Soap and Bubble, originally uploaded by SoapChickAsh.

Another great reason to use (our) soap: the environment. I just read a great article in Country Living Magazine called the Country Living Eco-Challenge. According to it, if each American household used bar soap rather than liquid soap, 2.5 million pounds of plastic would be kept OUT of landfills. Most liquid soaps come in bottles made of un-recyclable plastic. Who knew?

So now that you are feeling greener, are you ready to raise the bar…(OK, bad pun), check out Serendipity Bath Co. for great handmade soaps!

soap connoisseur, originally uploaded by SoapChickAsh.

I caught my daughter in the act of blatant soap thievery today after her bath. She grabbed a bar of Night, Night, Baby! soap that I left on a table in my bedroom. Earlier in the day I was trying to take a photo of the soap as part of something Tiff and I are working on and left it there. (Left it there like a novice! All parents know if you don’t want your kids to take it, break it, or stick it up their nose you should put it away!) When she saw that she’d been caught her words were, “this is some good smellin’ soap!” Ah, yes, RoRo…flattery does get you everywhere. Especially to this soapmaker!

That reminds me, I now need to update Tiff that we are another Night, Night Baby soap down.

Holiday Soap, originally uploaded by childplay.

…and by popular demand, I might add. So many of you wanted to know if we’d make the Cinnamon Orange soap that we delightedly ran to our kitchens and whipped some up. The Peppy Mint soap is back with a vengence, too and it is heavenly! These yummy soaps are only here for a few more weeks so claim yours now. Check out our website at www.wildlyluckysoap.com.

Breathe deep and enjoy! The holidays just got a bit more wonderful!

Our Lucky Clover soaps and bath products (Whipped Shea, and ‘You Da Bomb!’ bath fizzies) are as green as we’re getting for St. Patrick’s Day this year. A snowstorm is blowing through and leaving us 8 inches of white stuff–covering over all our tulips that have started poking up to say hi.

Soon enough we’ll be basking in warmth again…for now, we’ll hold onto that hope by bathing in a soap that reminds us of the promise of a green spring!

An added bonus…this month all Lucky Clover soaps are on sale! We’re hoping good karma will send the warmth here sooner rather than later.

With so many articles being written about how many chemicals there are in soap and bath products, we have had lots of requests to share our soapmaking recipe so you can do it at home. If you can bake a cake, you can make soap, so here’s our tutorial for a basic bar of lavender soap.
By the way, did you know that because most commercial ’soaps’ are actually ‘detergent bars’, they can’t put the word soap on the label. True Story! Dove calls themselves ‘Beauty Bars’, Oil of Olay has Body Wash‘, Palmolive has ’softsoap’, which is almost soap but not quite.

Anywho, back to the tutorial.

1) find a great apron. It will help summon the wisdom of your great grandma, who could tell you a thing or two about making soap.

2) get some dark chocolate and peanut butter. There will be some free time when you are waiting for the temperatures to get to the right point…chocolate & peanut butter is just the thing to pass the time. Trust us!

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3) get some soap molds ready to pour soap into. We have collapsible wooden molds, you can use a cardboard box with the sides cut down to size. The most important thing is to remember to line them with freezer paper (shiny side down), saran wrap, or butcher paper.

4) get a recipe. Ashley and I guard our secret soap formula like Coke guards their syrup formula. Except if you babysit my kids and I come back from a date with Hubby drunk off of Coldstone ice cream. Then, I’ll tell you anything. But, until then, check out all these recipes that other people have shared. A good, beginner one to start with is this olive oil soap recipe:

40oz olive oil
10 oz water
5 oz lye
1 oz fragrance

This will make a shoebox size loaf of soap that can be cut into 10-15 bars, depending on how thickly you slice it. We slice our bars into 6 ounces, which is a generous size, and we get 10 bars out of this.

5) Put on safety gear…safety glasses and rubber gloves. Seriously people! Because you are about to handle lye, aka drain cleaner. It’s nasty stuff. Remember the ‘chemical burn’ scene in Fight Club? That will happen to you without protective gear. True Story! Once you are protected, get out the lye (found at any Hardware store, and sometimes the cleaning section of your grocery store) and add it to the water. Stand back when you do this (or, as far as your arm will let you) and don’t breathe in deeply…the fumes are nasty. Always add lye to water, not the other way around.

6) Then measure out the oil in one pan (anything except aluminium!) and the essential oil in the other. It’s important to get the measurements right, so use a digital kitchen scale if possible. Even the littlest mistake makes a big difference in soap making!

