June Intensive Cosmetic College - Day Five

The last day of our June Intensive Week and still plenty to cram in!

The morning started with a practical session and the students made beautiful lip glosses followed by a treatment balm. The lip glosses contained a selection of oils, butters and wax designed to nourish and soften the lips and each were laced with mica to give beautiful shades of gold to pink to a very glossy burgundy - beautiful!

Each student designed their own treatment salve and we had a range of hair wax, rash treatment, nail and cuticle balm, eczema treatment salve, cracked finger ointment and elbow grease!

From practical to theory and having remembered to give homework the night before, Sally went over labelling, weights and measures, allergens, specialist software and everything else that you need to consider when putting together and producing labels for your cosmetic products.

Traditionally on the last day of the intensive week Plush Folly treat the students to lunch and today we went upstairs in the hospitality suite for a sumptuous buffet prepared by Mandy. Since the weather was wet and grim, we sat indoors rather than on the balcony.

After lunch we traipsed back to the training room to discuss suppliers, costing your products, insurance and selling over the web, retail outlets and at craft fairs. Whilst the session was underway, we multi tasked and fragranced /bottled the liquid soap that had spent the night softening in the big pot.

The final practical exercise was making a moisturising cream using all the knowledge gained during the week. The students chose which oils, waxes, waters, extracts, essential oils and other fancy optional additions they wanted to use and set to making up their wonderful pots of thick, luxurious moisturising cream.

Having cleared up and made the room as oil free as possible, the students were awarded their CPD accredited certificates of achievement for having covered so much during the week. That just left us with one task in hand - to unwrap and dish out the soap made yesterday!

To squeals of delight, gasps of surprise (that Blue FCF truly had turned magenta!) and laughter at the amount of botanicals some of us had managed to use in our soap (! - quite a few exfoliating bars made!!) it was time to pack up our mountain of goodies and say goodbye.

It's always sad to say goodbye at the end of such a bonding, busy, interesting and exciting week, but a pleasure too. I know that those students have learnt such a lot, their enthusiasm for every task was immense and the skills they displayed in creating wonderful products - well each and every one was worthy of a shop shelf.

We wish everyone luck and enjoyment and look forward to hearing how they get on.