3 years

3 years ago today my beloved Mummy died after a long, long 5 years with cancer, chemo and all the horrors that go with that. There but for the grace of God..... but anyone who reads my infrequent blogging knows that I am still here... alive and kicking. But today's blog is not really about me.
Because I live in the house she spent her last days in I see her in everything and life has thrown me some curve balls lately so she is closer than ever.

My dearest Mummy, I have you with me with every stir of a pot, with every thread in a needle, with every clank of a glass. Your words spring from my mouth and my son looks at me like I am crazy, just like I must have to you....I have collected people in my life who say canny, and besom and twee and my chip pan is full of lard. My dishes aren't done, and I work too much but the food is good and I am teaching Luke to cook. Now because of a strange but neccesary turn of events in my business I will be following in the footsteps of Grump(my Mum's Dad for those readers who don't know), Uncle Gordon and you and with your old black hairdressing scissors in my hand I'll be cutting hair. There are lots of moments I wish you were here. There are lots of moments I know you are here and with every snip I have a feeling I will know more and more....

Hey Curly !! This event is for you!!!

Dear CurlFriends, Curls in Disguise, Chemo Curly's & WavyCurls too,

I am so crazily excited to tell you about this event I can barely type! My Friend, Curly Mentor, the original DevaCurl Angel Lorraine Massey is coming to see us at our boutique in Dundas! On October 25th Lorraine & her amazing staff "Curl-Man" David will regale us with curly tales, tips & tricks to help you live frizz free no matter how curly or wavy you are! Bring us your curls, whirls, nappyness and all & we'll teach you the magic of the Deva! Leave your blowfryers and your troubles at the door, we'll spoil you with curly deals & a refreshment or three!

Bring a canned good to donate to the local food bank & we'll trade you for one of our favourite bathing treats.

I cannot wait to see you & all your smiling faces to greet our guests! More details and RSVP contact below... Yours as always, Noëlle
Want to reserve your free spot at the CurlyCon?
You choose- October 25th 1:00pm or 3:30pm to reserve by phone 905 627 9379 or email ellenoire@ellenoire.com or use this link to the website...
Watch this video for more info on DevaCurl!

Take the ellënoire 14 Day challenge and help your dry skin get back on track!

The weather is starting to get a little cooler, the humidity is dipping a lot lower and the dry skin issues are starting to rear
their ugly cuticles…!

Even I, a person who preaches daily about the huge impact of exfoliating and moisturizing has become a wee bit lazy over the summer and have noticed that the skin flaking has started already. Nothing like a cold bit of weather to remind us to restart the routine of sloughing off the dead dry skin and slathering on creams to add moisture. What’s that Australian sunscreen slogan? Wiki says it goes like this: Slip-Slop-Slap is the name of a health campaign in Australia exhorting people to "slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, and slap on a hat". Let’s take that for your chemical free skin care routine and get you to slop-slough-and-slather with ellënoire, to keep your skin soft and perfect, chemical free, all winter long.

Can you imagine? Perfect skin all winter long, with no flaking, no itchiness, and no cracked fingers? It’s actually quite easy. You just have to commit. Let’s try to commit for 14 days shall we? I know I know, you’re busy. I hear your voice now, in the store in January with your cracked bleeding hands and your flaky itchy legs… I hear it every season. So let’s start now and save you the PAIN and the ITCH.

Me: “Put your shea butter (chemical free by-the-way) next to your bed and use it every night on your hand, lips face and as often as you can put it on your feet too”
Customer “I never remember” “ I don’t have time”
Me: “Well, then you’ll have dry cracked hands all the time then unless you sleep with shea butter, or any other rich butter on your hands with gloves on”
Customer: “I wish I had nice skin like yours”
Me: “well I put shea butter on my hands, lips and face every night.. and on my feet when I remember… you might wanna try that and see how nice your skin can be”

This one is a good, in the dead of winter scene in my store:
Me: “Where are your gloves”
Customer: “I forgot them at home”
Me: “You need a spare pair at work and in the car so your hands don’t get dried out. Hey, when was the last time you cleaned the snow off the car with no gloves on?”
Customer: “This morning, I was in a hurry, it wasn’t THAT cold”
Me: “Can you imagine anyone from Florida saying snow was not THAT cold? Stop that!”

