However, in the meantime, just let me announce that....

I WON A CUSTOM BLOG DESIGN!!!!!!!

I'm so excited about this. I entered a giveaway contest at Mommy's Quiet Time for a custom blog design by Subjective Beauty! I'm so excited. My poor blog needs so much work and I'm so happy to have won this.

So exciting things to come!

I was featured in the Issue 2 of Around zine. :) Around is a homeschooling mini magazine that instead of being comprised of practical and scholarly homeschooling resources, actually focuses more on eclectic issues and ideas that make up the daily lives of homeschooling families.


Laura from Around zine asked to interview me and then she sent me some interview questions. Click to enlarge and then you'll probably have to zoom in a bit to see the article.

Free Hugs

Watch the video.

I just purchased a new soap cutter and got it in the mail a couple of days ago. This is from Anhoki on Etsy. This will cut 12 bars - or 9, or 8, or 6, or 4, or 3 depending upon where you put the combo cutter/divider. With the larger surface area, I should be able to swirl and combine colors a bit better. I can still use my other mold for bars of one color or for bars that the colors don't actually have to blend. I'll be experimenting with my new mold in the next few days. :)

You must watch this and appreciate.

Birds Fly Away by Theresa Andersson.

Today, I got something in the mail that I ordered over the last week. Wonderful metal stamps from Melita at an Etsy shop called, Print Letterpress. I ordered a small one with the intention of stamping my thank you notes, but she assured me that the depth of the stamp would mean that I'd also be able to use it for stamping my soaps. She quickly came up with a design for me based on my specifications, and worked with me to get it right. The entire process took less than a day with back and forth communication to get the design right. Plus, I thought I'd use the one stamp for both letters and soap, but she actually included a larger stamp that I could use as my soap stamp! I can't wait to try these out.



Thanks, Melita!

Just some fyi stuff -

Up until this point I have been using FDA approved colorants in my soaps, if I used any additional coloring at all. My dyes are from a very reputable supplier. The colorants are all oil-based, using the same oils that I put into my soaps. They've not only been tested for the use on skin, they are specifically made for use in soaps, and they can (why you would want to, I have NO idea) also be safely consumed.

However, I will be switching to the use of oxides and ultramarines for future soap batches. They're on order right now and I have high prospects for them. I prefer the idea of using natural mineral pigments and like the idea of using powders to color my soaps, instead of liquids.

So anyway, that's that. Just giving everyone a heads up. I might just take the mention of any kind of colorant off my labels in the future and just have it as a disclaimer on the site.

Has anyone seen the site yet? It's still a work in progress. We're slowly getting little bits of it done. It's a bit time consuming and there's soap to make, kids to feed, etc etc.

I just wanted to throw a big thank you out there to Eddie who has been taking some REALLY nice pictures of my soaps. Spiffing!

Justine - here are some visuals of example gift baskets that I put together. These are just ideas and mock ups of some of the items that might be available to put in. I took pictures to give you an idea of size and possible content.

The first picture uses a rectangular Christmas basket in red and green colors. There are two incense packs on either side. The tube sticking up next to the left incense pack represents a bath salt tube. There is pink tissue in it because I didn't think the clear tube would show up so well in a photo. In between the salt tube and the incense pack on the right is an 8 oz mason jar with some gingham cloth for decoration. That is another possibility for a bath salt container in a larger size. You can see four bar soaps toward the front of the basket. I'm awaiting an order for clear bags that each soap would be put in with a little decorative ribbon for closure. The object in front of the soap is a representation of a 2 inch diameter bath fizzie wrapped up like a candy. There are red, crinkly paper strips in the basket for filler.

The next picture is of four soaps in a smaller basket - again, just for size comparison. Unfortunately I've only managed to acquire just a couple of the smaller round baskets. I have a few other small baskets but they're all a little different. I guess with this being really close to the holidays, people are stocking up on baskets and such. Bah humbug! :)

The next picture shows the various basket rim choices of the Christmas basket that I used in the first photo. I don't know how hard these will be to find as it gets closer to Christmas. I managed to grab double of what you see in the photo. The baskets alter from being a majority of red with green accents, to a majority of green with red accents. They're pretty sturdy and the dimensions are approximately 9" x 7 1/2" by 3 3/4" deep. They make a pretty display.

