As an artist, I crave beauty with all my senses. As a spiritual, sensual being I believe that we best show gratitude for the gift of life, by enjoying all the beauty, love and pleasure life can offer. Honouring the gift of the body by caring for it, as the temple of Spirit that it is.
I require my soap to be lovely to look at, to smell, feel and use. It must leave the skin feeling soft, clean but not dried out. The bar must be long lasting with proper care, and feel good in the hand.
Handmade soap is luxurious by nature, because of the essential oils, the superfatting and the high natural glycerine content. Glycerine is a skin moisturizer that is created as a byproduct of the soap making process. Most large commercial soap makers remill the soap to remove the valuable glycerine, so they can sell it to you separately in skin lotion. That is why commercial soaps are sometimes found to be very drying.
My handmade soaps retain all the natural glycerine, and some of my soaps are specially cooked and processed to increase the glycerine content to make the soap especially mild and kind to precious skin. The resulting glycerine soap is not transparent, but softly translucent when held up to the light.
All my soaps are handmade in small batches (5=12 kilos**) in my kitchen, using fresh oils and fats. Most of the soaps are cooked to increase the glycerine, before being unmolded and cut. They are cut, carved, trimmed, polished and wrapped by hand, individually. Fresh cut soap is set aside to cure for one to six weeks, depending on the type of soap it is. Curing allows the excess water to evaporate, making the bar harder, milder and longer lasting. Finally, the soap is shrink wrapped to preserve the fragrance, and labeled. The soap may have some minor irregularities such as bubbles, uneven cuts, slight variations in weight, shape, etc. These are not flaws, but evidence of the uniqueness of a hand crafted product.
Fire Serpent Soap is lightly fragranced, to be unobtrusive and gender-neutral. My ideal is to be able to smell the scent when I sniff the bar, and enjoy it in the bath or shower, but for the scent not to be overpowering or linger on my skin. I use essential oils, fragrance oils, herbs and spices to scent my soap, to enhance its natural clean smell.
To colour the soap I use mineral colours, micas, herbs, cosmetic grade colourants, spices and other natural ingredients like paprika, organic lemon zest and cinnamon.
It is part of the nature of my ADD brain and creative energy, that I cannot repeat a creative experiment, or follow someone else's recipe. I always want to take the road not travelled, and go for the new experience.
The Shakti of infinite manifestation is my Muse, and She won't even make two snowflakes exactly the same!
The result is that all my soaps are "limited editions." I may make a similar batch sometime, but it will not be exactly the same.
I guess if I were a retailer, I would have to aim for consistency, and repeat recipes... but I'm not! I'm an artist who is on a soap making binge! I make soap because I love to make soap. I like always having a variety of new soaps to try out, especially the ones I make myself.
**( 1 kilo = 2.2 lbs.)
