Jules Of The Earth

Nobody tending a garden wants a bar of soap that smells like a spa apology.

I started making soap because my own skin was throwing tantrums and nothing I could buy would calm it. That's where all of this comes from. I needed something that worked, nobody was selling it, so I made it. I've never had any interest in the pretty version.

The gardener's soap came from the same place. Hands that have been in soil, roots and brambles don't need to be told they're precious. They need the dirt gone, and they need to still feel like your hands afterwards.

So it has pumice in it, which is volcanic rock, ground down and put to work. And it has plantain, Plantago major, the w**d that grows on the path you keep treading on and gets pulled out of the lawn every spring. Traditionally used on skin for a very long time. I like that the plant most gardeners curse is the one in the bar.

If there's already one on your sink, you know what I mean. If there isn't, Muck & Magic Gardener's Soap from Jules Of The Earth is £6.99, https://stillroomhq.co.uk/l/fyAu92H.

Pele doesn't ask permission before she moves. She was driven from one island to the next by a sister's jealousy, and each time, instead of shrinking to fit somewhere safer, she simply made new ground. Lava doesn't apologise for where it lands. It cools into something solid enough to stand on, eventually — but not before it has burned through whatever was there first.

There's a version of leaving that looks like destruction from the outside and feels, from the inside, like the first honest thing you've done in years. The marriage that ends. The job title you stop answering to. The body that won't run on the old rules anymore. Nobody claps for the fire part — it's the same unglamorous burning that sits underneath Jules Of The Earth, skincare and scent for people who'd rather be witchcraft-rooted than palatable. They wait for the garden that comes after, impatient for the soft photo.

Pele was never interested in being forgiven for the burning. She just kept making land.

Not modest. Just quiet about it, until now.

Fifteen years of formulating creams people actually use. Nine years with a herbal medicine degree sitting behind that. Long enough to read an ingredient list and tell you in under a minute whether a claim on the front of a jar is earned or just printed.

I used to make large batches of herbal creams for herbalists who needed something better than they could knock up themselves. I still do bespoke formulation and wholesale production. I've just been strangely quiet about saying so.

Not any more. If you need a cream, lotion or balm formulated properly — bespoke or wholesale — that's exactly what I do, and I'm good at it.

https://stillroomhq.co.uk/l/QEYPf4m, or just ask.

Mugwort — Artemisia vulgaris, is doing its last good work right now. By October it's gone leggy and silver-backed, seeding along verges and field edges before the frost takes it down, and this is the window for cutting it if you're going to.

Herbalists have reached for it for centuries as a bitter, used in small culinary amounts to help digestion along, and it's long been burned or dried as a smoking herb for its reputed effect on dreaming, whether that's chemistry or ceremony depends who you ask. Named for Artemis, which tells you most of what you need to know about its character: sharp, a bit wild, not interested in being tamed into a tidy border plant.

It's cut in dry weather, tied in loose bunches, hung somewhere dark and left alone for a couple of weeks. Rush the drying and it moulds. Leave it too long on the stem and the leaves go brittle and lose their silver.

I haven't formulated with mugwort myself at Jules Of The Earth, my East Yorkshire apothecary for handmade botanical skincare, scent and witchcraft-rooted stock, but Artemisia earns its reputation honestly, bitter, defiant, genuinely useful.

If you've landed here with no idea who I am — fair. Short version: I'm Jules, and Jules Of The Earth is an East Yorkshire apothecary and perfumery. I make handmade botanical skincare and scent, and I don't pretend the witchcraft side is a marketing flourish on top of it.

There's no pastel talk here. No lecture about fixing your skin, correcting your age, or becoming a better version of yourself. The day cream and night cream I make are built to just bloody work, nothing more performative than that.

The scent side goes further than a candle with a nice name. I'm building proper perfumes with a story behind them, ones meant to walk you through something, not just sit pretty on a shelf. That's still taking shape, so more on that another time.

I'm not new at this either. 15 years in, a genuine herbal medicine degree behind the apothecary bit, and a customer base that includes people who've bought the same cream from me for over a decade. I didn't build this to look spiritual. I built it because it's actually how I think.

If you're the sort who wants your skincare and your scent to mean something, rather than just smell nice and say nothing, you're probably in the right place.

Three of my long-running wholesale clients sell creams I formulate and produce for them under their own name. Not tweaked labels — proper briefs, costed and batch-tracked, repeat orders running for years. Most people only know me for the perfumes and the creams with my name on them. This is the bit I've gone quiet about for too long.

If you sell skincare under your own brand and want it formulated properly rather than picked off a catalogue shelf — or you're a herbalist who used to buy bulk creams and lost that supplier — that's exactly the conversation I want to have.

Full story's on the blog. https://www.julesoftheearth.uk/blog/bespoke-wholesale-production-jules-of-the-earth

Here's a number nobody puts on the shelf: cost per month, not cost per jar.

A well-known high-street cream, the kind that calls itself hypoallergenic, can run you two jars a month if it's not actually calming anything down. Reapplying because you still feel uncomfortable isn't a skincare routine. It's a cream that isn't finishing the job.

My Nourishing Day and Night Cream are £19.99 each. Used as a pair, most people get 6 to 8 weeks out of them. Work that out monthly and it undercuts the "premium" option by a long way — because when something actually works, you need less of it, not more.

Not skin-supporting. Not anti-bullsh*t either, just honest. A cream that does what it says, so you stop needing so much of it.

https://stillroomhq.co.uk/l/5WEQqus.