7) Now, you wait for the lye/water to get to 110-115 degrees (oh, you’ll also need a digital thermometer. Temperature also makes a big difference, or you’ll make a soap volcano. Happened to The Soapchix a few times. True Story!) This is when you break out the chocolate.

8) Once the temperature is right with the lye/water, heat the oil up to 110-115, then remove from heat and add the lye/water to them. This is when it gets fun! Make sure you have no distractions from this point on, or you’ll end up with a bunch of goopy glop. This is why Ashley and I do most of our soapmaking after the kids go to bed. That, and the dangerously toxic lye.

9) Once you add the lye/water into the oil, then it’s time to mix with a stick blender. What, I didn’t tell you that you needed a stick blender? Well, you do. Or you’ll be mixing it by hand for hours and hours. Actually, that might depend on the size of your batch of soap. We make bigger batches, but maybe if it’s a smaller batch you can get away with mixing it by hand. Although, it’s worth it to get a stick blender, just because they’re fun to have around.

10) You want to mix this mixture until it gets to ‘trace’, which means it’s thickened up and looks a bit like pudding when it starts to thicken:

11) This is the time to add in all the fun stuff! For our simple recipe, we’ll leave it at essential oils for you. When we do our soaps, we use the opportunity to add ground oats, lavender buds, honey, extra oils & butters, loofah, and things like that. Again, this is top secret, so I can’t tell you everything we do, unless you take my kids to the park and I get a 2 hour nap…then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.

I seem to have misplaced my lavender pictures, so here’s our lavender mint being mixed. First the color (no dyes! just ultramarines and minerals!):

Then blend and mix:

Then comes the essential oils; mix and blend:

12) When it gets nice and thick (but not too thick!) and nice and blended, pour it into your mold like this:

See how dark and liquidy it looks? This means it has entered the ‘gel stage’…it’s when the magic happens. They lye is heating up the oils, causing saponification. You want to help this along by covering the top of your mold with a blanket and tucking the sides down around it. Also, sing a little song to the soap while doing this…it makes it happy and extra lathery. True Story!

13) Leave it alone for a day or two, until it looks lighter and feels more solid:

Then, unmold it and cut to your own liking. But don’t use it yet! It’s still a little soft. Find a nice, happy place to leave it for a few weeks (!!! I know! Weeks!!!) to make it a nice, hard bar of soap. Treat it like a plant during this time, and make sure to talk to it a few times a day. Say things like, “Who’s the cutest bar of soap ever? You are! And who smells so good? You do!” Soap really likes it when you encourage it like this.

Ashley even donated her dining room space to make sure she could keep an eye on them:

<img src=”” alt=”lots of handmade soap!” />

And there you go! Handmade, cold processed, phthalate free, paraben free, laryl sulfate free, all natural, and totally super bar soap!

If you have any questions, comments, or grammar corrections, you can email us at soapchix (at) gmail (dot) com. And, if you’d rather not make soap in 13 steps, but still want some, take a gander at our soaps at www.serendipitybathco.com.

To recap:

Recipe (being a true castile soap, this will be less lathering, but don’t let that fool you! We’ve been brainwashed by all the lauryl sulfates out there into thinking that lather = better cleaning. It’s not true, especially in the case of this soap. It’s a lovely, if less lathering, bar.):

40oz olive oil
10 oz water
5 oz lye
1 oz fragrance

Equipment you’ll need:

soap mold, lined.
digital thermometer
digital weight scale
stick blender
non aluminum pots to mix soap in

Ingredients:

Olive oil
lye
water
essential oil
chocolate & peanut butter

Happy Valentines Day, everyone!

We haven’t just been busy making Valentine’s arts and crafts with our kids…we’ve also been whipping up more Sweetheart, Baby! soap. We’ve had a run on it ever since the rucus started about phthalates, and we are happy to announce that Sweetheart is back in stock and our orders are being filled right on time!

This little gem is in our Wild Child natural soap collection, and gently scented with lavender and ylang ylang essential oils. It comes with a cute little heart in the center and is mixed not only with coconut, palm & olive oils but also superfatted with cocoa and shea butter and avocado oil for extra softness.

Ash and I can’t resist…this is one scent that we use ourselves…why should baby be the only one feeling and smelling so good!

This has certainly been an exciting week for Ash and I and our little soap, too! The press coverage of the phthalate article in the Journal of Pediatrics certainly spiced up our blog and website viewership, as well as demand for our phthalate free baby bath products.

(Do you notice how often I’ve been saying that all week? Phthalate free baby bath….phthalate free baby bath…I can’t stop typing it. It’s like a tongue twister for my typing fingers.)

