photo by Nickleen Faucher

BASE OILS

Olive Oil - smoothing, soothing, moisturizing, and it wont clog your pores, olive oil contains more than 230 bioavailable antioxidents and has been a staple in soapmaking for centuries 

Coconut Oil - emollient, moisturizing, conditioning, easily absorbed skin protectant

Cocoa Butter -  improves skins elasticity, deeply hydrating,  high in fatty acids and antioxidents, helps soothe sensitive skin and irritations, helps smooth scars and wrinkles    

Hempseed Oil -  non-clogging oil that helps reduce size of pores, protects the skin from free radicals,  provides  essential nutrients required to maintain epidermal lipids, improves elasticity and softness,  anti-inflammatory, reduces redness, used to treat  psoriasis and eczema.

 A LITTLE ABOUT LYE

           You can not make real soap without lye. Oils (fatty acids) + Lye (sodium hydroxide) = SOAP. The process is a chemical reaction called saponification.  There is no lye in finished soap.  So if my ingredients say olive oil and lye what you are getting is saponified olive oil.  Lye has been historically produced by filtering water through the ashes of hardwood fires.  This method has been used for the purpose of soap making for thousands of years.  Today it is manufactured in controlled scientific laboratories.   For the record, I use only Kosher Food Grade lye in my recipes.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOAP

          The first written evidence of soapmaking was found on a Babylonian clay tablet  from  2800 BC,  inscribed with a recipe using water, ashes, and cassia oil.  Evidence of soapmaking is found in nearly every early culture, although recipes and uses of the product vary widely. Olive oil soap was common in places like Northern Italy and Israel, yet it was the medieval Kingdom of Castile, during the 15th & 16th centuries in Spain, that became famous for mass producing and exporting this type of soap.  This is where the term Castile soap comes from.  Later, soap makers in France gained popularity with olive oil based soaps that included blends of other vegetable oils with unique contributing properties.  DriftAwaySoap's  recipes are inspired by the traditional craftsmanship of these times.

WHAT I DO NOT PUT IN MY SOAP

Additives - No phthalates, parabens, microbeads, triclosan, or phosphates here!!!

Fragrance oils -    Fragrance oils are a combination of synthetically manufactured chemicals.  I use only pure essential oils, oils that are steam distilled from the leaves, stems, flowers, and other parts of plants. 

Palm Oil - Wide scale demand for palm oil has prompted large areas of rainforest to be cleared to make way for palm oil plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia.  Deforestation in these areas accounts for up to one-third of total CO2 emissions and has a devastating impact on native peoples and many endangered species' habitats.   Since there are so many other useful soap oils available,  I choose to exclude palm oil from my recipes as yet another way to ensure that my soaps are earth friendly.  

Glycerin -   Glycerin occurs as a natural byproduct of the chemical reaction in the soap making process.   So some glycerin occurs naturally in my vegetable oil based soaps but I do not add any outsourced glycerin to my products.  They don't need it!  Many manufacturers extract glycerin from animal fat based soap in order to add it to other products.  When you see glycerin written on a label for a soap, body wash, toothpaste, shampoo, or lotion it is more often than not derived from an animal fat source.  Since the labeling do not  always specify, this can be a concern for those who choose to be vegan.