LOCAL GIFTS: Skin Care

Locally-made Gift ideas Nothing about 2020 has been normal, thanks to the pandemic and its enhanced racism awareness, but StreetWise was blessed with help from its friends and so now this holiday season, we are using our city-wide platform to return the favor. StreetWise vendors are entrepreneurs, and so we are promoting other Chicago entrepreneurs of innovative products – many of them nonprofits – from varied cultures. We are all in this together.

by Suzanne Hanney

SCRUB ME

Scrub Me offers skin care products by a Wicker Park esthetician that contain purposeful ingredients like Dead Sea salt, mineral salt, clays and skin-loving oils that leave your skin softer, healthier and more radiant. “Everything your skin needs and nothing it doesn’t!”

Choose from facial care/treatment bars, soaps, whipped butter (shea, with or without Bulgarian lavender or citrus) and scrubs. “Wellness Energy” for mature or aging skin is a green tea blend scrub that contains both caffeine and antioxidants to firm and heal skin while exfoliating, as well as spearmint and essential oils to clean and refresh while awakening senses. $9/5-oz., $18/10-oz. “Invigorating” scrub contains eucalyptus essential oil and sea clay to deeply cleanse and detoxify with an uplifting aroma. $9/5-oz, $16 10-oz. “Soothing” scrub contains lavender and palmarosa essential oils with detoxifying purple Brazilian clay, all of which specifically target sensitive skin by relieving redness and helping retain moisture. $9/5-oz, $16/10-oz. Use code GIFTS! At checkout for free lip balm and shipping on orders over $25. Scrub-me.com

beelove

beelove® cleanse & refresh amenity lathering shower gel is a mild, allnatural body cleanser that produces a rich and silky lather. Featuring saponified organic coconut, olive and jojoba oil, glycerin/vegetable gum extract, as well as organic aloe vera and rosemary extract, its secret ingredient is honey from Sweet Beginnings LLC hives in and around Chicago, and the signature beelove® scent. Introduce yourself to this skin care experience with the Pure Necessities Collection ($17), which includes lip balm and all-natural amenity body lotion. Comprised of distilled water, shea butter, hydrolyzed silk protein, wheat germ oil, meadowfoam seed oil, avocado oil, rosehip oil, grapeseed oil, coconut oil, aloe, vitamin E, signature beelove® scent and more, this lotion can be applied as often as needed to moisturize dry and sensitive skin.

Sweet Beginnings, LLC is a sustainable social enterprise, a wholly owned subsidiary of the North Lawndale Employment Network (NLEN) that promotes a unique product and a solution to overcrowded prisons. Sweet Beginnings offers full-time transitional jobs to citizens returning from incarceration in a green industry: the production and sale of all-natural skin care products featuring its own urban honey. The company manages apiaries (bee farms) Skin care in North Lawndale, at O’Hare International Airport, Roosevelt University Schaumburg campus and the Forest Preserve District of Cook County Trailside Museum. Sweet Beginnings workers harvest honey, make beelove® products, fill product orders, package and ship them, track inventory, sell at retail outlets such as Mariano’s and Whole Foods and perform quality control. These transitional jobs require all the qualities they would need in a permanent job, including punctuality, workplace etiquette, interpersonal communication and how to work effectively on a team. Since 2008, Sweet Beginnings has employed more than 500 men and women committed to turning their lives around. While the recidivism rate nationally is 40 percent and the Illinois average is 55 percent, the rate for former Sweet Beginnings employees is below 8 percent. The Sweet Beginnings team is buzzing with excitement about the holiday season. Starting October 5, they have been onsite for production, order fulfillment and shipping weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the potential to adjust if the City of Chicago moves back a phase due to COVID-19. You can place orders at beelovebuzz.com/collections/all Upon checkout, you can even select 3-4 p.m. curbside pickup at present.