In the cosmic way of balancing things out, the crush of orders coincided with both the Soapdudes being out of town, and all the soap ducklings getting massive head colds. So, it’s kept us on our toes. But it’s so exciting to see all the products packaged up and being sent out to their new homes.

Wow. When we wrote our blog yesterday talking about phthalate free baby products, we had no idea that it would jettison our little soapy blog up into the ‘Top WordPress Blog Posts’ of the day. We’ve received a lot of questions about what phthalates are, how to find them, and what products we have that are phthalate free–both for babies and adults.

So…here we go…

According to the Chicago Tribune:

Phthalates are synthetic chemicals found in industrial and common household items, including PVC plastics, cosmetics, personal care products, plastic toys that children love to suck on, vinyl products and products with fragrance.

USA Today highlights a major frustration of finding toxin free products:

Because scents can be considered trade secrets, hundreds of ingredients can be lumped together under the heading of “fragrance.” Some fragrances are made with endocrine-disrupting chemicals called phthalates, several of which are listed as reproductive or developmental toxins by California and have been banned in cosmetics by the European Union.

But they do go on to point out a few red flag ingredients to watch out for:

The Environmental Working Group recommends that consumers adopt a “better safe than sorry” approach. The group says consumers may want to watch out for certain products and ingredients:

•Fragrance, which often is included in ingredient lists as a catch-all term for dozens of chemicals, including phthalates.

•Sunscreens, which may contain estrogen-like chemicals. Houlihan recommends that consumers choose sunscreens made with zinc or titanium, which don’t appear to pose this threat.

•Sodium laurel/laureth sulfate, a surfactant that Houlihan says is often contaminated with the carcinogenic substance 1,4 dioxane.

Greene recommends avoiding plastics with certain recycling codes: #7 may include bisphenol A, and #3 may contain phthalates. Plastics with recycling codes 1, 2 and 5 are safer, he says.

Now, what Soapchix Ashley hasn’t told you all is that, before kids, she used to clean up toxic environments all over the country. I’ve been begging her to share some stories she has of phthalate contamination, but she’s modest and shy and humble and up to this point hasn’t thought anyone would really give a darn. But the amazing response we’ve been getting has hopefully showed her how much interest there is! She is the one that explained to me all the chemicals there are in commercial soaps and cosmetic products. Go ahead and grab your bar of soap and read the ingredients…anything you recognize? No, because all natural ingredients in commercial products are replaced with preservatives and chemicals.

Here’s where it gets fun for us…our soap is natural, toxin free, and environmentally friendly! Our packaging is recycle code 1, which means it’s as safe and friendly as it gets. Just like us!

In particular, here are our totally natural, phthalate free bath products for adults and babies alike!

For Baby:
Wild Child Baby Soaps.
Wild Child Honeybuns Bath Oil. (Seriously…put down the Johnson’s Baby Oil and step away. It’s that bad.)
Whipped Shea Butter.
Bath Bombs Our kids will bathe if it includes anything with the word ‘bomb’ in it. I don’t have the Wild Child scents listed (Ash is the organized one between us) but just click any scent and then comment on what Wild Child scent you want.)

For you:
Simply Soaps
Some of our Wildly Soap line. We’ve marked which ones are essential oil based, but if you have any questions, just ask us at soapchix (at) gmail (dot) com.
Our amazing Sugar Scrub has essential oil scents, as does the Body Bling and Honeybuns Oil. Oh, and the Bath Bombs aren’t just for kids!

We created these products first for ourselves and our kids, so we made sure it met with Ashley’s high standards. (I didn’t have particularly high standards before I met her, except in men and shoes. But that’s another post.)

We do have some products scented with fragrance oils, but from our research we feel like these are an acceptable low level of synthetic ingredient, in a concentration that is much much less than in a commercial product. We also do not bind our fragrance oils to our products with phthalates, lessening the exposure even more.

a handful of helpful articles:
The Chicago Tribune
USA Today
ABC News Report
The Right Start: The Need to Eliminate Toxic Chemicals from Baby Products by Environment California (pdf file)

The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics said a 2002 study found phthalates in more than 70 percent of products tested, including shampoo, deodorant and perfume. The chemicals were not listed on labels, the group said Monday in a release.

When I brought each of my 3 kids home from the hospital, I waited impatiently for their little umbilical cord to dry up and fall off so I could give them their first bath. Is there anything sweeter than the smell of a tiny, warm, squirmy baby all soft and clean?! Just the thought almost makes a girl rethink her “3 kids is my limit” stance and have another one STAT!

Anyway, I would bathe my kids every day, when they were little–in the sink, and as they grew they’d move into a baby bath, and then finally in the bathtub. Bathtime was our nightly ritual!! So imagine my horror when I read the news today about how babies absorb phthalates through their skin from baby shampoos and bath products.

