Heavenly Scented Handmade Soaps & Body Creams

About Heavenly Scented Handmade Soaps & Bath Products

My love for soapmaking started when I was a young girl and would go to my grandparent’s house and would help my grandmother and my aunts make the old fashioned hot process soap in a huge cast iron kettle stoked with firewood and corn cobs. When they butchered hogs, they would render the fat into lard. They would use the lard and bacon drippings after the salt was skimmed off along with water and “Red Devil” lye to make their laundry soap. She would add Borax to the mix to get a whiter soap. This was an all day process; it would cook for hours and hours before the soap was ready. My grandmother would let it set in the kettle, usually overnight until the soap set up. She would cut it up into large pieces and then remove it from the kettle, being careful of the remaining lye water that was still in the bottom of the kettle. She would then cut it up into smaller pieces and store it upstairs in the woodshed and let it cure for at least one year before using it.

I wish that I had a photo to remember this by, but I can close my eyes and I am back there on my grandparent’s farm helping them with their annual soap making event. And I will never forget the year that my cousin and aunt’s foster son threw a bucket of corn cobs in the soap before coming to the table to eat. What a disaster that made and this is still talked about to this day.

My grandmother and my aunts also made cold process soap which was easy on your hands. I remember that there was nothing better than the feel of washing dishes with homemade soap. The dishes were so slippery that they were sometimes so hard to hang on to and they shone so once they were dried. One of the added bonuses of hand washing dishes with homemade soap was that your hands were always soft and supple. But looking back now, those were the good ole’ days and are some of my cherished memories from my childhood.

I guess that I have always been fascinated in things done the old fashioned way and want so much not to see these “crafts” lost on the younger generation, but to keep them alive. Grant it; soap making has changed most drastically since those times when my grandmother mixed up hot process soap in her huge cast iron kettle using lard, but none the less – soapmaking is still a “craft”, but only better than it was back then. I am still fascinated to this day by the soap making process and will probably always be amazed at how you can take oils, add lye and in the end make soap that will lather, clean and is gentle on the skin.

Today, I am a practicing registered nurse and am constantly washing my hands with anti- bacterial soap and notice how harsh these commercial chemical based soaps are on your hands. During the winter months my hands used to crack and bleed, until I started making my own body cream and using it on my hands diligently. For the past couple of years my hands have remained soft and hydrated despite all of the hand washing that I do while I am at work. Once you have tried a bar of handmade soap, you may never want to buy a commercial brand again. Give it a try and you too may be amazed at how these bars leave your skin feeling fresh and clean, while my body cream retains moisture leaving your skin soft and supple.

About Us | Shop Online | FAQs | Wholesale | Contact Us | Home