Precious Skin Elixirs - New Shop Spotlight

This months "New Shop Spotlight" features Marissa from Precious Skin Elixirs. Marissa provides natural face and body products and offers a variety of masks, creams, serums, and cleansers. Her products are made in small batches and from the heart.

Let's hear what Marissa had to say about her shop...

Why did you decide to start Precious Skin Elixirs?
I started my shop after years of making my own skincare products and realizing there is a growing need for 100% natural, preservative free skincare solutions.

What does your shop name, Precious Skin Elixirs, means to you?
I worked with precious and semiprecious gemstones for years - many of my products bear the name of my favorite gems.  I believe the skin is extremely precious.  It's an organ, after all, and deserves much more respect than we give it by slathering on products with ingredients we can't pronounce and certainly would never put in our bodies!

How are you inspired to create your products?
Inspiration for my products comes from various sources.  Maybe a friend is having a particular skin issue and so I start thinking of oils and herbs that would be helpful.  That's actually how the "Garnet" honey scrub was created.  Nature is a constant source of inspiration.  There are so many solutions in nature - nothing we need to chemically alter or synthesize.  The gift of well being is all around us...and that's pretty cool.

What is your favorite item in your shop?
It's difficult to choose a favorite product, but my life saver is the 24 karat gold cream.  I live in New England and winter is so harsh on the skin!  Even my little ones avoided chapped faces and hands with this cream!

What is your favorite part about running an Etsy shop?
My favorite part is fulfilling an order - from making the products to packaging it up in pretty wrapping.  I imagine sending out healing and love to my customers.  I try to do everything this way - with love, gratitude, and intention.

What is the biggest lesson you have learned from starting your shop?
Patience and trusting that if I create with honesty and integrity that the buyers will come and share my vision of supporting one's health through the use of natural products  And I mean ALL natural - not just the "97% natural" we sometimes see on the popular brands.

In speaking with Marissa, it is clear that she pours her heart and soul into her products.  Precious Skin Elixers has a wonderful selection of items for all people.  I especially love that the shop offers trial or travel sizes!

Follow the link to visit Marissa's shop - Precious Skin Elixirs


Images used with permission from Marissa and Precious Skin Elixirs

July Photography Tip - Bokeh

Introducing bokeh or good quality blur into the background of your images can be a wonderful way to to evoke emotion and focus the eye of your viewer.

The image above uses bokeh to draw the eye to the gorgeous, spring Pear Tree flowers in the foreground.

So how do you achieve this effect in your images?  The short answer is that you want to use a wide aperture when shooting.  Many lenses can achieve f/2.8 or wider (meaning lower numbers such as f/1.8 or f/1.4) for this effect.  

Shooting in manual or aperture priority mode is helpful.  For beginners especially, aperture priority mode will allow you to set your aperture without having to worry about what shutter speed to select.  In manual mode, you will need to set both the aperture and shutter speed.

If your lens is not fast enough to use these wide apertures, placing more distance between your subject and the background can do the trick as well.  In the image below, the subject (rope) was placed 100+ feet away from the background (the ocean), creating a beautiful blurred background.

Any questions on how to make this work for you?  Give me a shout out in the comments!