Nature’s Ingredients with Vennie Chou

By Anita Kalnay, RA^®, EOT^® 

Vennie Chou caught my attention when she posted a Facebook comment on using flowers to create colour naturally for bath salts. Prior to that, I had seen her name as a member of the Natural Perfume Foundation, (1) but we had never met. 

Amazing people sometimes come in the most humble of packages! Although Vennie is not an aromatherapist, her job as senior technologist at the B.C. Cancer Institute, of which she is a 32-year veteran, involves the use of colour in determining malignancy of cell tissue. 

“My job is ‘playing with colour.’ I use chemical colour to dye the tissues that come from surgery. I take a removed organ, slice it up, and colour it with different chemicals. From that I can tell which cells are cancer cells and which are other cells. I call it ‘the body shop’ (she laughs)

“In cancer testing, we use logwood, which is a purple-blue natural dye that colours the nuclei in the cells that hold the DNA. A tumour nuclei looks very different than a normal nuclei. We look at the colour, the shade, and can tell, just by looking at the colours, the state of health of the cell. 

“There is a lot of funding in cancer research to ‘cure,’ but there is no funding toward prevention!

“That’s why I study naturals. To get away from chemicals.

“My goal is to find natural alternatives to products we use daily, such as lotions, hair colour, shampoos, soaps, toothpaste etc. For example I use a combination of henna and indigo to create a black hair dye, or cassia and amla for blonde hair.” 

Vennie was appalled at having to wear full PPE at work, while working with the very same chemicals that were in health and beauty products. Her motivation was “to do it different,” to explore naturals as alternatives. So, after work, she started to apply her laboratory and science skills to create her own personal care products at home. 

Creating Coloured Bath Salts with Flowers

How did you come up with this idea?

“Originally, I wanted to create an anti-fungal, anti-bacterial foot soak using thyme and oregano. I  picked the plants live, mixed them with epsom salt and put them in the blender with the idea of ‘breaking up’ the plant material. When I picked blue pansy, I got blue bath salts, roses gave me pink salts, lavender didn’t have much colour, but it had a beautiful scent! Calendula marigold was bright gold and totally therapeutic, anti-inflammatory and calming. 

“I picked the flowers, pulled the petals off, added epsom salt, put it in the blender and as it mixed, the flowers totally disappeared into the salt. Then I laid it on a paper grocery bag to dry. 

“Some plants have more ‘juice.’ Where thyme might dry in a day, marigold would take three to four days. And it also depends on how much plant material you put in the blend and the depth of colour that you want.”

Being the scientist that she is, Vennie observed her bath salts over a period of a year and noticed that the colour was still active and had stayed the same. 

Hints:

• Be sure to research the flowers and herbs to ensure that they are not poisonous. 
• Test for allergies. Those allergic to plants in the daisy family allergies will likely be allergic to calendula, too.
• Use your aromatherapy skills to add scent and consider different applications or skin types. 

Here’s a good link for edible flowers (2) that might help.

Vennie particularly liked pink peony flower, the original peony, which apparently is non-toxic and has a strong rose like scent. She suggests blending peonies with rose petals, as the peony has larger and more petals than roses and offers a vibrant pink colour. 

Her suggestion:

Dry as many of the raw materials as you can, over the summer, then try to play with it, especially after the summer season is over. 

Here are some other colour ideas:

• Lemon verbena, blended with grated lemon zest.
  
• Beets have no smell, but they have a beautiful strong colour. Add just a tiny bit to a blend. Let it dry in epsom salts and dissolve in a bath or foot bath. 
  
• Use the primary colours to create your own colour explorations: pink or red flowers, blue flowers such as pansy, yellow flowers such as dandelion. Mix and match to your own delight!  

Keep good notes.

Take pictures, so you can refer back to them.

Explore. You can add lavender and marigold to salts, to make a light purple with yellow, for instance

Look at the yin/yang of the plants/herbs, often most visible in the growing conditions of the plant.

Consider the WHOLE process as natural therapy

“I don’t like products that have gone through a lot of processing. The only process I do is rinse the bugs off the flower, then add the salts and some moisturizing oil.”

Moisturizing Oils

-Grate some coconut butter into the epsom salt to add a cream colour. When added to hot water, it will dissolve.

-Grate some 90% dark chocolate and mix into the salts. Add some grated cacao butter for scent. 

Other Ideas

Consider plant material such as fruit or vegetables. Cut a small piece of watermelon and blend into the salts for a cooling effect. Very nice with lemon verbena and lemon zest. Make a pillow or eye bag with the dried materials, too! 

Does it have to be Epsom salts?

“Epsom salt is easy to use because it is very drying. But you can blend it with pink Himalayan salts or dead sea salts.” (Which I find take on more water in our coastal environment.)

