From Blossom to Balm:

Our skin care formulas feature organically grown ingredients from our gardens in the Finger Lakes Region of New York State.

All products are handcrafted in small batches and packaged in recyclable or home-compostable containers.

We test new items only on willing friends and family, never on animals.

Thirsty Face and Thirstier Facial Serums

handmade natural soap

The OHL Story

We grew from tinkering in a tiny home kitchen and backyard garden on the Connecticut shore

to formulating precious wild and cultivated ingredients in beautiful Naples, New York.

Here’s our story in a nutshell. We’re glad you stopped by!

onhandlotions

natural skin care + body care ::: 100% handmade from blossom to balm in Upstate New York

Dahlia and sunflower petals are skin safe and edib

Dahlia and sunflower petals are skin safe and edible, and they dry into perfect sprinkles for cakes, winter cheese boards, and—Yay!—naturally colorful botanical body care. 💐

Soon, soon.

The season of fresh bouquets may be ending a bit earlier than expected here in NY, but there are rainbows everywhere if we look through the storm. 🌈💛✨

1. Dahlia and sunflower petals arranged from crimson to fuchsia to lemon, plucked and headed for the dehydrator.

2. Cosmos in the garden: Unlike our dyestock darling, C. sulphureus, the C. bipinnatus species is not edible, but 'Seashells' is lovely and fleeting with dark pink, white and blush tubular or rolled petals. She is an old friend; I saved and brought her seeds from our Connecticut gardens nine ?! years ago. Edited: Ten years! Time flies.

Happy Fall, y'all! Today's mist felt positively ma

Happy Fall, y'all! Today's mist felt positively magical. 🍁 We gratefully collect loads of flowers, herbs and veggies every day, May through September. Sometimes it feels like the gardens might always be warm and fruitful. Every year, I'm amazed when the main harvest is nearly over as summer flies by.

The closure this time seems right for us, though. I have a few weeks of tough treatments coming up and we're wholeheartedly welcoming the cozy season of wool beanies, simmering soups, changing leaves and hoodies by a bonfire while it's still delicious and fun. Fall is so beautiful in the Finger Lakes and we feel incredibly fortunate to live here.🍇

Ooh, and shop talk: Lots-lots-lots of restocks including Thirsty Face serum, Fix It balm, Sweet Rice cleanser, Smoothie polish;

Calendula Chamomile salve, Arnica balm;

Flower City Lilac scrub, Naples Grape Seed scrub (with ground seeds from the one and only Jeni's Pies);

Pomelo & Sage, Unscented, Cedar & Citrus deodorants;

Ginship and Malt in Motion art soaps (made in partnership with @HollerhornDistilling); a few others. It's been a busy month-plus here. 🙌🏽

Hope you're all doing well. If you can, take a minute or ten to soak up the season outside. It's so, so good. 💛✨

Fresh and dried Coreopsis tinctoria, dyer's coreop

Fresh and dried Coreopsis tinctoria, dyer's coreopsis! I'm enjoying the ritual of plucking these velvety jewels each morning. For a few years we've been selecting for dark red blossoms, and all of the plants we grew this year have rich red petals with yellow undersides rather than the usual yellow petals with red centers. 🙌🏽 I'm pressing some and drying some to be used in projects (and products) through fall and winter. Stay tuned. 🌱

Happy September! If you've considered ditching ant

Happy September! If you've considered ditching antiperspirant for an aluminum-free deodorant, this is a great time of year to make the switch. 🍂 Top advice from our customers: Use it right after bathing, give your body time to adjust, and stick with it. If you've already made the switch, what advice or thoughts would you offer?

Image: blue gloved hand holding two Cedar & Citrus clay-based, vegan deodorant sticks in brown Kraft paperboard tubes. The tubes, labels, shrink seals and shipping envelopes are all compostable.

Indigo! In fiber and in soap, I am always in searc

Indigo! In fiber and in soap, I am always in search of that good-good true blue. Here's a bit of this season's second cutting of round leaf Japanese indigo (Persicaria tinctoria), ready for extraction. The cuttings are headed for a long, cool rainwater ferment followed by aeration, reduction and dehydration, hopefully resulting in a few cakes of dark blue pigment powder.

Indigo also yields gorgeous shades of green, teal, yellow and even pink with some physical adjustments and natural chemical manipulation, but it's all about that blue for me. 💙😍

1. Fresh cuttings of round leaf Japanese indigo, harvested under wild crackling thunder just before a storm.
2. Salt method fresh indigo on silk: shibori, hapa zome/flower pounding, and solid dye techniques.
3. FLX Sunset soap from this spring featuring two shades of indigo reduction.

If you'd like to grow your own indigo next season—which I highly encourage!—consider buying your seeds from @fruition_seeds and @jeannecease. 🌱

Sparkly lotion bar babes all lined up. Supply chai

Sparkly lotion bar babes all lined up. Supply chain challenges mean pressing baking cups into the tins instead of pleated rice paper, but it works! Still compostable, too. 🌱 The stars are back. 💫🌟✨

Weird hazard of the job: superfine biodegradable g

Weird hazard of the job: superfine biodegradable glitter. It. Gets. Everywhere. For a few days a year I clear the shop kitchen, tape off the HVAC and doorways, wear a full respirator and make our glitter products. Today is day three and I'm completely covered in it. 😆 So, um, if you happen to be at our CSA pickup tonight and see a sparkly human who looks like she could use a shower and a drink, say hi. It's me. ☺️✨

PS Bright Star bars will be back in stock by Friday 🌟

Small sample of ROY(GBIV) on deck! Ooh I wish you

Small sample of ROY(GBIV) on deck! Ooh I wish you could see the brilliant rainbows of petals and leaves in person. Not shown, but no less exciting: fresh indigo and a few cakes of finished fermented indigo powder. I've run a few test batches and so many new shades are possible this season. 💙💜💚

It's been pretty quiet here. Pails of raw ingredients like this are the core of OHL's form, function and fragrances, and summer gets busy. The kids harvest plant material each morning and I slooooowly process it into scents and natural colors. Feels good to be back at it and I seriously can't believe we get to keep doing this!!! ✨ I'm excited to share what I've been working on for you this fall and winter.