Other possibilities are:
* 4 oz wide-mouth mason jars for a body scrub, also with a gingham cloth (or other style) for decoration.
* body poof (those mesh scrubbie things that people use in the bath or shower)
* lip balm
* wooden soap tray(s)

I'm open to other suggestions if you have any. And remember, these are only ideas of what I can throw together and things that I have or will have on-hand. There is no obligation for any of this if you don't want to go this route. If nothing else, it will give me experience of what I should put together and make for the seasons to come.

I'll be making bath salts, fizzies/bombs, and a couple of other flavors of lip balms as soon as my supply orders ever arrive. This isn't because of the gift baskets - I just want to make them for my product line and they can can always be included in baskets since I'll have them on-hand (once made, of course). The good news is that there is not a 4 week dry/harden time associated with those products, only the soaps. So I'm not particularly concerned that my order for them isn't here yet. I'm also going to be putting together some additional soaps that will be ready before the necessary holiday shipping. I haven't completely decided on the scents and colors of the salts, and fizzies yet. Again, I'm open to suggestions otherwise I'll just put together what I think will smell nice in a bath. I think I'll be making strawberry and rootbeer lip balms. You know, you REALLY shouldn't order flavor stuff when you're hungry. :)

Anyhow, just wanted to throw some pics up here to see what you might think about any of it. I haven't yet figured price in to anything. I'm thinking that I should possibly have two different price ranges for my soaps. I know a lot of people do that. Some of the soaps are a lot more complex and have a lot of different or more expensive ingredients in them and are more time consuming to prepare and make. So I'll have to do some more thinking along these lines. I think that's the hardest part actually - coming up with good pricing. The making of it all is fun and artistic. It's a challenge to see what I can come up with.

Let me know what you think of all this and keep the ideas coming!

Nothing much going on. Just finishing up a lot of things I've been working on. Testing some others.

I threw together the two scents that Justine recommened - orange and rosemary. They smell pretty good at a 2:1 ratio.

I tested both scents of incense sticks that I made. The Voodoo smells pretty good. You can't really pick out any one scent but together they all smell pretty good. I didn't time the burn on it. I was running around doing too many things at once and lost track of time. The GotM/F&M/Whatever they're going to be called since no one has suggested anything and I've run out of ideas sticks smell pretty good too. That one I did time and it burned between 45 minutes to an hour. That's what it was supposed to do. So yay!

I've been doing a lot of computer research regarding ingredients, suppliers, prices, recipes, competitive pricing... that sort of thing. I've also been trying to organize my notes and recipes and that seems to be taking forever. I'm still awaiting some supplies but after I get those, I'll be trying out some new stuff.

I made some more Heffalump cookies the other day and I'm guessing that tomorrow will see the last of them. So I'll have to make some more in a day or two.

Hopefully soon, I'll put up a more productive post. I plan to make another soap in the next day or so, kids permitting. :)

I probably won't have time to make any soap today, but possibly sometime this weekend. The kids are underfoot, and when that happens, soap doesn't. I have a blemish control type soap in mind for this next batch. After doing a lot of research on what herbs would be best, I put together the herbal infusion previously and it's been sitting and steeping so it should be good and ready when I get around to throwing my ingredients together. Problem is, I don't know many people that have blemish control problems... or at least anyone that will admit to it. So I might have to wait until I have a freakish breakout to see if the soap will work. I could always send some to Emily, but then I'd never hear anything back about it. Hmmm... dilemmas, dilemmas.

Good news on the home front.... www.feralmoon.com is now ours! Mwa ha ha hahahaha. Oops. Please pardon the maniacal laughter there. It got away with me. I've been trying to grab that site for months now. The expiration date had come and gone and I was in contact with various domain people to try to find out WHY it wasn't showing up as available. After becoming increasingly frustrated due to getting the runaround and people not answering my questions because afterall, they'd have to stretch their toes just a little to think outside the box.... I just waited it out and kept checking on the domain availability daily. So I've pointed the other website (feral-moon.com) over to the new one. It is STILL just a placeholder page, but at least it has point of contact information on it until we can get something up and going. I'm not a web guru so I have no idea how to do that. But the name's in place for starters.

