Still Showering With a Bar of Lard?

Right now I am gearing up for the Christmas Soap Sales, ordering oils and butters, lotion bottles, restocking my Essential Oils and the like. I had just enough supplies to make ONE soap log so I choose to make one of my best sellers-Rosemary Mint!

This soap is scently mostly with Peppermint Essential Oil and accented with Rosemary Essential Oil. The green specks are actaully freeze dried parsley pieces...it holds the color for several months where as Dried Rosemary tends to turn brown, ditto for dried peppermint leaves. Men LOVE this soap! My husband has a co-worker that buys this soap 10 bars at a time, and has to hide the bars or his teenage son steals them! Let's hope his son has a good paying job when he moves out so he can buy his own!

The wonderful thing about this particular soap is the blend of essential oils is very invigorating and makes a perfect wake up soap. Peppermint is great for headaches, and I know several people(myself included)who have had their headaches disappear after showering with this soap. Everytime I make a batch I am completely wired for hours from the smell. (A natural high!) One of my good friends would keep a bar by the computer when she was pregnant, and whenever she started to feel nauseated she would sniff the bar and the feeling would go away.

I do use Beeswax in my soaps, which is considered an animal by-product by vegetarians, as well as Goat's Milk in certain types. Goat's milk is just lovely on the skin and can be very helpful to persons with very dry, irritated or sensitive skin.

Other then these 2 ingredients, all of my soaps are made from only oils and butters from plant sources. Every bar I make is made from a minimum of 50% Olive oil. The rest of the soap is comprised of a combination of Coconut oil, and Palm kernel Oil, which both contribute conditioning attributes as well as make a harder bar with lots of lather.

Certain types include the additon of Shea Butter, Mango Butter, or Cocoa Butter. Then I add herbs for color, and Essential Oils for scent. That's it. No whiteners, Commercial Dyes, skin irritating cheap fragrances...just GOOD STUFF! Many people who can not use commerical soap buy mine and suffer no skin reactions. Some people wonder why does a Bar os my handcrafted soap cost $3.50 when you can get a 10 pack of soap at Walmart for the same price? Read the label! Generally the first ingredient on that Mass Produced "soap" is Sodium Tallowate....this is the scientifuc name for Saponified(this means it has been turned into soap)Tallow or Animal Fat. Soap Manufactorers get this dirt cheap, because.....are you ready for this? It has been "reclaimed" from Restaurant Cooking Oils that they buy from places like McDonald's, filter and clean it and send it off to be made into your bar of Deodorant Soap.

Ok, so I can by never been used Lard and Tallow to make soap, and it is much cheaper then my current recipe using high amounts of Olive Oil, which is very pricey. $20 for a liter bottle is a bargain!

Frankly Tallow and Lard are known pore cloggers, and they so not exactly smell pleasant  while they are being rendered or melted for soapmaking. They do make fantastic laundry soap, which I have made in the past and will again-I am not a vegetarian. (Also you can take most of my soap camping and it will not harm the ecosystem.)

Why do I have the word soap in parentheses when referring to commercial soap? Technically most of the stuff you buy in the store is not actaully soap, it's detergent. Most contain Petroleum by-products. Their Aim is to make a Rock hard bar that will last a long time, and will not change in smell or appearance should it sit on the store shelves more then a few months. In order to do this, they end up removing most of the natural Glycerine, a by-product of the chemical reaction between the Sodium Hydroxide and the Fatty Acids used to make soap. They actually sell the Glycerine to Costmetic Companies that make Moisterizers to soften the dry skin you got from the drying bar of crappy soap you bought to get clean, when you would not have gotten dry skin in the first place if they had not messed around witht he natural process and left the Glycerine where it belongs! Their goal isn't to make GREAT soap, it's to make cheap soapat a big profit.

I am very fortunate. I developed allergies to Fragrance Oils, dyes, and checmical additives when I was pregnant with my youngest son, whom is now 7. I do not have to buy special all natural soap because I learned to make my own, so to me it is not a luxury or a special treat to be purchased a few times a year. My family will not touch commercial soap, they are spoiled and refuse to go back. I take my own soap with me when I travel to other people's homes, Hotels, and yes, during hospital stays. I had to beg my husband to bring me a bar when I was hospitalized with pneumonia last year.

Ok, so I will get off my "Soap Box" about the wonders of handmade Natural Soap! I encourage you to take the challenge, see and feel the difference, and I warn you that it is highly addictive!

Leslie Townsend                                             Professional Soapmaker since 1999