Stewart & Claire

I had a chance to work with photographer Shane Walsh today for a story I'm working on at Food & Wine magazine. Everyone always loves the images on the website, and well, this rad dude, along with my friend, stylist Dani Fisher, is responsible. Seeing him made me realize how long I've been toying with this lip balm idea--he shot these great photos in a studio just off NYC's Union Square almost exactly two years ago. Since then, he's moved to Philadelphia, proudly procreated and started shooting portraits for Philly mag. It also reminded me how I owe him a big box of S&C lip balms, now that we've finally launched.

For your enjoyment, above, is an outtake from that shoot.  -Claire

There's been lots of blog love for Stewart & Claire since launching.

Grace Parisi, recipe developer at Food & Wine magazine (and, full disclosure, one of Claire's coworkers), wrote this awesome blog post about pairing lip balms with candy.

The wine-like write-ups continued when Nick O'Kelley from the fledgling site Lip Conscious wrote detailed reviews of the balms. 

Shana, the college intern over at Birchbox, included Stewart & Claire in a round-up of petroleum-free balms. 

Mollie Chen, a director of content for Birchbox, blogged this fabulous write-up for Of a Kind, a super cool site that features and sells clothes and accessories from emerging designers. 

And the photo above comes courtesy of Michele Mandell, who included it in her Twitter feed. Thanks Michele!

xoxo -Claire

In his book, Food Rules, Michael Pollan writes to avoid products containing ingredients that a third grader can't pronounce. It's a great rule of thumb for beauty products, too, and one in which Liz Neves of Raganella follows whether she's making a scrub for your face with powdered goat's milk and oatmeal (above, it's divine) or one for your tub, with baking soda, castile soap and rosemary essential oil. 

Liz named her company using the Italian word for tree frog, a sensitive little creature with permeable skin. She simply intended to help people to live healthier, greener lives by teaching classes on things like composting and making natural beauty and cleaning products. While she still does plenty of classes, she found that many busy people would rather just buy her concoctions than follow her recipes on a regular basis. 

Using her experience with herbalism and foraging, she's taking all-natural beauty products to the next level and incorporating wild plants into many things she makes. We highly recommend you check out her shop on Etsy. Or if you're feeling ambitious, try one of her awesome-sounding recipes, like this "mermaid's" body scrub made with kelp. -Claire