I had Eddie reprint my labels so that I can at least have the slightly modified, yet correct website address on them. I can't figure out what is wrong with our printer, so I can't print from here. The colors are all funky and we've even tried installing new ink cartridges. It's really annoying. That and it's been about two years since I've been able to print anything from where I sit using MY machine. If I want to print anything, I have to do the work on my machine and then get on Eddie's machine and print from there. That's inconvenient and irritating. We haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with our setup. I USED to be able to print from my machine. It's been so long though that we don't remember if there was anything specific that we did that would give us some clue as to why it's not working any more. It could be something having to do with printer drivers - whatever those are. We have a friend that is excellent with computer hardware and repair but Eddie just hasn't had the time to have him walk us through what might be a rather long process.

Okay now that I've stopped rambling temporarily, the Oatmeal, Milk, & Honey AND the Pumpkin bars are ready for use. Justine, I know that I owe you some soap. Honestly, I'll get to the post office soon. I'm going to try and pack some up today so that I can aspire to get to the post office tomorrow. I'm gonna put the new labels on them so it'll look all professional and everything. Sorry to keep you waiting. :(

That's it for now.

Is that wine I see behind those cookies? I wish. I could have used a bit of it yesterday. Wednesday is one of those days that Eddie leaves straight from work and goes to play tennis. This means that Wednesday is also one of those days that Jenine goes quite insane having been up with the kids for a solid thirteen hours with no break and no naps, being that Bronwyn doesn't take them and she won't let Teagan fall asleep either because she is just SO NOISY and distracting, and it causes Jenine to have run-on sentences and talk in the third person and be thoroughly ticked off when Eddie finally shows up around 8 pm.

Anyway, I was too exhausted, distracted, exhausted, impatient, fed-up, (did I mention exhausted?), and at my wits end to mess around with chemicals to make soap so instead I made an herbal infusion. That's what's in the wine bottle. It's in preparation for another soap that I'm trying to come up with. I'll be filtering the herbs out and will use the infusion in replacement of the water to combine with the lye.

Well, Little Bear is over so my 20 minutes of relative peace and quiet with Teagan has come to an end. I just wanted to dash this out when I had the time.

Yesterday, Dennis sent me the following email.

"....have questions about your soap. do you/how do you/ check the pH of the final product? i have done a side by side compare of one of your soaps (cranberry almond) and "dove" and find your soap can sting a little bit more on sensitive skin. on the other face jackie says your barnone soap leaves her face quite smooth and less dry than the other face soaps (cetaphil)."

Good question.

A few words about pH.
I use standard pH testing strips to test my soaps. At first I was testing my soaps only after they had either cured (for cold process soap) or cooked (for hot process soap). My soaps always seemed to test at a pH of 8, so I started testing them during the various soapmaking stages just for the sake of curiousity and I determined that my soaps will tend to test at pH 8 as soon as all the oils are saponified. Sorry for the blurry photo. The camera wouldn't focus on the tiny bottle of test strips but there they are.

Saponification: The chemical reaction between lye (or alkali) and fats (or oils), yielding soap and glycerin as the products of the reaction.

A good part of saponification takes place during the combination of the oils and lye water in the soap pot. The oil is first heated to the desired temperature and once the lye water is added, no further heating is needed. The chemical reaction of saponification proceeds and generates sufficient heat for the soap to thicken (brought to trace) and is ready to be poured into molds to solidify. Trace is helped along by the fact that I use an immersion blender that I purchased specifically for this duty. Any further saponification needing to occur happens after the soap is poured into the mold and is insulated and let to sit. I usually let it rest overnight. The soap, while insulated in the mold, goes through a gel phase whereas the soap generates enough heat that starting at the center of the soap loaf, the thickened soap turns gel-like and then this gel-like reaction radiates outwards until the soap loaf cools and solidifies. You can actually feel the heat coming from the mold when the soap is gelin'.

This means that in the case of cold processed soap, unless I do something really radical, my soap will test at a pH of 8 as soon as it is ready to be unmolded and cut into bars. With hot process, the soap is 'cooked' after it has thickened in the soap pot (whether it be in the oven, crockpot or dutch oven on the stove) and the gel phase occurs during cooking. The cooking also forces the soap to harden or cure faster because the applied heat forces evaporation of excess water and moisture. So as soon as it's done cooking, again, pH of 8.

