Sopalotta Sudzy Soap: Fancy Pants Extra Good Smelling Soap

All of these soaps are made with the same recipes used for my other naturally fragrant and colorful soaps.  They have a bit of essential oil or fragrance oil and some have a little mica colorant added for fun.  Lots of folks make their soaps with tons of added fragrance.  I prefer to go a little more lightly so the scent doesn't interfere later with your cologne choice.

Ahimsa--Made with an olive oil and coconut oil base and superfatted with sweet almond oil.  Scented with sandalwood frangrance oil.  Colorant free!

Ahimsa (with a little bit of Mother's Day in the corner there).

Gardener's Hand Soap--A sturdy soap to clean the garden grime from your hands. Scented with pine needle essential oil and colored with a little green mica for a marbled effect.  Available in spring and summer.

Gardener's Hand Soap

Joyful Squid--Named for my bestie Joan and her lovely daughter Allie.  Joyful Squid is scented with mandarin  and clove essential oils and has a swirl of red oxide colorant.

Joyful Squid

Lumberjack--Very manly.  Just like a lumberjack (and I'm okay).  Scented with vetiver and cedarwood essential oils and tinted with black oxide.

Lumberjack

Mother's Day--A very pretty smelling and pretty looking soap.  Scented with rose geranium essential oil (swoon-worthy scent) and swirled with pink mica and powdered hibiscus flower colorants.  The first thing I thought of when I smelled this soap the first time was Mother's Day.  Available in spring and summer.

Mother's Day

Petal Pink--This is my Plain & Simple soap with some pink mica colorant added.  No added fragrance. Very pretty soap.

Petal Pink

Prairie Sunshine--My version of lavender and lemongrass with essentail oils of the same name.  No added colorants.  Just pure lemony goodness.

Prairie Sunshine

Serene Dream--A very nice bastile bar scented with lavender essential oil and swirled with purple mica.  Hands down, this is my favorite of all my soaps.

Serene Dream

Shinto Garden--Ylang ylang essential oil makes this soap smell like a walk through a Japanese garden.  I make this one extra pretty with some pink and purple mica swirls.

Seriously smells amazing.  I wish there was smellavision.

Smuggler--Remember college when you were still too young to drink?  Remember hot chocolate with a peppermint kiss on top and a shot of peppermint schnapps mixed in?  That is what this soap reminds me of:  A drink we called The Smuggler.  Made with real cocoa powder and peppermint essential oil.  Smells like a brownie with a peppermint kiss on top.  I can't recommend eating it, though.  It sort of ruins the effect.

Smuggler--looks a little weird on the washcloth.  I recommend a dark colored cloth.

Stanky Dawg--You know that funky smell that dogs get after a while?  This will wash it off gently but firmly.  I use it on my own short-haired dogs and it works great to de-stinky-fy them.  Made with peppermint essential oil.  Zero added colors.

Stanky Dawg.  Works great if you can get them in the tub.

Sweet Innocence--I swear I used purple mica for color but it looks greyish to me. Sweet Innocence has violet fragrance oil for scent.  Superfatted with sweet almond oil.  Limited edition because I don't like the color.  It will be back...just not in that weird color.

Sweet Innocence.  It sorta looks purple if you squint just right and side-eye it.

Tea Ceremony-- Jasmine fragrance oil makes this soap a real treat to smell.  I add a little green mica glitter on the top and swirl it in.

Tea Ceremony

That's it for now.  I'm always interested in hearing about any particular fragrances you'd like to find.  Let me know!

Sopalotta Zero Added Fragrance, Zero Artificial Colorants Sudzy Soaps

Extra Stout--All the color and fragrance in this soap comes from the dark beer in the recipe.  Smells grainy and earthy.  Made with a cocoa butter superfat.

Extra Stout

Harvest Moon Hand Soap--Smells like grandma's kitchen at Thanksgiving.  Made with ground spices and real pumpkin. Smells great!  Tastes really bad!  Available in fall and winter.

Harvest Moon

Kitchen Sink Hand Soap--Made with brewed coffee and has some ground coffee for texture.  Smells nutty and wonderful.  Cleans your hands so you can make a safe and healthy meal.

Kitchen Sink Hand Soap

Mellow Yellow--This is a fragrance free buttermilk bastile-type recipe with olive and coconut oils.  Contains pureed carrots.  Great soap for a young child.

