Welcome to Olive Street Mercantile!

This is the first blog post and I would like to use this opportunity to welcome you and to thank those of you who helped with my soap for Ukraine fundraiser. 

My sincere thanks to all of you who supported Olive Street Mercantile’s fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. We were able to donate $500 earmarked for emergency medical relief. Currently they have doctors in Ukraine and surrounding countries delivering much needed services and supplies. Please follow them on Instagram to see the good they do in the world. 

This was a special soap project for me. I have wanted to create a sunflower seed oil soap for some time now, and this was a good time to move on the idea. I used sunflower seed oil as the star of the show, adding olive oil (from the orchard), hand rendered tallow (by me) from local farms, coconut oil, avocado oil and an essential oil/fragrance oil blend.  

Having the base oils in place I thought about the scent. In these tumultuous times it needed to be uplifting. I chose grapefruit as a bright note, geranium for its benefits for anxiety and depression, and ylang ylang for its benefits in lowering blood pressure and promoting relaxation. These effects probably don’t come through after the process of saponification takes place, but the intention is there as well as the scent. 

I used oxide for color - opting of course for yellow and blue. I used some sunflower petals to decorate the tops. 

Then the label. I found an antique botanical sunflower drawing and using it for inspiration, created my own painting. I then shrunk it down and included it with my logo and description.  

Thanks for all the support, I am looking forward to shipping these out!  

Slava Ukraini!

All the best,

Nicole