With all my soaps testing at the magical number of 8, I questioned the accuracy of my pH strips. So I tested lye water and it tested at 14. I tested the unsaponified lye water and oils together, again - bad juju. So I guess my strips are good.

The idea that my soap would be neutral within days of my making it really had me in a state of disbelief. With all the research that I had done, I was led to believe that soap would reach a neutral state only AFTER it had cured. Most sources state that cure time equals 4 weeks. This is why I ran so many pH tests at the beginning. So basically, now I run a pH test after I cut the soap into bars. If it tests at 8, then I still won't release the soap for use until a few weeks down the road just to make sure the bars have hardened enough. If the pH doesn't test where I want it, I will retest the bars throughout the 'cure' process.

More interesting stuff about pH.
Here's an interesting site that talks about pH in regard to soapmaking. http://waltonfeed.com/old/soap/soaplit.html

The site lists the following brands of soap and their pH.
Camay 9.5
Dial 9.5
Dove 7.0
Irish Spring 9.5
Ivory 9.5
Lever 2000 9.0
Palmolive 10.0
Zest 10.0

I do not know where this information is obtained (if the author tested the soap himself or not) but if it is correct, then it sure is interesting. The site also claims the following:

"Soapmakers in general say they shun soaps with a pH over 9 but look at the major brands! Notice the Dove above... a true neutral pH soap. To get this you'd have to run your cured soap through a rebatch operation and mix in boric acid to lower the soap's naturally high pH. My cured soaps now weigh in anywhere between a pH of 9 to 10. I've also thrown a pH strip to a couple of other soapmaker's soaps sold on the internet and find they also come in at about the same pH as mine."

If this is accurate then gee... my soap IS really good stuff! :)

A few words about sensitivity.
Most people that are sensitive or allergic to soaps and other products applied to the skin are 'allergic' to the colorants and/or the fragrances that are in the product. Some people are okay with some fragrance oils and not others. Some folks are fine with essential oils, but not fragrance oils. And some are okay with a degree of fragrance, but not too much.

Although all of my ingredients - base oils, essential oils, fragrance oils, and colorants are top-notch, are specifically designed for soapmaking, and have been tested to be safe for use on skin, that doesn't guarantee that individuals won't have a reaction. Hopefully it doesn't happen often though.

In the case of my Cranberry Almond soap, I used both colorant and fragrance oils. I used very little coloring so I'm betting that the stinging you have experienced is probably due to the fragrance oils. I used both a cranberry fragrance oil and an amaretto one. You might have a sensitivity to one or both of them. That doesn't mean that you will be sensitive to other fragrances of the same name by other suppliers though. It also could have been the amount of fragrance that I used, although I didn't use an awful lot in that soap. You might want to see if any of the other soaps I've given Jackie give you the same sort of sting. Regardless, we can keep narrowing it down to try and figure out what it is you're sensitive to and we can always make changes or come up with something else for you.

I'm glad to hear that the Bar None soap is working well for Jackie. Since there are no fragrances or colorants in it, it should be great for sensitive skin. Have you tried that one yet?

I added a couple of comments to the Bar None post. I looked up the ingredients of Cetaphil. Interesting stuff. For those that are curious, go to the comment section of Bar None and check it out.

Well, we've finally reached present day. I have posted all the previous journal entries using the date of 10/20 so that they'd all show up on the same page. No sense archiving it all into different months since the blog is brand new and I want all the starting posts to be seen at a glance.

I haven't made any soap for a while because I had run out of lye. I get most of my soapmaking ingredients via mail order but I have been getting lye at one of the local hardware stores. There are restrictions on shipping sodium hydroxide and the shipping costs are pretty high due to the weight. Plus some companies also charge a hazardous material fee.

