Busy Saturday at Spotted Cow Soaps

I've been busy filling my store in anticipation of Mother's Day.

Spring Fling

This is by far the COOLEST soap I have ever made! It evokes vibrant spring colors that our current landscape is seriously lacking. This soap is screaming with the vibrance of spring! The essence of spring is wrapped in the elegance of Lily and Jasmine along with lemon and ozone. Fragrance is light and airy, not overly heavy. I have several men that enjoy this fragrance. I have called this SPRING FLING. The girl I am mentoring for soap making was really psyched out and digging the cool soap when we got together this afternoon for another soap making session.

Modern Day Soap Making

I've always been interested in the history of soapmaking. In my research several years ago, I came across the web page Colonial Soap Making. Its History and Techniques that answered those questions for me.

Today we have the luxury of purchasing ingredients to make soap with consistent results. With the click of a mouse we can order everything we need to make a batch of soap. Suppliers are plentiful and growing by the number every day. I can't help but wonder how different today's handcrafted soap making trend would be if we had to make our own lye and render the fats used in our soap making process.

In Search of Real Soap...

Several years ago I had problems with my skin that seemed to magnify in intensity during the winter. I developed what was thought to be allergies to perfumes in soap. The Doctor told me to switch to unscented soaps...how boring! What I found is that my skin condition remained unchanged after I made the switch. I had multiple suggestions...use ivory, or liquid body wash...nothing helped until one day I happened to stumble upon a website that sold old fashioned lye soap. The seller told a story similar to my own, and how they discovered the "soap" as sold in the stores isn't really true soap. You can find more information about true soap from the U. S. Food and Drug Administration Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Office of Cosmetics and Colors Fact Sheet dated February 3, 1995.

Needless to say I was hooked on the idea, but not quite ready to jump in and make my own soap. I dabbled with melt and pour glycerin soap for several months, made lots of nice Christmas gifts that year, before jumping in with making lye soap. My first batch was made in the crock pot so I could test the soap as soon as it hardened up. I was so delighted with those first bars, even though they weren't a very luxurious bar of soap, but it was soap! I absolutely LOVE the way my skin feels after I have bathed with a bar of good old fashioned soap...it is like a cleanser and lotion wrapped into one single bar! My skin was digging it, and thanking me! I am no longer a scaley, cracking lizard in the winter.

I discovered that the "soap" I was accustomed to using from the stores had in fact been the culprit for all of the skin rashes, redness, inflammation, irritation, itching, and burning I experienced every day after I bathed. My skin problems had absolutely nothing to do with the fragrances, and everything to do with the fact that my "soap" was really a detergent.

If you found this information useful, you might also be interested in reading about the differences between commercial and homemade soap OR how commercial soap is made.