Our soap is truly homemade by us, using the cold process method of soap making. We don’t buy pre-made soap and package it to sell as homemade like some sites. Ours is not a pre-made soap base or soap flakes melted down with additional ingredients added like some other sites. We begin our soap making with designing our own recipes to meet various skin care needs from healthy baby skin to special conditions like sensitive skin, aging, eczema, psoriasis, or dryness. We use a variety of ingredients with qualities reputed to meet certain skin conditions. The ingredients include a variety of vegetable oils, vitamins, extracts, and herbs. Some of our soaps are merely a combination of wonderful oils. We are also growing in our knowledge of aroma therapy and will be using those oils in most future soaps.
We are not concerned about decorating the soaps with colors, swirls, colored chunks, or specially shaped molds. We don’t use exotic scents in our soaps, either. Our goal is to stay focused on making the highest quality soap that is meant to be used, not for decoration. Our packaging is simple with the purpose of labeling and protecting the soap though in the future we may look into gift packaging for those who request it.
Cold process soap is not usually poured into fancy molds. Cold process soap must be kept warm and insulated for at least the first 24 hours after mixing to help the soap complete the saponification process (lye and oil molecules attaching to each other). Small molds are difficult to keep warm enough for this process. Cold process soap also has a tendency to stick to molds and not release from the fine indentations because it remains soft for a long time. Usually if someone wants to make soap in fancy molds they either make the soap and wait until after the saponification process has ended or buy a pre made soap then grate it and melt it again to pour into the fancy molds. We do not process our soap a second time. We like our soap natural and unprocessed.
We make our soap with various oils, lye (sodium hydroxide), and purified water. Lye, unlike chemicals used in commercial soaps, is only used in the making of soap, but is not present in the soap after the soap has cured. The lye undergoes a chemical process binding the lye molecules to the oil molecules resulting in new molecules that are soap (actually soap is a salt). That is why commercial soaps list as some of their ingredients sodium tallowate (soap made with tallow) or sodium palmate (soap made with palm oil). The gentlest mildest of all soaps are made with lye. Cold process soap is milder than even the so-called glycerin soaps bases used in making fancy clear soaps. These soaps are usually commercially made and are equal in quality to commercial soap with all the chemicals and are really detergents and not soap at all. Clear glycerin soap is made clear by boiling it with alcohol and adding sugar and glycerin at the end if homemade and contains many more ingredients if commercially made. The purpose in making the soap clear is for decoration not for improving the quality of the soap for skin. Cold process soap naturally contains glycerin as a by-product of the natural saponification of soap. It is not necessary to add it to the soap. In commercial soap making the natural glycerin is removed and used in other products like cosmetics, lotions, and creams that you will probably need because of the drying nature of commercial soap.
We make our soap using modern homemade soap procedures using accurate digital scales that weigh to the tenth of an ounce or gram. This allows us to calculate in a surplus of oils to ensure all the lye is consumed and allowing for additional unsaponified oils to leave skin clean but not dry feeling. We accurately weigh the oils, water, and lye according to the recipes we design with the precise amount calculated for that recipe. After the soap mixture reaches saponification we add the additional nutrient ingredients to the soap and pour it into the prepared mold. Then it is insulated and left until the chemical process is finished and the soap has cooled. Then the soap is removed from the mold and cut into bars by hand. We don’t trim the soaps unless they have some ash on them which is usually only a little in a corner. The soaps are a little rough looking and not perfectly shaped. By not trimming the soaps excessively we can give the customers more soap. The rough edges will come off the first time or two they are used anyway. We are switching to new molds so our future soaps should be approximately the same size and within an ounce in weight. Our aim is to have all our soaps between 4 and 5 ounces. If we label the soap a certain weight like 4 oz., the soap can be up to 1/2 to a whole ounce heavier than labeled states, making it really up to 5 oz. in size . The future soaps will be approximately 1 x 2 x 3 inches in size or a little bigger. Right now they are various sizes but all easy to handle. We let our soaps cure at least 3 weeks or more before labeling or selling them.
Our liquid soaps and shampoos are made by us the same natural way as our bar soaps. We begin with high quality natural vegetable oils or butters and use natural potassium hydroxide as our lye. As with our bar soaps the lye is no longer present in the soap after the saponification process is complete. One difference in natural liquid soap is that once the soap is finished there is no need for a curing time. The soap is ready to use right away with a very low PH value. Our liquid soap is slow cooked for several hours to a gel state then for several more hours to a liquid soap state. Our liquid soap is so concentrated that if we added any less water the soap would begin to return to a solid gel forming a floating mass above the liquid soap. We do not add any alcohol or sugar to our liquid soap to make it clearer or to help it remain liquid. It remains liquid by keeping it lightly covered or capped. Our liquid soap is made of only vegetable oils and lye. Our soaps may not be as clear as our competition because we use the smallest amount of lye necessary to make our liquid soap which results in a opaque liquid soap but much milder with a lower PH value so better for skin and hair. Our liquid soaps are the same Ph value of 7 as your natural tears therefore they don’t irritate eyes like the higher PH value clear liquid soaps or detergents. The lower PH value of our liquid soap makes it a great base for our natural shampoo. The lower PH helps the hair scales lay down making smoother softer hair.
We thicken our liquid soaps with guar gum for most uses like for hand soap and shampoo. This helps conserve the soap or shampoo so it isn’t wasted by spilling or by using too much. We do not thicken the liquid soap when making our natural all purpose cleaner.
