Holiday Collections

I'm so excited about the new things coming in this week! Check out our Winter shop for the selection.

We received the China Glaze 'Tis the Season nail polishes earlier this week, and they're already a hit. If you haven't seen swatches for these yet, I highly recommend checking out those featured on All You Desire or Scrangie's blog. A great mix of classic and whimsical shades.

We're also now featuring OPI for sale to our online retail clients, as an extension of our in-house service. We still have a bit of both Burlesque and the Swiss Collection left.

The Villainess winter items are juuuust around the corner. Literally. They're sitting in the Montreal postal sorting center, and I was expecting them to be delivered today, until I realized that all services are closed due to it being Memorial Day. They should, however, be in by tomorrow. If you want to have an advanced peek, they are listed on both the Winter page and the Villainess LE page.

EDIT (Nov. 12): And they're in!

I am personally really looking forward to Just Desserts - it smells like a vaguely malicious Dreamsicle, if soap could have ill intent. ;-)

No teasers yet about the Arcana holiday update, but we'll let you know as soon as we know. =)

Shipping Changes and New Things For Fall

Canada Post is many things, but inexpensive isn't one of them. We're always looking to bring you guys wonderful, unique products at affordable prices, and working out the shipping has been challenging, to say the least. (Never mind the irony that it's less expensive to ship very light packages to the States, than it is to our neighboring province.)

Please check out the new rates here.

For international orders, please e-mail us for a quote.

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In other news, we finally have the fall collections from both Villainess and Arcana! Returning favorites and some new yumminess to indulge in. =)

My personal favorites?

Arcana's Holy Terror (soap and perfume) for its beautiful, heavy resins and beeswax sweetness. EDIT: Wow, we're officially out of Holy Terror soap!

Cobwebs from Villainess - possibly the most gorgeous-looking and seasonally apropos soap ever. It's also available in some experimental sizes and formats - a 2ml corked dram bottle of perfume, and a ceramic candle. This is not a sweet, foody fragrance (which abound in both collections), but rather something that encapsulates the darker aspects of the season.

BPAL - Trading Post Soaps

Sometimes the convergence of two things is just seamless. Such is the case with the soaps from Black Phoenix Trading Post.

Once upon a time, many years ago, Beth from BPAL made her own soaps. Being the prolific, highly inventive lady that she was, and soaps being the time-consuming creature that they are, eventually the BPAL soaps passed on into the mist to make way for other enticements - though they were much missed. A few years ago, BPAL teamed with a local soapmaker to produce a small line of soaps. As lovely as these were, they were not meant to be, and once again we suffered a dearth of BPAL-infused suds.

Enter Villainess. With years of soapmaking under her belt, Brooke is a master of her craft (as I have drooled over in a previous post). Her soaps are not just aromatic and cleansing - they works of art in and of themselves, complex riffs on olfactory concepts, and lushly lathersome to boot.

For these two ladies to team up was only natural, though the result has been nothing short of sublime.

Bear witness to The Most Perfect Soap Ever Made:

Ok. That might be touch of hyperbole. But only a touch - it really is an awesome soap.

First, a quick shout out for the label-design. It's not an easy thing to combine two very established aesthetics, as both BPAL and Villainess have, and come up with something that stands so beautifully on its own. Kudos extended to the lady behind Elixireleven for the gorgeousness.

Scented with BPAL's Shub-Niggurath perfume (a blend that was once a limited edition, with original bottles that fetched high sums on ebay), it is a soap unlike most people have likely experienced. It is smooth, spicy incense that once lathered up lingers deliciously in the bathroom and on your skin - it is so persistent, that you almost don't need perfume for several hours later. And of course the soap itself is a Villainess standard - that fabulous, slice-of-fudge texture, and a soft, silky lather that leaves the skin satiny-clean.

This is not the kind of soap that you toss in the shower for a quick, refreshing boost in the morning. This is the kind of soap that invites you to luxuriate, to marvel at the sheer voluptuous potential in an act as basic as bathing.

It is, simply put, smexy soap. And I officially need several hundred bars to stockpile.*

*And it is conserves very well over time. Soap does not, of course, have an infinite shelf-life, but Villainess soaps store very well - up to year, easily.

Villainess Soaps- An Introduction

One of my favorite indie bath companies - run by one of my favorite people.Villainess  is an artisanal soap e-tailer like few others. Unlike many soapmakers who rely on standard, reliable fragrance formulations, Brooke blends up original scent blends to evoke unique concepts, and then translates them into soaps, scrubs, lotions and perfumes. Her style has always been edgier than cute, but always with an undertone of humour - gunmetal-Victorian chic that's just this side of steampunk.



Her soaps are absolutely to die for. Take Krakatoa:

Krakatoa - Flashes of exotic foliage - coconut, banana, papaya, dewfruit, mango - amidst slightly more domestic fruits - nectarine, red apple, peach, plums, pears, and raspberries - and an explosive burst of citrus - mandarin orange, pineapple, lemon, and tangerine. Light musk, salted driftwood, sugar cane, and dry sandalwood work to ground our island paradise.



Or in other words: NOMNOMNOM.


It is succulent and refreshing and sweet and brisk. It's neither saccharine nor cloying, just perfectly juicy, the faint wood and musk notes keep this from being a tropical fruit punch nightmare. It's great in the summer, and then again in the winter, to remind you of summer. 


Like all  Villainess soaps, the lather is silky-soft and as emollient as you're likely to get in bar soap, without sacrificing that 'clean' feeling. (Very emollient soaps often feel like they're leaving an ooky layer behind on my skin. With these, my skin just feels soft, not slick or overly squeaky.)



Or try Chloroform:

Chloroform is listed as having notes of "crisp cucumber, sickly sweet green vegetation, a dizzy whiff of violets, mind-numbing plum, and a stiff shot of anesthetising vermouth." To me the big standouts are the wet greens and the plum, juicy and sharp and crispy. Not my usual thing, but it's very refreshing, like napping in freshly cut crass.


Of course, the perfumes are equally amazing. As evocative as the scent-blends are in soap form, they are doubly so as actual 'fumes. And also, the CUTEST BOTTLES EVER.

Of course, I didn't even get to the wonderful scrubs! I'll save that for Part Two.