Happy midsummer, friends. Thank you always for your friendship and support. -Hayna 🏵️

More Dragon Wing, Chinotto and Imagination art soa

More Dragon Wing, Chinotto and Imagination art soaps!

Hey, so I messed up 🤦🏻‍♀️ but it could be a good thing if you missed out on these in March. A back-end code error a while ago set the quantities for the remaining OHL Kids Art Soaps, and a few other things, at zero. There are still some available!

Left to Right:

🐉 Dragon Wing / Ethereal, moody, equal parts brooding and bright. Scent is velvety, earthy and citric herbal with bergamot, vetiver and lime zest, warmed by the tiniest amount of rose.

🍊 Chinotto / With its sparkling veins and sunset ombre, this soap looks like striated sandstone. The scent reminds me of its namesake bitter citrus of Italy, Spain, Morocco: spicy and bright with grapefruit peel, kumquat, baby ginger, black pepper.

🧠 Imagination / So many superheroes, villains and random objects appear in this batch's imagery. Scent is earthy, subtle and fresh with rosemary, pine, juniper berry, bergamot and frankincense.

All are scented and colored with only natural ingredients.

Calendula and chamomile in the garden. Not shown:

Calendula and chamomile in the garden. Not shown: a 75' bed dedicated to non-OHL edible flowers planted in ROYGBIV order. I used to be all about maximized practical productivity, aka growing only food and eking as much nutrition as possible from every square foot. It took years to realize beauty and joy are a different kind of nourishment, and still every bit as crucial as potatoes and greens. Even the simplest flowers bring so much happiness. 🏵️

Also: Thirsty Face serum is back in stock, with some of this season's flowers in it. 🙌🏽

Happy July, friends. Enjoy the sun and rain alike. ☀️🌄✨

::: Doomscroll interruption ::: Happy Pride and Ha

::: Doomscroll interruption :::
Happy Pride and Happy Summer, friends. Remember to rest and nourish yourselves, especially in the midst of [all of this].

❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤

1. Edibles, foraged and grown
2. First stage of a cattail reed weaving project by one of the kids
3. Equisetum (horsetail) growing through an old dock
4. 15' tall mother elder tree in bloom, finally flourishing after years of efforts to eliminate invasive multiflora rose from her surroundings
5. Echinacea flowering soon!

P.S. Donations from OHL are headed to @trevorproject and @abortionfunds this week. We might be outside and offline a lot these days but we're still paying attention.
🏳️‍🌈⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

Instagram post 18005165725432126

Instagram post 18005165725432126

Happy Juneteenth! Today we're sending funds to Flo

Happy Juneteenth! Today we're sending funds to Flower City Noire Collective to help support their weekend-long Garden Build Block Party. Follow @fcnc585 and check the amazing work: creating a new community space, beautifying the block, and building a shared garden to nourish the people in every way. Tonya and Kristen, we love what you're doing and thank you. You pour light and joy back into hurting communities and we are all better for it. 🖤

White and fellow non-Black POC, you know what to do.

Please donate here 👉🏽
http://flowercitynoirecollective.org/donate/

Real quick Saturday night post after a week outsid

Real quick Saturday night post after a week outside because wow, summertime can be SO ITCHY! These are our standbys during camping/gardening/foraging/haying season:

🌿 Camper's Favorite soap is made with fresh jewelweed, comfrey, plantain, calendula, lavender and a tiny bit of camphor. We use it to wash off irritants after a day outdoors, and immediately after exposure to poison ivy.

🌿 Fix It Balm, a daypack staple made with calendula, chamomile and zinc oxide, is our go-to for bug bites and scrapes. Bonus: the formula is moisturizing enough to help ease dry cracked garden hands and cuticles.

Hope this helps. Gonna go scrub up now. 🧼

BERRIES!!! And friends. Peak strawberry season in

BERRIES!!! And friends. Peak strawberry season in the Finger Lakes means pies, jams, daily shortcake and some super fresh seasonal products. Stay tuned. 🍓

We're feeling incredibly lucky to live in a place rich with organic produce, amazing people and healthy soil, where we know the farmers' names and faces and they know ours. Big thanks to Malcolm at @artofthesunfarm and Jenny and Erik at @fellenzfamilyfarms for growing such abundance in both food and friendship over the years.
✨
When OHL first launched in 2014, we were in a rough spot and had little more than a dream, an intense work ethic and each other. Andy Fellenz gave us our public start by inviting us to set up at his CSA pickups and offering some advice that saved us from many market newbie mistakes. This built our (OK, my/Hayna's) confidence, and our in-person event presence bloomed from there. Thank you, @fellenzandy. We owed ya back then and still do now.
✨
TL;DR: Our existence and growth are thanks to farmers and always have been; friendship is everything; berries are delicious.

P.S. Today's the last day for code STRAWBERRY15 - get 15% off just about everything on the site including strawberry scrub. 🍓

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