Come see us at Cowes Week

After months of preparation we are very excited to be putting the final touches to our Retail Stand on Cowes Parade today for the start of Cowes Week – a yachting extravaganza that takes place every August here on the Isle of Wight.

It is a real team effort getting everything organized for such a big event as Cowes, from creating the banners & flags you will see fluttering in the high street and on the marina, the design and layout of our retail unit, to the final task of physically building and merchandising our mobile store.  Then there’s organizing the team, who come from all areas of the company, that will be looking after and pampering our customers all week.  This is the part we all love best, meeting people and getting the chance to talk to everyone – sharing skincare stories and getting your feedback.

Come along if you can and meet our friendly team, enjoy a complimentary pampering hand & arm massage, have a personal skincare consultation and get advice on choosing the right products or gifts to take home. Plus, you can enter our prize draw to win a Liz Earle Signature Facial at our blissfully relaxing London Treatment Rooms.

Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances we've had to cancel Liz's book signing that had been organised for Tuesday 4th August at 4pm.

Superskin Body Cream is here!

It has been so exciting to launch not just one, but three new Superskin products, each one a complete winner in targeted skincare excellence. I am already completely hooked on our new Superskin Eye & Lip Treatment, (UK & IE) , which is definitely making a difference to my fine lines – and also to our new Superskin Bust Treatment (UK & IE). This is something fairly new for me, but already I’m finding it extremely beneficial. Today, I am beyond thrilled to announce the launch of the third addition to our new Superskin trio, the Body Cream. Why? Well, I have never in all my 30 years in the beauty world experienced such a fabulously rich, ultra-hydrating – yet completely non-sticky - body cream. It simply melts on contact, instantly transforming dry, parched and sun-dried skin into the most velvety soft, smooth, luminous skin from top to toe. And all this together with the divinely aromatic scent of pure, natural neroli oil, one of the most precious and highly prized of all the essential oils. It is unspeakably good.

As with so many of our formulations, the vital differences here are made with the highest quality naturally active ingredients. In the case of our new Superskin Body Cream, its prize-winning asset as far as I’m concerned has to be the newly available grade of shea butter from a lesser known sub-species, at the heart of this fabulous formulation. Pure shea butter is a very good ingredient for skincare and the commonest kind (Vitellaria paradoxa) comes from West Africa, which is the variety we use in our new Superskin Eye & Lip Treatment. West African shea butter has a fairly firm texture, which works particularly well in this formula. However, in new Superskin Body Cream, we have focused on a sub-species called Vitellaria paradoxa nilotica, which is lighter and finer in texture and so sinks more easily into the upper levels of the epidermis. This enables us to use more of it without overloading the skin or causing any kind of greasiness. In fact, we’ve been able to formulate with high levels of pure plant oils, including organic rosehip seed oil, cranberry seed oil and natural source vitamin E. The overall transformation of dry to beautifully smooth skin really does have to be experienced to be believed.

To track down this unusual but beneficial ingredient, our Botanical Research Manager Jennifer and I travelled across East Africa to Northern Uganda, home of the Rwot Ber Women’s Association. Here in this arid, dusty landscape the shea trees provide welcome shady relief from the relentless sun, as well as a valuable skincare crop. We recently started to work directly with these resourceful women, who hand-gather and sun-dry the shea nuts especially for us. They are then simply cold-pressed and filtered before being shipped by sea to arrive on our shores here in the UK. It is a wonderful association where everyone benefits – the community benefits from an important source of sustainable income that pays for education and medical care (in a country where there is no state provision); the global environment benefits from the trees being protected and valued – which in turn protects bio-diversity and prevents soil erosion; and lastly, we all benefit from a truly fabulous and completely natural skincare ingredient. To find out more, take a look at our video diary of the journey we made and our quest to bring back our latest, fine quality, naturally active ingredient.

Our magical botanicals…

When it comes to building relationships and understanding what a producer does, nothing replaces seeing it first hand. So last week I packed my Cleanse & Polish and headed south to France to visit three of our suppliers- by stacking visits like this, I minimise my CO₂ footprint.

Stepping off the plane from overcast Southampton, the first thing you notice is the heat. Grasse, on the French Riviera, is the birthplace of the French perfume industry. The world's perfume capital for centuries, Grasse produces more than two thirds of France's natural aromas for fragrance and flavours.