Mellow Yellow

Nothin' Fancy--The soap that started it all!  Nothin' Fancy is a basic bastile soap made with over 90% olive oil plus a touch of castor oil to provide hardness to the bar.  This recipe serves as the basis for most of my bastile soaps.

Nothin' Fancy.  Ugh!  Ever try to take a good picture of something white?

Plain & Simple--Made with olive oil, coconut oil, and sweet almond oil superfat.  No fragrances.  No added colors.  No preservatives.  No nothing but plain & simple soap.  This recipe serves as a basis for many of my other soaps.

Plain & Simple

Reggae--Believe it or not this soap has no added colors or fragrances.  It's made with red, red wine (Merlot in this instance) which gives it a sweet and earthy fragrance and deep, deep rusty red color.  Superfatted with cocoa butter.

Reggae

 

Sowing the Wild--A bastile bar made with oats and honey.  I've made this soap many times and because of the nature of the honey I add, it never comes out looking the same way twice.  In this particular batch, the honey caramelized to produce a rich, dark brown color and it smells divinely of honey caramel.

Sowing the Wild

Next up:  My Fancy Pants line of good smelling soaps with essential oils, fragrance oils, and/or colorants.

Introducing: Sopalotta Sudzy Soap

In the next few weeks, I plan to officially launch my new soap business.  I call it Sopalotta Sudzy Soap.  You can thank my husband for the alliteration.

I've been hard at work all winter testing recipes and making soap.  Here's a little information about  my soaps. 

My soaps are just that: soap.  Soap that gets you clean.  They are real soap.  Not detergents derived from petrochemicals.  There aren’t any added preservatives.  My soaps are made with water or other liquid, various oils, some have fragrance, some have colors, and all of them have lye.

Yes.  Lye.  You can’t make soap…real soap…without lye.  Here’s how I make mine:

The soaps made in the Sopalotta shop are created using the ‘hot process’ method of soap making.  The ingredients for each batch are carefully weighed, mixed, and gently cooked to speed the reaction of the lye with the soaping oils to completion.  This process allows for a shorter time from batch creation to shower or sink.  By the time the soap is poured from pot to mold, the reaction is complete and only a few days of drying time are needed before the soap is ready to package and use.

Every batch is oil heavy.  That means that there is an excess of oil added to the recipe to ensure that all the lye is used up by the time it’s done cooking.  We call that ‘superfat’ in the soap making industry.  I use sweet almond oil, cocoa butter, shea butter, and avocado oil to superfat my soaps.

There are several different recipes available from Sopalotta.  The very first kind of soap I ever made was a bastile type.  What’s a ‘bastile’ you ask?  I started out wanting to make a very gentle soap called Castile.  Castile soap is made from lye and olive oil and water and that’s it.  The trouble with castile soap is that it’s not very hard and it doesn’t last very long.  So some soapers add a little bit of another oil to make the bar harder and thus it lasts a lot longer.  But if it’s not 100% olive oil, you can’t really call it a Castile, can you?  So the soapers started calling it a bastile.  My bastile soaps are over 90% olive oil.

Left: Soap made with buttermilk and carrots.  Right: Soap made with honey. No added colorants here.

Most of my soaps are free of added colorants.  I prefer the rustic and more organic-looking results of the process without dyes or colors.  Some of my soaps will have a little mica colorant to add some visual interest and a little sparkle here and there.  The search for natural colorants is an ongoing process.
 

Left:  Soap with mica colorant and hibiscus flower powder.  Right: Same soap recipe without colorant added.

I use both essential oils and fragrance oils in my soaps.  Where possible, I prefer to use essential oils over the fragrance oils because the fragrance oils tend to be artificial creations.  But, there are just some scents you can’t get in an essential oil—like a lot of the floral fragrances.  Additionally, some are prohibitively expensive for use in the quantities required for soap making—such as sandalwood.  Sandalwood essential oil is available.  But the soaps would be very, very expensive.

The goal at Sopalotta Sudzy Soap is to create a soap for every body.  From toddler to granddad, we have a soap to get you clean. 

In the next few days, I'll publish a post or two about the different soaps I will have available for purchase on my yet-to-be created website.  I'll also do a post on what got me started making soaps in the first place.  So stay tuned!