Soap Ingredient List & other frequently asked questions:
Our soap recipes use food grade olive, palm & coconut oils, with added luxury oils such as Almond, Mango Butter, Jojoba, Cocoa Butter and Grapeseed, chosen for their skin friendly, soap-enhancing properties. Growing up gardening, our favorite scents have always been from flowers, trees and the natural world; we scent our soaps accordingly. All our soaps are vegetarian, most vegan. We use the cold process method which preserves the glycerin inherent in natural soap, and allows us to use the alchemy of soapmaking to make really special soaps, getting the best out of our raw materials.
Olive Oil The time-honored best oil for soaps, rich, emollient and long-lasting. We include Olive oil in every bar, some recipes are 50-100% Olive oil. While a pure olive oil bar has less lather than other formulas, it is the mildest soap. When properly cured and stored, such soaps can last for years (though why you'd wait years to use them, we aren't sure. We're not that patient!)
Basic soap oils:
Almond Oil Rich light oil, very conditioning. Similar properties to Olive oil with a better lather.
Avocado Oil Luxurious oil, skin-loving and very moisturizing. We use it to superfat and in lotion bars.
Canola Oil Canadian oil with very similar properties to Olive oil, and more local to Idaho than Olive oil.
Castor Oil Produces billowing lather in shampoo bars; highly moisturizing oil.
Coconut Oil High-lathering, deep-cleaning oil. Big bubbles. Will lather even in sea water.
Grapeseed Oil This light oil, a by-product of wine production, is perfect for superfatting as it is not greasy.
Jojoba Oil Actually a liquid wax, used to add emollience to soaps and as a carrier for infused oils.
Palm-Palm Kernel Oils These oils add firmness and lather to our soaps. We've switched to only certified organic Palm & Palm Kernel Oils as we don't want to take part in the destruction of the rainforest nor the homes of Orangutans & Tigers.
Additional oils, additives and scents:
Almond Butter Dense rich butter made from Almonds, lightly fragrant & similar to Cocoa butter. Adds a silky glide to lotion bars.
Beeswax Ahh the warm scent of unrefined beeswax! For smooth waxy bars of soap that last in the shower. Common ingredient in gardeners' creams & lotions.
Cocoa Butter Classic skin-friendly butter, fragrant and with a nice waxy-smooth feel. Some formulas use a deodorized (washed) form where the aroma of Chocolate might clash with the other scent in a soap. Also featured in our lotion bars.
Clays Clays impart color and texture to soaps, from the slip provided by kaolin and bentonite (good in shaving soaps) to the drying properties of morrocan and blue clays. We like them for their natural coloring and a bit of slip for the razor.
Essential Oils Fragrance distilled or expressed from flowers, foliage, bark, seeds and roots--used in tandem with herbs & flowers from our gardens. We use them not only for their scents but also for their historical, traditional uses and properties.
- Absolute Liquid or semi-liquid extraction from concrete. Labor intensive and expensive--but often the truest scent. This and concrete are used for roses, hyacinths, carnations, jasmine and other precious flowers.
- Concrete
Solvent extraction (often ethanol) from enfleurage. Usually further washed or tinctured, providing floral waxes along with absolutes.
- Enfleurage
Extraction of fragrant material into a heavy fat. Used for flowers and other scents where only cold extraction will preserve the true fragrance, such as hyacinth or rose. See our Lore page for a 'try this at home' explanation of the method.
- Essential oil
Steam distilled, cold-pressed or otherwise extracted fragrant oil from plant parts. We like the German term for them: Ethereal Oils. Essential oils are volatile (evaporate) as opposed to fixed oils, the fatty ones used to make the body of the soap.
Floral Wax Emollient waxes from Tuberose, Jasmine, Mimosa, Roses and more. We use them in soaps and creams to thicken and scent and for their emollience. Byproducts of making Absolutes and Concretes.
Fragrance Oils Compounded fragrances, for duplicating scents there is no essential oil for (such as lilac or lily of the valley, or most fruit scents), or for a scent that is too costly (essential oils and absolutes can go into the thousands of dollars per pound) or unethical to use (as in oils from animals or endangered species of plants). Sometimes blended from accords of other essential oils, sometimes from natural isolates, often synthetically produced. While there are no historical aromatherapeutic uses of fragrance oils (that testing hasn't been done), if a scent that reads true makes my customers happy, I'm happy too!
Goat Milk High-fat luxury milk from a neighbor's herd of happy goats. Makes for very creamy lather.
Honey Local Idaho honey provides rich amber color and extra lather.
Illipe Butter Yet another tropical butter, perfect for making hard bars. Moisturizing.
Mango Butter Wonderful oil from the Mango fruit, adds conditioning properties and hardness. We prefer it even to Shea Butter.
Monoi de Tahiti Fragrant infusion of Gardenia flowers in coconut oil.
Shea Butter Very popular butter from Shea nuts, provides rich moisturizing properties. Some people with latex sensitivity have problems with shea butter as the plants are related and shea naturally contains latex; this can result in a drying effect for some folks. While this is a nice addition to soaps, we have found that Mango butter is just as nice (nicer in my opinion!) and without the latex problem. Look for our products with Mango instead of Shea.
Poplar resin Ruby red sap exuded in late winter and early autumn by Balsam Poplar trees, a natural disinfectant and wound healer used by northern peoples both two legged and four (and winged). Deer eat the buds with their high vitamin C content, bees apply it to hives, and the aroma of poplar sap on rainy air is one of the best features of a spring morning here. We gather the fresh buds as they lose most of their 'oomph' when dried.
Rosemary Oil Extract This concentrated herbal antioxidant is added to help keep our soaps fresh.
Rose Wax Exceptionally fragrant and emollient wax, a by-product of the absolute making process still richly scented. Used in our Damask Rose soap and in our hand cream.
Sweet Orange Essential Oil Bright bouncy orange scent; orange oil is a good grease cutter and deodorizer.
Tuberose Wax Another fragrant wax, used in several of our soaps.
We add botanicals, infused oils & teas made with herbs and flowers--Lavender, Chamomile, Damask Rose, Palmarosa, Fir Needle, Mints and more. Some soaps are colored with Indigo powder (blues and greens), alkanet (purples), calendula flowers (yellows).
Q/A:
Our soaps are made in small batches, highly superfatted (extra skin-friendly oils added at trace) for super gentleness and to make them non-drying, and cured for 4-8 weeks before wrapping and shipping. As we use the all-natural anti-oxidant Rosemary oil extract (ROE) in all our oils, the oils and hence the soaps keep longer than other soaps. Well documented research shows that ROE keeps soap fresh excellently well; we also use only the freshest food quality oils.
Yes & No. Yes lye is used to make soap; no, there's none in these soaps. All the lye is used up in the soapmaking process (saponification) when soap is made correctly and we go further, superfatting for luxurious bathing.
We use essential oils and blends for fragrance, but when other scents are highly requested, sometimes we'll search out a superior quality fragrance oil and do extensive trialing to be sure it meets our expectations--as for example Lilac.
We also will not use oils from endangered plants (as, Sandalwood or Rosewood) for the plants' own good.
We are always tweaking our formulas to get the kindest non-drying yet well cleansing soaps, and have no need of any petroleum based solvents, lather enhancers or artificial preservatives in our soaps. Besides, that just wouldn't be as fun and interesting as doing the formulating ourselves, with lovely natural ingredients!
Our soaps will keep their fragrance unwrapped for 6 mo. to a year, wrapped indefinately. And no matter how long you wait to use them, they will still clean admirably well. However---why not use them fresh as intended, while they are at their peak of "soaperfection"?