Or with the men…
Male customer: “my legs are bleeding they are so itchy and dry”
Me: “What do you moisturize with?”
Male Customer: “Nothing”
Me: “Well there’s the problem. Winter skin is like a piece of unfinished wood that needs sanding and finishing, scrub off the rough flaky stuff, add a little oil and wax and it’s soft, shiny and healthier looking”
Male Customer: Light Bulb going off look in his eyes


Having no time is not a valid excuse. Like so many things it takes more time (and more OUCH!) to get things fixed than it does to take the steps towards prevention, AND this is another easy way to start out on our 90/10 rule. MAKE THE TIME!!! Or, your skin will not be as good as it could be. Here’s another way to “work it in” -to your life

My one shower per week treatment trick:
For me, this happens on Sunday mornings before I have to work. Pick a time that fits into your life to take care of your skin for these 3 things: slop-slough-slather
Get in the shower put the plug in the tub to soak your feet(yes, in a second you will know why), get your head and body wet and then:

1) Slop -Deep condition your hair once per week (only do the ends if your hair is really fine) put this on first, then do the exfoliation treatment on your skin.

2) Slough- Exfoliate head to toe at least once per week (twice in winter if you can) then scrub your body with one of our scrubs or a face cloth, then scrub your feet with something more aggressive.

3) Slather- Get out of the shower and slather a heavier moisturizer (like shea, or
body butter) onto wet skin once a week (or twice in the winter) head to toe. Don’t forget your hands! Finish by putting on your favorite robe on to let all that moisture soak in.

In your other baths or showers you can use a lighter lotion because your skin will be soooo awesome from the once or twice weekly deeper treatments. At bedtime, get a rich lotion or butter on your hands and lips EVERY NIGHT before they crack and bleed.

Seriously! If millions of people can commit to a challenge to eat yogurt for 2 weeks to “regulate digestion” or eat bran cereal because Captain Kirk does… can’t you commit to the ellënoire 14 day challenge to better skin?

We’ve even put it in a kit for you: try the ellënoire 14 day challenge skin care kit right here, or buy the separate pieces.

I can help, just ask!

Christmassy Scents?

What do you all think?
I am thinking about doing a line of just Christmas fragrances for room fragrances, powder rooms and things like that... Do you have any favourite Holiday fragrances?
Would a chemical free room spray fit in with your holiday house?
I want to know!

Why is it important to be chemical free?

It’s funny that I am completing this blog today given the work I had to do to calm a customer down a few moments ago. She had just read an article which directed her to a website that made her panic about all the “ingredients that cause cancer” in her cosmetic and household cleaning products. She told me the story of how she wept over throwing out all kinds of favourite products as she was terrified for her life and the lives of her children. She dumped a pile of products on my counter and begged for help so she could understand what she had to throw away.
I did manage to calm her down, and taught her a little about how to read labels, and offered better websites to look at and sent her on her way with some organic shower gel, unscented shea butter and some custom scented blood orange lotion to get her started with some simpler things.

In 1993 when I was making the plans to start a bath product company I was pretty naïve. I never thought much about the things that companies put in bath products; I was all in this for the fragrances. If I liked the scent, I liked the product. When I started manufacturing I got lucky and my first suppliers of raw materials were chemical free. I became aware of going chemical free early enough that lots of people thought I was bananas for researching it and insisting on it.

As soon as I started to import products from small companies like TerraNova (the original USA Body Shop until 1989) Lather and Virginia’s Soap I learned more and more about good ingredients and company integrity. The words “all natural” had only just started to be used and were mostly only used in small stores. I had been a Body Shop product lover since the early 80’s when it was already in Canada when we made the pilgrimage to the Toronto Eaton Centre to buy chunks of hand cut Glycerin soap and Banana Shampoo(The Body Shop did not come to the USA until 1989) so I knew that “no testing on animals” and natural ingredients were something that appealed to me. Little did I know many of the companies were not telling us the whole truth about the “natural” ingredients they were using.

The first step in becoming chemical free is to learn to read labels and ask questions, but as we should learn from the woman here this morning DON'T PANIC!
Over the years I have developed a list of chemicals that are on my avoid list(note I said avoid, not freak out and throw everything you own with these ingredients into a landfill, just don’t buy much more unless it falls into your 10% category):

Petroleum and all its other names and derivatives: Mineral oil, petrolatum etc- are pretty much useless for the skin and hair and come from non renewable resources. I prefer Shea Butter based body moisturizers like my
Double Rich Body Butter and vegetable oil based lip balms like the Badger Balm Lip balms to replace your petroleum based stuff.

Animal Fats –For most of history soap has been made with animal fat. It was cheap & readily available on the family farm, but with all the processing meat goes through and the hormones often injected into the animals not to mention the pore clogging behaviour of the animal fat (yes, pore CLOGGING) I would rather avoid using it to make my skin care. Vegetable Based soap is a good choice, Vermont soap is my favourite. Watch for my personally handmade soap in the store on occasion too!


Silicones –A man made chemical in many skin and hair products. Mostly useless for skin in a similar way as petroleum is, and especially useless for hair. A little in your makeup won’t hurt you, but man made chemicals should be avoided as much as possible.
For hair, the newest Deva product called Mirror Curls is the most awesome silicone shine product substitute I can imagine!

