Making "Lavender Orange" Soap

Here is a behind-the-scenes look at making "Lavender Orange" soap:

"Lavender Orange," a natural vegan soap for hands and body, is scented with essential oils of lavender and orange for a cheerful, sweet, and floral aroma, while cornmeal provides gentle exfoliation.  The citrus essential oil also assists in masking and washing pungent and long-lasting scents from the skin, such as garlic and onion, making this an ideal kitchen soap.

"Lavender Orange" is hand-crafted in small batches with olive oil, coconut oil, castor oil, and sunflower oil.  Olive oil is one of the most-used fixed oils in soap making.  It makes an extremely mild, hard, and long-lasting bar of natural soap.  Coconut oil produces large, fluffy bubbles and is a cleansing powerhouse.  Castor oil acts as a humectant, drawing moisture to the skin, and supports a lush lather.  Sunflower oil is highly conditioning and moisturizing.

Sodium Hydroxide is used to turn water and these luxurious oils and butters into soap, a process called "saponification."  Glycerin, a humectant which attracts and retains moisture on the skin, is by-product of the soapmaking process. With hand-crafted soaps, glycerin remains in the soap, resulting in a mild, pure bar.  Additionally, we "superfat" our soaps, meaning that each bar contains more oils and butters than mathematically needed to complete saponification, resulting in bars with excess luxurious oils and butters that did not turn into soap, to improve moisturization, mildness, and lather.

As with all of our natural vegan soaps, "Lavender Orange" does not contain any palm oil.  Although palm oil is a very popular ingredient in hand-crafted bar soap, unsustainable palm oil cultivation is contributing to deforestation and climate change.  In 2011, we reformulated our soaps to be palm oil-free.