“Colour is a BIG part of therapy. It is therapeutic and relaxing just watching it dissolve in the bath or a foot bath”

Both Vennie and I explored colour as part of the textile art industry. I originally explored it as a silk painter and after taking several colour classes at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design, discovered that the colours I was dyeing changed my mood. That was my introduction to the healing arts. 

Vennie took classes at Maiwa Handprints on Granville Island, where she learned about natural dyes and mordants that can be used in textiles to replace chemical products. Her goal is to “eliminate all the ‘crap’ we buy and replace it with plants.” 

“Natural dyes and plant materials have been used for thousands of years all over the world.

“I used alkanet root to dye my textiles. It offers a beautiful range of purples. In Japan and Turkey, the plant is used as a compress on a wound to help it heal very fast. The Japanese use this plant and this idea with diabetics. It helps wounds to heal fast and it is also antiseptic. 

“You can take part of the root and soak it in oil. The red colour soaks into the oil. I call it an alkanet infusion. Then take the oil and blend it with salts. It enhances the moisturizing properties of the salts.”

Her research also correlated these natural materials to Chinese medicine, eg. indigo root used to treat lungs, asthma and colds. It also inspired her to research the herbs used and the countries and traditions that used them. 

“About the only thing I don’t make is my own toilet paper,” and, strangely enough, just the day before our interview I found a reference to using mullein leaf as a natural toilet paper when out in the bush as it is large, soft and fuzzy. 

“The textile industry is the second largest polluter in the world! The first is the petroleum industry. If we can eliminate chemical dyes and replace them with naturals, then we can clean up the world! 

“I knit as well, and the moths in my house will only eat the synthetic or chemical dyes. I have been dyeing yarns for about 20 years and I never have to store them separately as a cashmere sweater dyed with natural dyes will never have holes from moths. The bugs won’t eat the natural dyes, because the mordants bind with the fibre creating a natural chemistry that is deadly to bugs.”

Vennie’s Vision

“I want to expand what I do. I use chemicals all the time at my job and I just hate it. How can I live a modern life avoiding these products? It’s been a long journey, over 25 years of exploring so far!”

Insights:

- Every failure is a lesson. So it is constant research and development. I have had lots of projects that didn’t work. 

- In inspiration there is possibility. I want to open up the possibilities, the dimensions, horizons, so people will start looking around, researching and learning about natural materials. 

- I love my walks in nature, and that’s what started the process over 25 years ago now.

“I am working with a doctor of Chinese medicine to create products for skin. I was watching a TCM documentary, in Chinese, and they mentioned some plants that might grow in our area here in B.C. So, I went to a Chinese herbal store, to buy them to dye my textiles. I discovered that gardenia seed pods were used in history to dye the emperor’s clothing, the ‘royal gold’ colour.”

It was humorous to hear Vennie talk about going into an herbal apothecary and buying huge bags of product for textile dyeing. 

“So, history meets colour, meets herbal use… I incorporated the Empress Herbal Blend formula into my facial cleanser, which is very good for freckles and brown spots, meaning age spots.”

Vennie’s Formula for Age Spots

At this point my curiosity on age spots took over! Age spots are often brought out via heat such as sun exposure and also UV rays emitted by older computer monitors. Vennie offered her recipe for an age spot mask. 

I noticed my age spots shortly after I went into menopause and immediately after going to Oregon for much of the summer, where we spent most of our time outdoors. And the sun is much hotter in Oregon. 

Recipe:

- Mint, peppermint leaf or use a peppermint tea bag

- Mung bean, unsprouted

- Barley flour grains

- Dried chrysanthemum flower, available in a Chinese herbal store, or tea store

Preparation:

- Use a coffee grinder and grind into a powder.

- Add water or add your favourite hydrasol to moisten.

- Make it into a paste and apply as a mask.

- Don’t add any essential oils to the blend.

The face has a yang energy. Use plain water or a cooling hydrasol (e.g. rose, neroli, lavender, peppermint), not rosemary or other warming hydrosol.

The whole idea is to cool the skin:

• In TCM, the process addresses stagnation where things are not moving resulting in irritation and inflammation. The body is trying to get things moving, so use cooling properties. 
• If the blood or the meridian channels don’t move, you have pain and the heat of ultraviolet mimics the sun.

Play with it at home for yourself! 

You can also sell the product by putting instructions on it, e.g. add your own water.

• For an oily face, add a bit of French clay.
• For dry skin, add a few drops of almond oil for a moisturizing effect.

Vennie does not have a website, but her Facebook page offers a world of wisdom and has some great pictures to guide the process!    

  

References:

1. Natural Perfume Foundation IPF

https://www.perfumefoundation.org/index.html

2. 40+ Edible Flowers (and How to Use Them)

https://practicalselfreliance.com/edible-flowers/