Anyway, you have to be very careful when purchasing lye because predominately, it's used as a drain cleaner and therefore, a lot of manufacturers add other ingredients to their lye that would be BAD for use in soap. The most well-known brand of 100% lye for home-based soapers has always been Red Devil Lye, manufactured by Reckitt-Benckiser. Well these folks have decided to discontinue making the Red Devil Lye product and instead are coming out with a new drain cleaner that is NOT 100% lye. I don't know if their decision was based on other disreputable things that people might be making with their product (more on this later), but home-based soapers are taking a real hit. Reckitt-Benckiser received a plethora of phone calls from soapers across the nation and it was the hope of many that it would be understood that if they discontinued the manufacture of Red Devil, it would do a great disservice to the home-based soaping community. Unfortunately, Reckitt-Benckiser's decision is firm and they have been telling soapers that they hadn't ever endorsed the use of their product for soapmaking anyway and basically they're out of luck. Those filthy lyers!

It has gotten to the point that in many hardware stores, if you purchase too much lye at one time, the local authorities are called in and you are questioned. A lot of soapers have taken to carrying soaps and soap tutorials with them when they go to purchase their lye just in case they are forced to explain themselves. I've called all of the hardware stores in our area and either they flat out don't carry lye, they don't know what it is and I have to explain it to them, or they do know what it is and treat me with a lot of skepticism when I tell them why I want to know if they carry it. I have found only one store that carries Red Devil and as it won't be manufactured anymore, I'm sure they either have a limited supply (although they seem blissfully unaware of this), or they keep ordering it from THEIR supplier, who will eventually run out. Anyway, supplies are costly, so we picked up only a couple of canisters when we were in the area. I'll keep frequenting that same hardware store to acquire as much as I can, but eventually, it looks as if I'll have to use mail order.

There you have the lye story. So now that I have some more lye, I'll soon be making some more soap. Maybe over the weekend if the kids permit. :)

I think now would be a good time to mention a couple of things if I haven't covered them previously. First off, all the Feral Moon products mentioned so far (and probably a good many of them to come) are highly experimental. I'm constantly playing around with ingredients and techniques to see what works and what doesn't. What I'm aiming for is what works WELL. It also is imperative that my 'testers' like the products. I like all the soaps I've done so far, but there are some things that I would do differently the next time round. Tinkering with ingredients, process, technique, fragrance, and color are all things that I'm probably going to be doing for a while before I settle in and keep my recipes stable for each product. So if some things work for you and some things don't - please comment and let me know. Also, if you have a really great suggestion for soap or other product, let me know that as well. Maybe I can put something together for you.

I also am going to be coming up with different products. Different soaps for different purposes, different fragrances and colors for a templated soaps, other bath and body products, etc. So our inventory might be in a constant state of flux for a while before we figure out what we should stick with and how much inventory to have.

As far as specifics go - I tend to superfat (or use a lye discount) by between 5-8%. This assures that there is ZERO trace of lye left after the saponification and curing stages. I run a pH test on all of my soaps before I consider them usable. After I test them, we use them around the house before releasing them to anyone else. I want to make sure my soap is good. :) FYI - all of my soaps to date have tested neutral BEFORE they have cured or dried. I guess this means my balance of ingredients is spot on. Therefore, the curing time is to let the soaps harden up, not for them to neutralize since they've already done that.

If I use any fragrances or colors in my soaps, it is all skin safe! I don't use anything questionable. I use only the best ingredients from reputable suppliers. I prefer to use essential oils but will use fragrance oils if the fragrance doesn't come in an essential oil or if using the EO would not be cost effective. I pretty much have to use mail order for most things - there are no local suppliers around here.

Right now, I use a small wooden mold for all of my soap. So basically, what I have after I mix everything together and it saponifies, gels, and hardens, is a loaf of soap. I then trim it up and cut it into bars using a soap cutting device. This makes sure that the soaps are pretty uniform. I aim for an average bar weight of 3.5 ounces at the time of cutting. The bars can weigh less if they've been hand-milled. My bar size is roughly 2-1/2 x 3-1/4, with a thickness of around 3/4". I say roughly, because during the curing/evaporation stage, the bars can shrink a little. I use any extra soap that is remaining after trimming to make soap balls or other things. I've made little soap 'chicklets' before and have even rolled out the soap scraps like dough and have used cookie cutters to make soap 'cookies'. So needless to say, nothing goes to waste. I plan on experimenting with different molds in the future.

