Brackencraft and Bsoaps
My name is Bracken Thompson and I live in Northamptonshire in the UK. Brackencraft started when I spent quite a large amount of money in a well known high street store. I bought soap, shampoo, bath bombs and moisturisers. When I got home I looked at the ingredients and was shocked to discover these natural products were actually not natural at all. The soaps were all made using propylene glycol which is a petrochemical derived from crude oil.
I am by training and education a chemist so deciphering the ingredients was for me relatively easy. For most people I would suspect it would be quite bewildering. This means many people buy these natural products in good faith when in fact they are not really natural at all.
In the following months I was inspired to have a go at making my own soaps. I read loads of books and did lots of internet research. I started out making multi-coloured soaps using all sorts of wild and wonderful dyes. Blues, pinks, purples, green etc. After awhile it occurred to me that to use artificial colours when producing natural products was infact not quite right. So I started to experiment with natural dyes and extractions from herbs. Now I use camomile tea to give a yellow orange colour, green tea and nettle infusions to give a dark green colour and cinnamon spice to give a lovely brown to my cinnamon swirl soap. All my soaps have natural colours and contain no artificial preservatives, perfumes or anything else. They contain no SLS or parabens. Infact they are just about as natural as you can find anywhere. Where possible I also source organic ingredients but this is not on my labels since I am not always able to do this. I have my labels printed in batches of 1000 so it is unrealistic to differentiate between for example organic cinnamon spice and non-organic. For this reason I am unable to guarantee the entire product is organic at the current time.
All my Bsoaps range are made form Greek Olive oil, Coconut oil and Organic Palm oil from Columbia. Other than this the soaps are also enriched with such wonderful ingredients as Shea Butter, Evening primrose oil and essential oils. The exact ingredients does depend on the particular soap so please see the separate soap page for this information.
Since developing the soap range I have moved on to manufacture several other cosmetics products. All have similar ethics behind them in that they are as natural as it is currently possible to make. I take great pleasure in developing new products and am always open to new ideas so if you have anything you would like me to make please let me know and I will see what I can do. Most of my range were developed from ideas from other people which I have taken on board and made into wonderful natural cosmetics. Please feel free to email any ideas you may have to me.
Please also note that my products are not tested on animals and are suitable for vegans and vegetarians. Infact my entire range has been developed with the assistance of my familly and friends who were all willing volunteers and who have tried out and given feedback on each and every product and in so doing have helped me to improve them to the point where they are ready to go on the market.
If you do wish for any further information, please do contact me.
Best regards,
Bracken Thompson MChem, MRSC
All products have been independently safety assessed and the soaps are weighed using Trading Standards approved scales.