Parabens- preservatives that have been loosely linked to breast cancer, although the studies are inconclusive. But better safe than sorry (I already had Breast Cancer, I don’t wanna go there again) as a precaution many companies like ours have decided to avoid them in their products. Use products that use alternative preservatives like our ellënoire Boutique Brand Lotions or ask me about products that need no preservatives!


Sulfates – cheap detergents found in shampoo, toothpaste, bodywash, bubble bath, dish soap, and engine degreasers. Frankly, anything used in engine degreasers really shouldn’t be in the bulk of your skin care products. Did you know these harsh detergents dry your skin/scalp out so much you could have a skin condition that would never have existed 100 years ago? You should try a soap or shampoo that actually hydrates as it cleans, or at least leaves natural, vegetable based moisture behind that the skin can absorb. The occasional bubble bath is fine and falls into my 90/10 rule of product and ingredient choices. Try a Deva Hair and Scalp Cleanser (not just for curly hair, just ask me for more info) like NoPoo or LowPoo, and an Organic Shower Gel

I hope this helps, I know this is all kind of hard to understand. Trust me, I have to do my research all the time to make sure I know what I am talking to you about and sometimes I still cannot believe that companies that want us to trust them are using ingredients that could be harmful, or cause skin reactions just because they are cheap... but skin care is a huge industry and you have to do your best to find companies you can go to to ask questions so you can decide who to trust.
I will always be here to help, just ask...

15 years and counting...

Every day someone asks me or my staff one or more of these questions:
Is your store new?
Do you have any Canadian made products?
What do you mean you can custom scent my products?

I wonder sometimes how to convey all that ellënoire is and has been in a single marketing program or if that is even possible.

Today, I will tell you the history of ellënoire. Many of you know it, some of you have no clue who we are or how we came about.
In the summer of 1993, an old friend of mine(who, FYI I call every Christmas and blame for my many sleepless nights) listened to me whine about how miserable I was with my life: waitressing to pay the bills and taking night courses in anything I could think of that might lead to a career in something I enjoyed doing. Cake Decorating, Wedding Cake Decorating, Pattern Drafting, Manicurist, Modelling, Makeup Artistry...and on and on..
At the end of my ranting, she simply said... (this is my memory's version of her quote) "Why don't you just do that perfume/soap thing you keep talking about? That store in Vermont you tell us all about every time we go shopping and then drag us into soap store after soap store, you keep saying you wanted to do something like that.."
So, without blinking I decided she must be right, if I talked about it all the time I must want to do it...and then I spent the rest of 1993 doing research about opening a business similar to a store I fell in love with in Middlebury, Vermont while I was in college there.
In 1994 after much navel gazing and talking about my "research" I finally did it. I opened ellënoire Just near to Christmas in my living room in Toronto I had 11 essential and fragrance oils, a gallon of lotion, a gallon of massage oil, a gallon of green bubble bath, some bottles, labels and ribbon all dressed up on a pretty shelf ready to make my fortune.... 15 years ago ...WOW!
So, no my store is not new.

The thing that always kills me about the "Made in Canada" question is that the original plan for the ellënoire company was that I was going to make my own products and that was all I was going to sell. Handmade, Custom Scented bath products and some
Custom Blended perfume, that was the business plan. That was until I got my first order. I realized very quickly that one person could not make all the products if orders came in too quickly. I had orders for 10 Christmas gift baskets my first week (I was a bartender with all male clients, it wasn't that hard) So, I looked at lines I liked in the magazines and called their head office and ordered them. I imported from all over the world, having no clue that at that time very few companies my size were importing anything. Somehow in there, I became known for a lot of the rare and hard to find cosmetic and skin care brands you saw in the magazines. Sephora and all it's copy cats were just a twinkle in someones eye when I was bringing in other American and French lines to support the joy I got when making my own products. But no one understood what I was trying to do with my own products so they mostly bought the brand names.
I was the first in Canada to bring in Carol's Daughter, DevaCurl, Bleu-de Lectoure, Smith & Vandiver, TerraNova and on and on. I was so naive I did not realize this was not normal, I just bought what I liked. So, we became known as the store that sells a lot of interesting brand names and then people seem shocked when they learn that we make our own products.
There are lots of days when I think it would be easier just to sell other companies' products but I know, at the end of the day I would be bored silly just ordering things and selling them. Without some sort of creative outlet in my life I go crazy and making perfumes and skin care products is one of my favourite things.
Buying and selling "Ready to Wear" is easy...creating "Haute Couture" is not, but RTW is not my style.. ;)
So, yes our primary Made in Canada line is ours, handmade for 15 years from bottles and jars and labels and wooden spoons and stained recipe cards and my bare hands. Chemical Free, Paraben Free, Petroleum Free, Silicone Free, almost Nut Free(not certified, but no peanut or almond oils go into my handmade things)Sulfate free(except at Xmas, I bring in some bubble bath.. please see my 90/10 rule to see why)and if you want it to be.. my line is 100% scent free.