My favorite methods of making soap are either cold process or 'in the mold' hot process. If I'm in a rush, I'll use HP, but otherwise, CP works just great for me. I've used other methods so as to get experience with them and to see if I like them or not.

I'll post more on various aspects of the soapmaking process as time permits or as inspiration hits me. If anyone has any questions or wants to learn more about the soapmaking process and how I do things, please leave comments or shoot me an email and I'll try to address them. :)

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...

A Brief History of Soap:

It is very difficult to pinpoint the exact time of the discovery of soap. However soap originated, the first uses of soap were not for personal hygiene, but for cleaning fleece and hides. Documentation dating back to approximately 2500 B.C. have been found etched on Sumerian clay tablets indicating that soap was made from the tallow of goats and lye was produced from the ashes of native trees. Around the first century, soaps containing dye were used in Rome to lighten hair color. This fashion trend was borrowed from the Gauls.

One legend is that the word 'soap' is derived from a fictional place called Mount Sapo. There, animals were burned in sacrifice to gods, a common practice in ancient Rome. After sacrificial ceremonies, rainwater would fall upon the ash-filled fire pits and altars and combined with rendered animal fat left over from the burned sacrifices. This rather disgusting water would then run downhill, churning together in transit, and subsequently wind up in the river. The local women who were assigned the task of laundry duty, would discover this pale, waxy substance floating in the water. When these women beat the clothes against river rocks in order to get them clean, this waxy residue would lather, causing the clothes to clean faster. Eventually, they started creating this laundry aid on purpose by using the tallow from goats, plain water, and then combining them with hardwood ash. Hooray! Soap was born.

Another theory is that soapmaking was a Celtic trade and the Romans brought the knowledge back with them after they conquered those peoples. The Romans thought that anything non-Roman was barbaric and concocted rumors to make the people of Rome believe that soap was their idea in the first place. However the discovery was made, it was in 79 A.D. after the eruption of Vesuvius, that a 'soap factory' was found amongst the ash and ruins of Pompeii. A Roman poet named Pliny the Younger, who was considered to be the inventor of soap, was actually among the surviving witnesses of the destruction. Whoever was responsible for the creation of soap, the English word soap does originate from the Latin word 'sapo', meaning fat or grease.

However, the Romans definitely did not use their new found soap for bathing. Instead, olive oil was rubbed onto the body with sand and they, or their slaves, would scrape the dirtied oil off with a device called a strigil. Only then did they rinse themselves in their public baths. Actual soap was only used for laundering their clothing and cleaning hides and fleece. The hides were then softened and processed for use as leather or as parchment.

With their vastly growing empire, the Romans were responsible for 'spreading the word' regarding soapmaking and by the 8th century, soap use was common in Italy, Germany, and Spain. In the 13th century, soapmaking was introduced in France where soap was commonly made by boiling goat tallow and caustic beech ashes. Although soap was commonplace at this point, it still wasn't used for bathing. In the 1350s, plague was pandemic and it was thought that people damp from bathing were more susceptible to catching the Black Death. Later in the 14th century, soapmaking made its way over to England. And finally, American colonists often made a soft soap from rendered animal fats, hardwood ash, and rain water. To make the soap harder, the soapmaker would cook the soft soap in a kettle to boil off more water, then add handfuls of salt. This characteristically yellow soap resulted from the color of the hardwood ashes and some rust from the cast iron kettle used to cook the soap. Since soapmaking was more art than science, the balance between lye and fat was often extremely variable and resulted in a harsh soap used only for laundry and cleaning.

As far as key contributions to the soapmaking craft, it was the French that took the lead. First, a milder soap which uses olive oil rather than animal fat was created, called Castile soap. The French also developed the process of Enfleurage - making perfumed soap through the floral infusion of fat. In 1791, a French chemist by the name of Nicolas LeBlanc, invented a process to make sodium carbonate, or soda ash, from salt by an electrolytic reaction. This enabled lye to be produced from the soda ash at high temperature without having to depend upon hardwoods. Lastly, in 1823 a French chemist named M.E. Chevreul researched and documented the chemistry of the soapmaking process by understanding the constitution of oils and fats so that soap could be made by exact recipe rather than trial and error. The researches of LeBlanc and Chevreul are what enabled large-scale manufacturing of soap.