New Soaps

I was really busy the last month, and now I have six (yes, count ‘em) new soaps ready to come off the curing shelves.  I’ll have them at Maker’s Market for the first time on July 12.

One is a complexion bar, “Baby Face”, made without coconut for those sensitive to that.  It has a lot of olive oil and rice bran oil, as well as shea butter, babassu oil.  It’s gentle and won’t strip the skin of natural oils.

“Castile” soap is 100% olive oil.  That’s it, just simple food-grade olive oil and mild enough for the most delicate skin.

“Olive & Oatmeal” soap is also 100% food-grade, straight-off-the-grocery-shelves olive oil with the addition of some ground-up oatmeal.  Doctors often recommend this type of soap for people suffering from eczema.  It’s a really mild soap and the oatmeal is soothing.

“Tucuma Castile” soap is mostly olive oil, with some tucuma butter from the Amazon, which my supplier assures me is ethically sourced.  The tucuma butter and a bit of castor oil help to make a bit more suds and cleaning power in this bar, while still leaving it mild.

As if these four lovely new bars weren’t enough to please, I’ve also designed two new shampoo bars!

“Shazaam!” is a very conditioning bar with babassu oil, olive oil, rice bran oil and loads of shea butter and some castor oil.  Rice bran oil is supposed to have some sun protection built into it.  The shea butter is a “fair trade” product, as well as a darn good moisturizer.  I think you’ll find this shampoo bar to be very mild with a very high conditioning factor, good for anyone but especially good for dry, damaged hair.

“The Toucan’s Shampoo” is really different!  It has lots of ucuuba butter in it, ethically sourced, which comes from the seeds of a nutmeg-family tree which grows wild in the Amazon.  I gave this name to my shampoo because the seeds are spread by the toucan bird.  This butter seems to coat the hair shafts with conditioner, and really holds my hair, encouraging the natural curl, yet I can also comb it out fairly smoothly.  In other words it gives me a lot of control over my hair.  If I bend over and comb it from scalp to roots the hair looks very full.  If I comb it down to my head it stays there.  There is an incredible amount of body in my hair.  I think people with curly ethnic hair will really like it too.  Besides the ucuuba butter, this shampoo has a huge amount of fair-trade shea butter.  Jojoba oil helps to condition as well.

Like all my other soaps and shampoos, these bars have no added perfumes or essential oils or other unnecessary additives.  They only contain vegetable-type oils, distilled water and lye (necessary to turn the oils into soap).