Which brings us to the custom scenting issue. When I answer this question I feel like I am teaching an English as a second language class. I say "I will custom scent your bath products for you" Which is met with a blank stare more than you can imagine.... which I don't know what to do with... How are the words "custom scent" hard to understand??

So, here is what the dictionary says:
custom –adjective
- made specially for individual customers: i.e. custom shoes.
- dealing in things so made, or doing work to order: a custom tailor.

scent
verb (used with object)
- to fill with an odor; perfume.


The slightly longer explanation is: All of the ellënoire product line is made unscented, quite on purpose. You can buy the product as is, or you can pick from our selection of essential and fragrance oils and we can "custom scent" your bath products as you like them. 15 years ago, people thought I was NUTS( wait we are nut free), BANANAS!!! No one had a clue what I was talking about

So, in order to make a living we allowed the other brands to get the name ellënoire out there and we simply continued to make our line. 4 websites, 4 cities, 6 locations, hundreds of bath bombs, lotions, custom scents, labels and ribbons and year after year of realizing that so many of the products we were bringing in were inferior to many of our own the ellënoire FINALLY outsells all our other lines. We only keep lines that we ADORE and now they complement our own products, and every day we happily struggle to keep up with the demand on us to make more and more products.

In the last 5 years we have added many organic ingredients to our products, we bring in a large selection of essential oils, absolutes and concretes for the Natural Perfumery service that I offer. Bloggy readers know I have started to make soap, hair oils, and many other things. Later this fall our mens line will be complete & on the website and by Christmas our facial line will be ready for you to try.

So all the buzz words you see on skin care labels now: Made In Canada, Locally Made, Chemical Free, Scent Free, All Natural, Handmade, Made with Essential oils, blah blah blah is nothing new. Not to ellënoire. That is how I started it all, in my living room in 1994 and it is how we remain.

How do you explain 15 years experience in a couple of lines? You don't. You stir 15 years experience into every product and hope that one day someone finally gets it.

The Day I made my first Bomb....or... The best Bath Bombs in the World (or we think so anyway!)

There was a time when the Ellënoire boutique was without Bath Bombs.... strange thought I know... but I used to be a Bath Bomb Boycotter...
Let me explain. I had tried the illustrious bath bomb, and found the things to be mostly annoying because they just fizzed in the water, left a bunch of dead flower petals in my tub and a little fragrance. There were some that I liked the smell of, but mostly... not worth the money for me.
Until, my lovely friend Yolande told me that she and many of her friends in Chicago were ordering Bath Bombs from a place in Canada and that she wanted me to make them for her. So, we booked a home party(yes, I still do them)a month or so hence and I taught myself how to make Bath Bombs. I jumbled the recipe around for a few weeks until I realized that I could make them moisturize my skin as well as fizz!!(Keep in mind, this was 2001, there were no you tube videos or soap blogs to teach me any of this)
Miss Yolande was a gorgeous black woman who took great care of her skin, as did her many girlfriends. The one thing for sure that the black culture understands is how important it is to keep skin moist.... I wish my white clients understood this as deeply!! So, selling a moisturizing bomb to this crowd was a breeze and they lapped them up! I was hooked on making them, and they were hooked on using them!
The scent recipes were great fun too! Napoleon & Josephine(made with their fave scents),Wake Up Angel!(the morning blend, named for my friends song), Slink( the Sensual Blend) Get out the Kink (the Sore Muscle blend) Hormone Sally(the PMS calming blend), Fruit Salad ( yummy! yummy!)and on and on it went.

At the time, our bombs were made in my house basement by the 100's and sent or driven down to Chicago regularly. Once we opened the current store location, we started making them here in the store. The ellënoire ë-bomb is now a top seller in the store and on the website. Have you ever tried one?
NO! I don't mean anyone else's Bath Bombs.. I mean mine!
Here's what you do: Pick a time when you need a little time to read, or soak sore muscles, have some deep thought... or think about nothing... and run a deep soaking bath at your favorite temperature and get in... put in the bath bomb you chose at the store(or on the website) ... yes, you use the whole thing... no, don't even try to break it... we make tub fizz ..the chunks of broken bath bomb bits for you frugal types...
Now, just sit in the tub and let the soft scented water cover you, soothe your sore body and soften your skin. At your leisure, climb out of the tub, wrap yourself in a robe or big towel and pat the water off. If you are lucky enough to have someone there to rub your back your skin is primed with natural and organic oils. Or simply stay wrapped up until your skin has absorbed the oils.
We are making more tonight- let me know which ones you want to try!
Sign up for my Newsletter to see specials on Bath Bombs coming soon!