Seeing the processing sites, laboratories and trial fields can give me as much of an insight into the journey our botanical ingredients take as walking around the fields with farmers or the forests with collectors.

Trial fields are testing grounds not just for new varieties of plants, but also for new growing techniques. Our suppliers are as committed to doing right by our planet as we are, and in this case, it means trying to eliminate synthetic herbicides and pesticides from the growing cycle. These are the same kinds of practices you might be using on your allotment or in your garden: planting things that attract pests to distract them from the crop; planting pest magnets like roses with things the pests avoid like clary sage; and introducing biological control, the use of one bug (like ladybirds) to eat another, the bug you don't want.

Our next stop on the trip was to the supplier who produces our organic pear seed extract, the key ingredient in our new Superskin Eye & Lip Treatment (UK & IE). It has been shown that, used over time, pear seed extract can reduce the appearance of wrinkles. I have to own up to being fascinated by the level of detail our suppliers go into to collect information on our botanical ingredients. They are specialists in identifying activity, extracting the important molecules and producing an incomparable result for your skin. Not only have they done the scientific research to prove an ingredient's activity, they go one step further and involve a beautician in blind trials to make sure that the ingredient makes a visible difference on the skin.

Here at Liz Earle Naturally Active Skincare, we go to great lengths to source the best ingredients. Our suppliers have this same passion and it's captivating to see this focus and enthusiasm in person. I have returned to the Green House inspired, enlightened, and raring to go!

Discover the magic of Superskin

After the riotous success of our 2 fabulous new footcare additions - reassuringly back in stock after an overwhelmingly popular launch (even I couldn’t get a highly-prized tube of the wonderful Foot Repair Moisturiser (UK & IE) at one point) I should probably preface our next news with a popularity warning… I’m really delighted to announce the launch of not one but two fabulous new Superskin additions, both totally targeted to visibly improve the appearance of ageing skin. As regular readers will know, Kim and I first developed Superskin for our own (ageing!) skins, using the finest and most potent botanicals we could get our hands on for skin plumping and an age-defying, youthful appearance. Since its launch, Superskin Moisturiser has rocketed to the top of our own bestsellers list, together with its cherished counterpart, Superskin Concentrate. We’re such fans of these two powerful facial skin smoothers that we turned our attention to creating 2 brand new formulas to help other specific areas of our skins that so often show signs of ageing: eyes, lips and the bust area.

Superskin Eye & Lip Treatment (UK & IE) contains a new ingredient for us, organic pear seed extract, which we’ve found really does help reduce the look of fine lines and wrinkles. Interestingly, I’ve noticed that this rich-yet-light cream hydrates and plumps the skin around my eyes, whilst also seeming to ‘lift’ and tighten – a strange but true combination. If you have more mature skin do try it for yourself and see. Kim and I have both noticed visible improvements to the fine lines around our eyes and lips – and even across the forehead and any other area that needs a little filling in! I especially love the fact it does double-duty and works well as more than just an eye cream alone.

The second new addition to our Superskin family is Superskin Bust Treatment (UK & IE), especially developed to help improve the skin around the bust and upper chest area. You may have seen the photos in our current newsletter from the trip to Africa that our Botanical Research Manager, Jennifer, and I made to Malawi in search of the magical ‘sausage tree’ – otherwise known as Kigelia africana. We have combined this unusual ingredient, renowned for its skin-tightening properties, together with mangosteen, quince, white lupin and chlorella extracts – a fabulous cocktail of botanicals each with properties to help improve skin elasticity, firmness and tone. While we were in Malawi we also heard about new research into Kigelia africana showing its potential to improve areas of sun damage and hyperpigmentation. I was so impressed by this that I’ve started to use a little extra Superskin Bust Treatment on my upper chest and backs of my hands where I’m starting to notice brown ‘age spots’ form. Aside from the welcome skin-tightening effects, using a daily bust treatment has also made me more aware of skin changes in this area and I’ve found it a useful way to be more aware of any lumps, bumps and skin changes – a useful breast cancer awareness tip for all women.

As if these weren’t enough, there is even more excitement still to come with the divine Superskin Body Cream, an all-over ultra-moisturising skin treat which will be hitting our shelves later this summer (just in time to help keep parched summer skin extra-soft). Do watch out for this as I predict Superskin Body Cream being another runaway success (I for one will be stockpiling it). I’ll bring you preview news of this just as soon as it’s ready for you.