Reviews

Honey Pot Herbals Skin Care #MadeinCanadaBaby

Honey Pot Herbals is a family-run business located in southwestern Ontario crafting herbal products from homegrown herbs for the whole family. All their products are created and formulated by Registered Herbalist Joanne Kewageshig.

I was introduced to Honey Pot Herbals through our upcoming Made in Canada Baby event, and I recently had the opportunity to try out some of their handmade products for myself and share with you how much I love them!

Honey Pot Herbals makes herbal products from homegrown herbs for the whole family.

I’m a big fan of handmade products because you know each and every ingredient that goes into them. Joanne lists full ingredients for each of her products, and all her products are paraben free, phthalate free, SLS free, and silicone free. That transparency makes me feel confident in using these on my entire family, even on the baby.

Baby Breathe Easy Salve: Did you know that commercial vapour rub contains camphor and turpentine oil? Both of these are toxic if ingested and even too much topical use can cause ill effects. VapoRub also contains eucalyptus oil which is not recommended for children due to its high cineole content that can slow breathing.

Honey Pot Herbals’ handmade Baby Breathe Easy salve is a safer option. The active ingredients are peppermint and thyme (not essential oils, these are gentler infused oils) and lavender essential oil. I used this salve on my two-year-old’s neck, chest, and back when she came down with a summer cold last week. She had no complaints about stinging, and it seemed to ease her cough and congestion.

Skin Salve: I’ve been using Skin Salve on a very stubborn patch of dry, cracked, and itchy skin on the back of my right hand. I’m not a fan of the scent of neem oil, but I use it for its therapeutic properties. Neem oil is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-septic, and anti-fungal. All of the ingredients in this salve are excellent for nourishing and soothing dry skin, itchiness, and irritation, and it has definitely reduced the itch and helped the damaged skin to heal.

Both the salves come in tins with twist off lids which make them so much easier to open than the pull-off style of tin. The labels on the back have a made by date and best by date, so you know your product is fresh.

Honey Pot Herbals' Baby Breathe Easy Salve and Skin Salve

Sweetgrass Perfume Oil: This perfume oil comes in a rollerball applicator and is the perfect size to keep tucked in my purse. It smells like summer!

Chill Out Salve: The Chill Out Salve comes in a lip balm tube for messless application. Joanne formulated this salve especially to treat the itch of mosquito and bug bites. Unfortunately (fortunately?), we haven’t gotten any so far this year, so I can’t speak to how it works on mosquito bites. I have used it on itchy healing scratches on my girls though, and it seemed to help.

June 28 update: We went out to the Night Market this weekend, and I guess I was super yummy because I came home with half a dozen mosquito bites. I pulled out my Chill Out Salve, and almost immediately I could feel the itch fading away. It really works!

Sweetgrass Hair Conditioner: Tee has long, fine hair down to her waist, so I need to use conditioner on it every time. I’ve always just used a small amount of my own commercial conditioner on her hair, but when I saw Honey Pot Herbals had a sweetgrass conditioner, I knew I wanted to try something more natural for my girl. When I apply it to her hair, it doesn’t feel quite as slippery as store-bought conditioner, but after rinsing it does a good job at detangling and leaves her hair soft and smelling marvelous, just like sweetgrass.

Honey Pot Herbals sweetgrass conditioner

Because it’s made with fresh ingredients and uses only fermented radish root as a preservative, this also has a best before date. You can see the date it was made and the expiration date right on the label.

Handmade Soaps: Joanne also sent me a selection of her cold process handmade soaps to try.

Honey Pot Herbals handmade soaps

From left to right: citronella, gardener’s, pink raspberry lemonade, avocado lime, and sea salt.

  • Citronella soap contains citronella, lemongrass, and rosemary essential oils to help deter mosquitoes. It smells so good! I’m planning to take this with us on our camping trip this summer.
  • The gardener’s hand soap is scented with yummy cedarwood, orange, and vanilla essential oils, and the coffee grounds in the soap help exfoliate and scrub to get dirty hands extra clean.
  • I requested the pink raspberry lemonade soap for my girls to try because I knew they’d love the smell and colour. It does smell just like pink lemonade, but unfortunately the bar I received was more of a muted brownish beige instead of pink. They still like using “their” soap though.
  • The avocado lime soap is a Honey Pot Herbals bestseller. Made with mashed avocados, avocado oil, and French green clay, I’ve been using this one a lot. I really like the citrus essential oils scent.
  • Finally, this sea soap is made with extra coconut oil and sea salt for extra cleaning and exfoliating power. It feels very moisturizing, and I like the anise and lime scent. (P.S. The extra coconut oil make this really nice for shaving too!)

All of these and more of Joanne’s handmade herbal remedies and skin care products are available online in the Renegade Honey Herbs shop on Etsy.

Follow Honey Pot Herbals on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Win a Herbal Prize Pack!

Honey Pot Herbals is a proud sponsor in our massive Made in Canada Baby event where they are giving away a herbal prize pack worth $118 including:

  • 6 sample-sized soaps of choice
  • 2 one ounce salves of choice
  • free herbal consultation

Head over to the Made in Canada Baby giveaway to enter for this and 32 other fantastic prizes!

lavender

Love me some lavender!

Disclosure: I received sample items for review. All opinions expressed are completely honest and my own, based on my personal experience. Your experience may differ.

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2 Comments

  • these products sound really interesting and I love the fact that it’s a handmade and a Canadian firm too. 🙂

  • Thanks for this great review! I’m always looking for Canadian businesses to support. We are really getting into the joys and benefits of honey! 😉