Known to many as “the Bread Chick”, senior Quinn Rhodes and Hesston High School senior Lulu Williams have turned onto a new entrepreneurial venture. The pair plans to take a cross-country road trip this summer to celebrate their high school graduation. To fundraise for this occasion, Rhodes and Williams have been creating and selling love potions.

The idea first occurred to Rhodes while sitting with friends in ceramics class.

“At first I thought of it as a joke, but then I thought about it and really liked it,” Rhodes said.

The process began soon after. The duo started by brainstorming some oil combinations, and began doing research. Their google search histories were soon filled with questions about the different properties of essential oils, finding several that promoted feelings like love, stability, health and energy.

“Then from there, we went and sampled all the oils at Prairie Harvest,” Rhodes said.

Prairie Harvest, a market and deli located in downtown Newton, has a collection consisting of over forty essential oils, so Rhodes and Williams soon found combinations that they felt communicated the feelings that love potions should.

“We have three scents. One is more for energy, it has lavender, orange and myrrh, it smells like a Sunday morning. Then there’s jasmine and geranium which is very flowery and sweet, more perfumey. Then there is our personal favorite which is rose, rosemary and

frankincense. It’s very deep and loving,” Rhodes said.

After deciding on the three blends, Rhodes and Williams figured out what forms their love potions would take.

“We have roll-ons and we have spray. For the roll-ons we used almond oil and we dropped in the amount we wanted for each of them until we thought they smelled right. There is no particular formula, we just did it until we thought it smelled nice,” Rhodes said. “For the spray bottles, it’s witch hazel, water and salt. So it can actually be used as a cleaner for your face and skin. Witch hazel is something that people usually use, but it smells really weird so we had to put the water and salt in to balance the smell. The salt makes the oil more soluble in the water.”

To further the idea of their love potions, they also included crushed up rose quartz stones in the bottles.

“Rose quartz is universally the love stone. So having it soaking in the love potion all the time, it’s just some voodoo stuff,” Rhodes said.

With all of the elements in place, Rhodes and Williams then began to mix, bottle, and label their potions.

“Considering that we aren’t the most efficient workers, this process has taken longer than it probably should have. Overall we’re probably dedicated seven hours to it,” Rhodes said.

To promote the sale of their product, Rhodes has been reaching out to potential customers both in person and online.

“I’ve been yelling about it to people, like ‘Hey do you want to buy a love potion?’. I’ve also been posting about it,” Rhodes said.

One customer, junior Clara Rowe, has seen this approach as rather successful for Rhodes and jumped on board. Rowe purchased a rosemary, rose and frankincense roll-on and is excited to use it.

“I bought a love potion because I wanted to support my friend Quinn and I thought that it was a unique business idea. I also love essential oils,” Rowe said. “She was talking to me about it during Graphic Design. I know that Quinn does a lot of her marketing through word of mouth and some social media.”

While some say that the love potions will not actually work, Rowe believes that there is some kind of truth in its effectiveness.

“I believe that if you believe that the love potion will work, then it will work,” Rowe said. “The energy that you put into the universe is the energy that you get out of the universe.”