Ingredients and other Frequently Asked Questions:
Wildwood Soap Company soap is handmade on a farm in Northest Idaho, using food grade olive, palm & coconut oils, with added luxury oils such as Avocado, Mango Butter, Cocoa Butter and Jojoba, chosen for their lovely soap-enhancing properties. All are vegetarian, most vegan. They're made in the cold process method which preserves the glycerin inherent in natural soap, and allows me to use the alchemy of soapmaking to make really special soaps and play with pattern and color.
I got started making my own soap as Idaho is dry skin central with its mountain weather and outdoor way of life, and wanted to be in control of what I washed with; soapmaking became an artistic passion and creative outlet. I love using infused oils scented and colored with herbs and flowers, and recipes and formulas I've created to evoke gardening & walks in the woods while making the gentlest, nicest smelling, best lathering and most non-drying soap you'll find.
My basic soap formula contains a high percentage of Olive oil, plus coconut oil, palm oil, and usually avocado oil (for the gentle fluffy lather it adds and the deep green color of the unrefined oil). Often the soaps will also be made with cocoa butter, shea butter or avocado butter, which add hardness, resistance to melting in the shower, and creamy, silky lather. Prime pressed cocoa butter also smells delish!
I use the highest quality essential oils I can find, and (very occasionally) a few high quality fragrance oils. The soaps I make are well scented, but won't linger long on your skin to conflict with your personal choice of scent.
Some soaps are colored with Indigo powder or clays (blues greens, pinks & white), alkanet (purples), calendula flowers (yellows); others use mineral colors such as iron oxides or ultramarines. Goat milk comes from neighbors' pampered herds, honey and beeswax from local beekeepers, poplar resin and fir needles from the woods and herbs from my garden.
I'm striving to reduce and recycle in packaging, which means paper labels, recyclable boxes and packing materials, and minimal packaging. Tins are re-useable, the lip balm tubes & cream jars recyclable &/or with post consumer content.
As Wildwood Soap Company™ is a tiny home-based business, not all soaps will be in stock at all times, depending on seasonal ingredients and whim. If you see a soap listed as out, feel free to inquire about the next availability.
If you are in town in the Summer, stop by the Farmers' Market and visit us on a Saturday morning and check out the latest soaps!
Note on Palm-Palm Kernel Oils:Wildwood Soap uses only certified organic Palm & Palm Kernel Oils as we don't want to take part in the destruction of the rainforest nor the homes of Orangutans & Tigers.
Q/A: Wildwood soaps are made in small batches, well superfatted (extra skin-friendly oils added for super gentleness and to make them non-drying), and cured for 4-8 weeks before wrapping and shipping. All bars are a generous 4.75-5 oz size, and formulated to last a long time in the shower.
Yes & No. Yes I use lye to make my soaps; no, there's none in the finished soap. All true soaps are made from oils, lye and water (or other liquid such as milk). All the lye is used up in the soapmaking process (saponification) when soap is made correctly; Wildwood soaps go further, superfatting for luxurious bathing. I use and prefer essential oils and create my own blends for fragrance, but when other scents are highly requested, sometimes will search out a superior quality fragrance oil. I will not use oils from endangered plants (as, Sandalwood or Rosewood) for the plants' own good, nor animal oils. The animal products I do use include beeswax, honey, and milk.
The Glossary:
Sodium avocadoate, sodium cocoate, sodium palmate, sodium olivate, other "-ates": the soap made from reacting pure vegetable oils (avocado, coconut, palm, olive in these examples) and butters with lye (sodium hydroxide).
Fragrance:
those yummy essential oils, or fragrance oils, used to scent the soaps.
Oxides:
mineral colors--Iron (yellow, brown, burgundy, red, or black); Chrome (green and teal)
Ultramarines:
(sounds like something from Andy Warhol, but really just FDA approved cosmetic colors, soap safe, to provide pinks, blues, violets and lavenders.
Micas:
Mica sheeting bonded with FDA approved pigments for bright splashes of color and sparkle. The only way I can capture the zing of flower petal colors or the flash of a butterfly's wing, in soap.
Water:
water.
These soaps will keep their fragrance unwrapped for 6 mo. to a year, wrapped indefinitely. And no matter how long you wait to use them, they will still clean admirably well. However---why not use them fresh as intended, while they are at their peak of "soaperfection"?