Until a couple years ago, I had no idea what phthalates were….it’s not like you see that listed on labels. This is because manufacturers aren’t required to list them. Nevermind phthalates are linked to liver, kidney, and lung damage as well as limiting testes development in boys. Typically, phthalates are added to the ‘fragrance’, and the manufacterers hide that under the guise of ’secret fragrance formula’.

This kind of stuff really freaks me out. I’ll admit I haven’t been on the forefront of the ‘all natural’ movement, but I’m getting more and more on board every day.

Reason number one:

We found that infant exposure to phthalates is widespread, and that exposure to personal-care products applied onto the skin may be an important source,” said the study’s lead author, Sheela Sathyanarayana, an acting assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

“This is troubling,” she said, “because phthalate exposure in early childhood has been associated with altered hormone concentrations as well as increased allergies, runny nose and eczema.”

Reason number two:

The phthalate levels found in some of the infants were “nothing short of horrifying,” he said. It’s critical because infants are building organs, and could feel lifelong ramifications of early toxic exposures. High levels of phthalates in infants can lead to “the whole masculinization process being disrupted.”

The rate of adult testicular cancer has been “ballistically increasing,” he said, and has been closely associated with undescended testicles in children, which in turn has been related to high phthalate levels.

If you google ‘phthalates in baby products’ you can find 334854039584309 more really frightening articles.

I don’t think this is a witch hunt or a scare tactic. Personally, I have dealt with exczema with my kids and an undescended testicle in my son. Since starting Serendipity Bath Co., I have heard from countless other parents dealing with skin issues with their children.

Unfortunately, simply choosing products labeled “natural” can backfire, since some natural goods may still be toxic, says Dr. Landrigan.

At present, U.S. manufacturers are not required to list phthalate contents on products’ package labels, making it hard for parents to make informed decisions, the investigators point out.

Here’s what you can do to get more informed about phthalates in your personal care products:

Choose personal care products that do not contain synthetic fragrance. Check labels carefully; even “fragrance-free” products sometimes have masking fragrances that may contain phthalates.

Check the labels of nail polish. Phthalate-containing nail polish should list “phthalates” on the label (because the chemicals are not used as part of the fragrance in that type of product).

Ask the companies. Call the manufacturer if you have questions about whether your favorite personal care products contain phthalates. Most companies have a toll-free number. It’s important for companies to hear about your concerns regarding phthalates.
L’Oreal: 1-800-322-2036
Estee Lauder: 1-877-311-3883
Proctor & Gamble: 1-800-725-3296
Revlon: 1-800-473-8566
Avon: 1-800-445-AVON

Visit The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics for more information.

Visit the Cosmetic Database to find out exactly what is in your cosmetics and sign a petition to Congress to remove phthalates in our products.

Visit The Soft Landing Baby Blog for more info on baby products that are safe.

Ashley and I have made a concerted effort to keep our Wild Child Baby Products and Simply Soap lines free from synthetic fragrance oils and completely natural. They are phthalates free and 100% natural. We also have our Honeybuns Oil that replaces evil, nasty, petroleum and frangrance oil based Baby Oil in our homes. This has lead to a safer, gentler bath for our kids and many of our customers children who suffer from chemical sensitivities and exczema. This takes a dedication and commitment on our part, because it increases our cost to make it, and it takes time to find safe ingredients. It aint easy being green, but the alternative just isn’t a option for us our our families…and certainly not an option for our products that we make for you.

 One of the best perks of having toddlers and young(ish!)  kids at home are the days spent at the park.  After a blur of sundresses, sandals, hats, picnic basket of healthy food (if you are soapchix Ashley), Sonic kids meals (if you are soapchix Tiff), & kids asking if ‘the park is close yet!’, the kids pour out of the car and skip onto swings, slides, and sand. 

These are some of our more productive business meetings…talking while pushing the youngest on the swings or laying on the grass watching everyone run around.  One of our girls will usually bring a fresh picked dandelion to us and cuddle for a minute before running back off to play.  It’s multitasking at its finest!

While looking for a good ‘outdoorsy’ scent for a soap that we wanted to be unisex–great for soapchix and their soapdudes–we looked high and low for the right blend of ‘clean and natural’.  Most were too florally, and some were too woodsy.  But then, we came across a scent that mixed equal parts green grass with clover & a touch of aloe.  Every time we smell it, it brings back these days spent at the park, lounging on the grass with the sun on our faces and the laughter of our kids in our ears. 

It’s just one of the reasons why we love our ‘Lucky Clover’ soap so much!