About Me and My Apothecary

My mom says when I was a toddler I used to play around with herbs and call my concoctions, "essperiments," aka baby-speak for experiments. 

So, my long-held interest in herbs and plants, combined with the fact that I'm a woman in her 30s who has more lines around her eyes and mouth than she used to, led me to start formulating anti-aging serums for myself about 2 years ago. 

My first real product was the Glow Water Ferulic Acid & C+E serum, my twist on the Skinceuticals classic, and I got so much positive feedback that I made an entire natural skincare line! 

These products were all researched, formulated, handmade and bottled, designed, tested, and shipped by me, and I even made several of the extracts! This is truly a passion project and labor of love, and I'm so, so excited to share what I've made with you! 😍

❤️ Martha-Jane Archer, owner & creator of Martha-Jane's Apothecary 

• Mental health research is a cause that means a lot to me. Did you know that only 2% of medical research funds are allocated to mental health care research? My degree is a BS in Psychology, and I have personally struggled with grief, depression, substance abuse, and anxiety, and found resources for healing to be lacking. For this reason, I have decided to donate 10% of yearly sales to mental health research.
• Packaging is subject to change. Early in development I had supply chain issues and realized I didn't want to pass that inconvenience on to the customer. I'd rather get the product out in a timely fashion than have a guarantee of uniform packaging.
• I make the green tea, jasmine oolong tea, black tea, rice bran, flaxseed, licorice, goji berry, rosemary, blackberry leaf, marshmallow root, comfrey, red clover, olive leaf, and elderflower extracts myself. I use a mixture of glycerin, vodka, apple cider vinegar, and distilled water, along with a fairly complicated heating, drying, and mixing process to produce potent, but skin-safe extracts without the use of harsh solvents. 

If you read through my ingredients lists, you may have noticed that I do not use any collagen or hyaluronic acid. That's not to rip you off or deprive you of benefits. Quite the opposite--during my research for product development I found that the skin doesn't actually absorb collagen all that well unless it is healing from an injury, and there are hundreds of hygroscopic ingredients similar to and better than hyaluronic acid. 

Brands load their products up with these ingredients for label appeal and to upcharge you. They're fine ingredients,  good even, but I thought I could do better and provide superior benefits at a lower cost by omitting these trendy active ingredients. 

I've opted to use ingredients that stimulate your skin to produce its own hyaluronic acid and collagen instead. This gives you more lasting benefits, as your skin becomes "trained" to do its job better!

I do use many hygroscopic (moisture attracting and binding) ingredients, and this is why I instruct you to layer each product with water--they're water activated!! 

💧 💧💧 

In lieu of collagen I am using skin-identical (exist already within our skin's structure) ingredients like sodium PCA, sodium PGA, sodium lactate (lactic acid salt), n-acetyl cysteine, n-acetyl glucosamine, lecithin, inositol, and amino acid blends targeted to address concerns specific to each product.