About Feral Moon…

My name is Jenine and I'm a stay-at-home/work-at-home mom of two beautiful and very energetic little girls and one older daughter who's adulthood is just around the corner way too soon. In addition to crafting, I love cooking, could do without so much cleaning, and would love to have more time in the day. With the support and help of my wonderful husband, our little ones are also homeschooled. As if that's not enough, I also run a little cottage business called 'Feral Moon' and have an Etsy shop at feralmoon.etsy.com.

Soapmaking and many other crafts have been hobbies of mine for years. I used to consider myself a 'jack of all trades, master of none' for a very long time. At which point I realized that after doing them continuously over the years, I was actually pretty good at them. :) I used to give my soaps and handcrafts away as gifts to my family and friends for holidays and special occasions. In 2005, after much encouragement (especially from my husband), I decided to make a go of it as a cottage business and Feral Moon was born.

I love making soap and I habitually experiment with different ingredients, scent combinations, and colors just to see what I can come up with. While I try and stay as natural as possible, I just love the variety of fragrance oils that are available these days and, therefore, I make both soaps with natural essential oils and soaps with fine fragrance oils specifically made for use in soapmaking.

I also make soaps using absolutely no colorants, soaps that get their color from various additives (like my pumpkin soaps from the natural pumpkin that I include), and soaps that have bursts of color using natural mineral pigments. Eventually, my goal is to have my husband construct a larger wooden mold so that I can experiment more with multiple colors and different techniques to get bigger and wilder color splashes and patterns.

I find inspiration from just about everything in the world around us. From the scenery, from a memory of a place we've visited, from my vision and imagination of a place where I'd like to travel, from movies I've seen, from something funny I've heard, even from some fleeting and crazy thoughts that brush against my muddled mind so fast that I have to write them down or the idea might be lost forever in the chaos of life. Quite often I suddenly wake and need to quickly and furtively scribble something down in the dark on a small scrap of paper at my bedside table before trying to sleep again. Whether these scribbles are legible in the morning, however, is debatable.

My inspiration doesn't end with soapmaking. I find peace of mind and wonderful therapeutic benefits in all sorts of crafting. Whether it be knitting or crochet, working with felt, or beading. Sometimes I make things that are mundane and useful - like a hat and scarf, gloves, or knitting charms. And other times I make zany things like little creatures that impose themselves in my thoughts until I actually bring them to life in yarn or felt. To date, these creatures have found loving homes with family or friends or have been sent abroad in care packages, but eventually I'd like to expand my shop to include this aspect of my creative nature.

We are located just outside of beautiful Austin, Texas south of Round Rock in a historical town having German ancestry of Pflugerville where the local slogan proclaims 'Stuck Between a Rock and a Weird Place'.

For more information on us, our products, a glimpse of modern day soapmaking, and the difference between handmade and commercially manufactured soap, please continue reading.

I'm happy to be a member of the following Etsy teams:
Etsy Moms Street Team
Schooling at Home Etsians (SHE)
Etsy Texas Crafters
Clean Up Your Act (CYA)


Thank you for visiting me. :)


About Handmade Soaps…

Handmade soap feels wonderful on your body and is great for your skin!

With the hectic lives we lead, it's only natural to take short cuts here and there. However, the soap you use shouldn't be one of them. Handmade soaps are simply good for you and your skin. And you should feel good about using them. Sure, you pay more for them than you would at your local grocery, but the product you get is so much better for you. No fillers, no preservatives, no harsh chemicals, and no cheap ingredients.

We have so few real opportunities to pamper ourselves, however, handmade soap is a daily luxury in which everyone has permission to indulge. Once you try handmade soap and see how wonderful the lather is and how great your skin feels afterward, I guarantee you won't want to go back to store bought detergent bars ever again.

Want more great reasons to indulge in handmade soap? It won't cause weight gain, stress, increase your cholesterol, or raise your blood pressure. Also with every purchase of some handmade soap, you're also purchasing a little peace of mind. Being handmade that means no industrial machinery, no polluting our air with smog, and no contaminating our waters with waste. Plus, you'll also be contributing to the support of independent artisans who believe in the craft of handmade goods and not mass produced, commercially manufactured items.

So what are you waiting for? Buy handmade and pamper yourself with some handmade soap today!


Our Soaps…

We create homespun soaps and other unique handcrafted gifts right in our own home. All of our soaps and bath & body products are lovingly handcrafted with great care and attention to detail in an effort to make yourself and your skin feel happy. All of our items are made in a smoke free environment. We do have pets, although they are never in the area where we create and store our products. We love to answer questions or chat about our soapmaking process. Please don’t hesitate to converse with us or shoot us an email. We look forward to hearing from you and we appreciate your business.

At Feral Moon, our soaps are handcrafted completely by scratch, in small batches. This allows us to control exactly what ingredients we use. We formulate and design our own recipes to provide a balanced combination of oils and other ingredients that are beneficial to your skin. We use only the best ingredients, only from reputable suppliers, to make our bars moisturizing, nourishing, enriching, and softening. All of our products are vegan friendly unless otherwise specified. Our testers are our family members and friends and they give us constant feedback on what they like or don’t like about our products so we might revise our recipes in order to create the best products possible. We try to be environmentally conscious so we recycle whenever possible.


Our Soapmaking Process…

We use the cold process method of soapmaking to create the majority of our soaps. First, we make a soap batter using a variety of oils and other ingredients, and then we pour the batter into wooden molds and wait for the soap to firm up. After the soap has hardened, we turn the block of soap out of the mold, hand cut the soap into individual bars, and hand stamp them to add another personal touch. The bars are then placed on drying racks and left to cure. The curing process takes several weeks and allows any excess moisture and alkali to evaporate from the soap. After curing, what is left is a nice, hard bar of soap - ready for use. All of our soaps are pH tested for neutrality before they go from our hands to yours.

Our soaps retain all the natural glycerin (a natural humectant and emollient that draws moisture from the air to your skin) that occurs as a natural byproduct of soapmaking -something that's actually removed in commercially manufactured soaps.

We strive to make all of our soaps with as many natural ingredients as possible. Our 100% all natural soaps have no artificial ingredients of any kind and either are unscented, fragranced naturally, or contain essential oils only. Also, our 100% all natural soaps have no coloring, are colored by nature, or use only natural mineral pigments.

At Feral Moon, we do love variety and therefore we also make soaps that use fine fragrance oils and FDA approved colorants. These oils and colors are specifically made for use in soap and are entirely skin-safe - just not denotable as all natural. We also make decorative soaps using other methods.


So... How Do We Look?

Each of our handcrafted soaps is unique. Because we create our soap entirely by hand, the appearance of our soap bars will differ slightly from each other. The rustic look and any little imperfections are a sign that the soap you are receiving is not commercially manufactured.

Our cold process soap bars are roughly 2 ½ x 3 ¼ with a thickness of approximately 1”. Each of our bars average around 4 ounces when cut into bars. The final bar weight will vary due to water evaporation when cured.

When you order soap from Feral Moon, your soap will be hand labeled with each ingredient. Before we ship your bars out to you, we put each bar into a clear sleeve (one bar per sleeve) to preserve the soap’s fragrance. The sleeves also help prevent scent mingling during shipping if you order multiple bars with different fragrances. We then tie the soap sleeve closed with a complementary ribbon and package carefully for the journey to your home.

Bath, Body, & More...