you have to convert measurements and if that's not something you do every day it can really be frustrating.
Below is a great guide to converting lots of measurements.
I'd like to credit the great folks here for this guide: http://visual.ly/common-cooks-how-many-guide-kitchen-conversions

The Common Cook's How-Many Guide to Kitchen Conversions infographic by ShannonLattin.

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Getting the mobile back

2/21/2013

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I've been just plugging along working to get the website back to where it will have a mobile version. More and more people are accessing sites and shopping with their phones and tablets, and without a mobile version that can be pretty clumsy to try to scroll through.
With any luck at all we can go live today! Not everything is going to be here but at least you can feed your hair addiction without interruption ;)

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Shipping, new scents and stuff like that.

4/25/2012

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I am such a blogger slacker. Tons of stuff is going on but do I think to write about it? Noooo......

Ah well. First off let's talk a little bit about shipping. I use the US Post Office for all my shipping. They're less expensive than other alternatives generally and with priority mail you'll have your package in just 2-3 days. I like it for international orders, too; that gets packages to folks in 6-10 days.

Something I don't like is how our shopping cart calculates postage on international orders. Domestic stuff the calculation is generally pretty right on but with international we've gotten all sorts of crazy numbers. The best idea I can come up with at the moment is to have international customers send me their "shopping list" to [email protected] and I will invoice you for your total with correct postage. Not the best solution but the best we can come up with right now.

I'm considering adding other scents and expanding Tropical Bliss to possibly include rose and lemon. Anyone who's tried the Bliss bars knows it's a dynamite shampoo that lathers like crazy and leaves your hair feeling wonderful. What do you think? Would you love more scents in that formula?

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Mixing henna colors

3/5/2012

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Well, I'm back in that phase of wanting more blonde, less red. Does anyone else want one color one month, another the next? Yes, I thought so.
Anyway to get to the point, I'd been mixing Chestnut and Blonde self-mix henna dye the last few times to make my grays more golden blonde. It was looking good, but towards the ends of my hair it was pretty red from using straight red henna self-mix (the Candy Apple). I do love the red, but when you want a change...hmmm.
So tonight I mixed 1/2 cup of Blonde and 3 heaping teaspoons of Brunette (gasp!) into another 1/2 cup container and filled that with Chestnut. I put it on all my hair, let it sit an hour or so and rinsed. I used the Brunette because of its high indigo content, to tone down the red. I worried a little bit that it might make it a lot darker but hey, hair grows, right?
Success! My base color is a great light brown with blonde highlights. I tried to snap a pic of it but my camera needed the flash indoors and on fresh henna about all you can see is shine!

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Those sneaky gray hairs are no match for pure henna!

2/23/2012

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OMG gray roots creeping in! Definitely time to do something about that! I was in a creative mood today and thought I'd play around with mixing an Options Henna Bar and some of the Self-Mixing Henna Dye and see how that did. I love both of them, but hadn't actually mixed them together to dye my own hair.

Nearly done slicing Options Blonde henna bar.

Here I've got a Blonde Options Henna Bar almost all sliced up. It would be safer to use a cheese cutter, but that would have involved washing mine so instead I used my favorite Old Hickory paring knife.
There's a little history with that knife. It was my mother's favorite knife and was passed down to me so it's pretty special.
Note that the slices are pretty thin; they'll dissolve a lot easier that way. Always always always cut AWAY from you if you slice soap! Did I mention to always cut in the direction away from you?

I've got the slices in the mixing bowl with my Chestnut henna self mix handy. I went ahead and cut up the whole Options Bar since I was going to do my shoulder length hair and hubby's hair and mustache. I had a lot left over.
I used a Blonde Options bar because last time I used straight Chestnut self mix henna and it was just a touch darker than I really wanted. The Blonde only contains cassia and gives a very light blonde color.
The Chestnut is an equal mix of cassia, henna and indigo. It gives a lovely dark blonde to medium brown, depending on your starting color.

Options Bar sliced and dissolving in hot water.

Instead of the usual 6 oz. of hot water that I would normally mix with an Options Bar, I went ahead and used 10 oz. because I was going to add 1/2 cup of self-mix henna dye. Before I add the self mix powder, I'm going to mix this on low speed until I'm sure all the Options Bar is dissolved. The reason for that is because the self-mix dye lowers the water temperature as it fizzes.
Pop chemistry question: Who can tell me why the temperature lowers?

Mixed and ready to apply.

Here's the final mix. The consistency is about like instant pudding. I put it on dry hair, which was very easy because dry hair is far easier to section than wet and since my scalp started out dry I could be sure I got every bit of the roots because I could feel the wetness of the dye.
We actually got involved in a movie and I left it on about 2 hours. I got fantastic color! :) The formerly gray hair is now a rich gold color, while the rest of my hair is a dark blonde.

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Hi Everybody!

2/19/2012

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How do you like the new site? I'm really pleased with it :)
Something pretty exciting is that with this site, we can have affiliates. What is that? An affiliate is a person who helps spread the word about a company's products and in return earns a percentage of whatever sales their efforts generated.
Southland Soap's products are pretty cutting edge, and I think the best form of advertising is from friend to friend.
Cheers!
Linda

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You, just as you are

How much is that?

Getting the mobile back

Shipping, new scents and stuff like that.

Mixing henna colors

Those sneaky gray hairs are no match for pure henna!

Hi Everybody!

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