Sprig Top 10

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Sprig Top 10

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Sprig Top 10

Sprig Top 10

what is one recent green obsession that you just can't live without?my husband and i are very passionate about composting. i have a vegetable garden and i'm trying to grow a lot of the veggies we eat. we can't throw any food scraps out at our house. if i accidentally throw something in the trash that can be composted, my husband gets very upset—he's kind of a compost cop.do you have any eco-sins?i don't buy green clothes. i often think that i should really start to figure out which designers i like that are making green textiles and organic clothing, but i just haven't done it. the problem is that it takes too much time to figure it out. if it was readily accessible at the places i'm shopping, i'd totally buy it.you just appeared on qvc to sell the pharmacopia line. how did you get hooked up with that? and how did it go?yes, we were just on for the first time. the buyers were so excited about the products. this is huge because it really shows how the mainstream is embracing the natural market. a few years ago, i couldn't have imagined that qvc would have been interested in pharmacopia.what is aromatherapy?we look at aromatherapy two ways: physical aromatherapy and sensory aromatherapy. sensory aromatherapy is when you smell essential oils and they affect your mood and your emotions. then there's the physical aromatherapy, where you put the oils on your skin and they go into your bloodstream and actually physically affect you. for example, rosemary essential oil is an anti-inflammatory and neroli has anti-anxiety benefits.what makes an essential oil aromatherapeutic grade, like the oils you're using?i don't think there's an official grading system, but essential oils are sold based on how much processing they've had. sometimes, oils have been adulterated, which means extenders have been added to them. this type of oil is often used in cheaper perfumes and soaps. we use essential oils that we know are pure and have been handled in a certain way that retains their aromatherapeutic propertieswhy did you choose the four scents—ginger, rosemary, citrus, lavender—that your products are based on?i took aromas that are fairly common in aromatherapy but i made my own sort of blends with them. for example, i love ginger and i've always loved its healing qualities. i think it's an amazing, really tonic herb. so i combined that with other things i really like, such as lemongrass and citrus, to make it a bit more relaxing and soft because ginger can be kind of intense.speaking of relaxation, the holiday season can be a very stress-inducing time of year. what do you do to decompress?i like to give myself a foot massage at night. it's such a simple thing to do and it's so relaxing. i use our lavender lotion to keep my feet soft and i just do a quick rubdown all over each foot. if my feet are really dry, i'll use the hand cream on them. it really softens your skin but it's not quite as thick, so it really works in a massage.where else are your products being sold these days?the direction we're going into is spas, hotels, and specialty gift shops, and not as much in the natural foods stores. there are all these stores that don't carry natural products and all of the sudden they're just craving that. we were pretty well positioned to go into those kinds of stores because we have beautiful packaging and great ingredients. i feel proud that we’re the first natural brand that a lot of these places have decided to carry.what inspired you to create pharmacopia?it started with my own health problems. i was a graphic designer for 20 years and was very stressed with that job. i was starting to burn out when i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. i was in a lot of pain, my memory was really bad, i was having a really hard time functioning cognitively, and i was having trouble sleeping. so i took about 6 months off from work to just care for myself and slow my life down. that's when i started to look at everything that i was eating and everything i was putting on my body. i did a lot of detoxifying and changing my lifestyle and i started to feel better. i also started to study aromatherapy and herbalism. i'd always been interested in plants, but more from a gardening point of view. as i studied herbal medicine, i became so intrigued by the healing qualities of plants. when i saw that there were very few brands that really capitalized on these therapeutic powers, i started to mix my own products and then design bottles for all of the things that i was making. i'd take samples to my friends and they'd say, 'this is the best lip balm i've ever tried,' or 'this is the best body oil.' because i was really ready to do something new, something that was more meaningful to me, i just went for it.why do you think using natural skincare products is so important?i think a lot of people are aware of the importance of eating healthy, clean food, but they don't really think about what they're putting on their skin. your skin is your body's largest organ and what you put on it goes directly into your body. i think there's a statistic about how 60% of what you put on your body goes into your bloodstream. just think about a trans-epidermal patch: you put it on your skin and you're delivering medicine directly into your blood stream. it doesn't go through your liver or all the other places that food does to help break it down and get rid of bad stuff. with personal care products, this is one area of your life where you really have some control and you can start by just buying pure things, buying products that keep you from putting bad stuff on your skin.without a true definition of what makes a product natural, how do you differentiate the pharmacopia line from other "natural" and organic brands?we're actually working to reformulate our products so that we can get them certified by the british soil association [which is the equivalent of the usda in europe] because they have organic standards for body care and the usda does not. anything with the usda organic seal means that it meets the food standards. that's hard to do with a lot of the ingredients we use.how can consumers tell if the skincare products they're using are actually natural, or if they're just marketed as such?you have to get used to reading labels and know that they're written in descending order. the first handful of ingredients on the list is what a product is mostly made up of. a product could have some really good-sounding stuff in its ingredient list, but if it's at the bottom, there could be less than .01% of those ingredients in there. they put all of those wonderful things on the label just to make the product sound more natural. people should also look for products that are paraben-free. when we first started, we used parabens because they were thought to be safe, but as information surfaced that parabens are mildly estrogenic and persist in breast tissue, we decided to become paraben-free.

