December 27, 2021

Is This Soap HANDMADE or Is It HANDMADE?

Choosing where you buy your handmade soap is very important, as your skin is depending on it. There are a couple of basic questions that should allow you to make the right decision. Some handmade soap are really melt and pour soap. They take pre-packaged melt and pour soap, place it in the microwave for a minute, add color and fragrance, pour into molds and call this handmade soap making. This is really a task for keeping the kids busy on a rainy day. There is very little skill involved, almost anyone can do it. The worst aspect however is what the manufacturers have to put into the basic batch in order to get it to behave this way in a microwave. The number of chemicals are too numerous to list. This is a bad choice on all counts.

Handmade soap must go through the process of saponification in order to be true handmade soap. There are newer hot process methods but these are not the methods that the finest old world soap makers use. If you were to visit the finest castile soap makers in Europe you will find they are using a method called cold press soap making. This timeless method that uses lye as the saponification agent makes the finest soap available today. You don’t have to believe me, just google French, Greek or Italian soap and read how they make their soap. Most are extremely proud of this old world tradition that they have kept alive all of these years.

If a melt and pour soap maker tries to scare you by saying “our soap contains no lye”, don't believe them. That is not true. Remember, NO LYE NO SOAP! Now with this information you need to know the other ingredients in the soap and their properties. Some very good soaps have more moisturizing properties and others have stronger cleansing properties. This has to do with amount and combination of oils in each soap. Lathering oils are coconut, castor, babassu oils and Palm oil. The more moisturizing oils are almond, apricot kernel, canola, cocoa butter, olive, rice bran, and shea butter. Some oils have a great combination of both attributes.

At EmerySolene all our soaps are handmade cold process soap using lye, oils and essential oils.

No fragrance oil.

NOT melt and pour soap

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