what is one recent green obsession that you just can't live without?my husband and i are very passionate about composting. i have a vegetable garden and i'm trying to grow a lot of the veggies we eat. we can't throw any food scraps out at our house. if i accidentally throw something in the trash that can be composted, my husband gets very upset—he's kind of a compost cop.do you have any eco-sins?i don't buy green clothes. i often think that i should really start to figure out which designers i like that are making green textiles and organic clothing, but i just haven't done it. the problem is that it takes too much time to figure it out. if it was readily accessible at the places i'm shopping, i'd totally buy it.you just appeared on qvc to sell the pharmacopia line. how did you get hooked up with that? and how did it go?yes, we were just on for the first time. the buyers were so excited about the products. this is huge because it really shows how the mainstream is embracing the natural market. a few years ago, i couldn't have imagined that qvc would have been interested in pharmacopia.what is aromatherapy?we look at aromatherapy two ways: physical aromatherapy and sensory aromatherapy. sensory aromatherapy is when you smell essential oils and they affect your mood and your emotions. then there's the physical aromatherapy, where you put the oils on your skin and they go into your bloodstream and actually physically affect you. for example, rosemary essential oil is an anti-inflammatory and neroli has anti-anxiety benefits.what makes an essential oil aromatherapeutic grade, like the oils you're using?i don't think there's an official grading system, but essential oils are sold based on how much processing they've had. sometimes, oils have been adulterated, which means extenders have been added to them. this type of oil is often used in cheaper perfumes and soaps. we use essential oils that we know are pure and have been handled in a certain way that retains their aromatherapeutic propertieswhy did you choose the four scents—ginger, rosemary, citrus, lavender—that your products are based on?i took aromas that are fairly common in aromatherapy but i made my own sort of blends with them. for example, i love ginger and i've always loved its healing qualities. i think it's an amazing, really tonic herb. so i combined that with other things i really like, such as lemongrass and citrus, to make it a bit more relaxing and soft because ginger can be kind of intense.speaking of relaxation, the holiday season can be a very stress-inducing time of year. what do you do to decompress?i like to give myself a foot massage at night. it's such a simple thing to do and it's so relaxing. i use our lavender lotion to keep my feet soft and i just do a quick rubdown all over each foot. if my feet are really dry, i'll use the hand cream on them. it really softens your skin but it's not quite as thick, so it really works in a massage.where else are your products being sold these days?the direction we're going into is spas, hotels, and specialty gift shops, and not as much in the natural foods stores. there are all these stores that don't carry natural products and all of the sudden they're just craving that. we were pretty well positioned to go into those kinds of stores because we have beautiful packaging and great ingredients. i feel proud that we’re the first natural brand that a lot of these places have decided to carry.what inspired you to create pharmacopia?it started with my own health problems. i was a graphic designer for 20 years and was very stressed with that job. i was starting to burn out when i was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. i was in a lot of pain, my memory was really bad, i was having a really hard time functioning cognitively, and i was having trouble sleeping. so i took about 6 months off from work to just care for myself and slow my life down. that's when i started to look at everything that i was eating and everything i was putting on my body. i did a lot of detoxifying and changing my lifestyle and i started to feel better. i also started to study aromatherapy and herbalism. i'd always been interested in plants, but more from a gardening point of view. as i studied herbal medicine, i became so intrigued by the healing qualities of plants. when i saw that there were very few brands that really capitalized on these therapeutic powers, i started to mix my own products and then design bottles for all of the things that i was making. i'd take samples to my friends and they'd say, 'this is the best lip balm i've ever tried,' or 'this is the best body oil.' because i was really ready to do something new, something that was more meaningful to me, i just went for it.why do you think using natural skincare products is so important?i think a lot of people are aware of the importance of eating healthy, clean food, but they don't really think about what they're putting on their skin. your skin is your body's largest organ and what you put on it goes directly into your body. i think there's a statistic about how 60% of what you put on your body goes into your bloodstream. just think about a trans-epidermal patch: you put it on your skin and you're delivering medicine directly into your blood stream. it doesn't go through your liver or all the other places that food does to help break it down and get rid of bad stuff. with personal care products, this is one area of your life where you really have some control and you can start by just buying pure things, buying products that keep you from putting bad stuff on your skin.without a true definition of what makes a product natural, how do you differentiate the pharmacopia line from other "natural" and organic brands?we're actually working to reformulate our products so that we can get them certified by the british soil association [which is the equivalent of the usda in europe] because they have organic standards for body care and the usda does not. anything with the usda organic seal means that it meets the food standards. that's hard to do with a lot of the ingredients we use.how can consumers tell if the skincare products they're using are actually natural, or if they're just marketed as such?you have to get used to reading labels and know that they're written in descending order. the first handful of ingredients on the list is what a product is mostly made up of. a product could have some really good-sounding stuff in its ingredient list, but if it's at the bottom, there could be less than .01% of those ingredients in there. they put all of those wonderful things on the label just to make the product sound more natural. people should also look for products that are paraben-free. when we first started, we used parabens because they were thought to be safe, but as information surfaced that parabens are mildly estrogenic and persist in breast tissue, we decided to become paraben-free.