Wednesday, November 29, 2000

Lathering up for better skin

A homemade, all-natural way to get clean

By MONROE ROARK
mroark@TheCitizenNews.com

A Peachtree City woman looking for relief for her skin has a homemade remedy that she is now sharing with others via her own home-based business.

After growing of constantly using lotion to counteract her itchy skin, Michelle Ferry began noticing the large amounts of chemicals in most store-bought soaps and how they were contributing to her problem.

A few months of research, mostly on the Internet, convinced her that making her own soap with vegetable oils was the way to go.

"Most soaps in stores use animal fat, which does a good job of cleaning but doesn't absorb very well," she said. "As a result, it clogs your pores."

So she started making her own soap and seeing great results with her own skin. She got into the soap business by accident, however, after giving some away as gifts being told repeatedly that she should sell her creations.

She named her operation Scentsational Soaps, and now produces a variety of choices with such names as Lime Delight, Cinnamon Oatmeal, Honey Cocoa Butter, Peppermint Patty (made with Hershey's Cocoa), and Apples & Cinnamon.

Ferry points out that in addition to using pure vegetable oils, which she says are beneficial to the skin because they are natural moisturizers, she includes natural glycerin, a skin softener that is stripped out of most commercial soaps and sold separately.

Making her soap is relatively easy, she reports, but it can be difficult to find all of the ingredients. She has had to buy coconut oil, palm oil and other exotic items on the Internet after being unable to find them in this area.

It is also not a quick process, as curing her soap can take up to four weeks. Many mass-produced soaps use chemicals partly to speed up the process and make the products harder so they can be sold sooner. She cooks up about 30 bars in each batch.

While some customers have specifically said that they like the absence of animal products in her soap, Ferry says that most are pleased with it because of what it does to their skin.

One customer recommended her to the Green Plant Market in Senoia, whose owners called her up and now stock some of her products. Fisher-Lee Coffeehouse in Fayetteville is another vendor, and she is working on a special coffee-scented soap for that establishment.

For more information on Scentsational Soaps, call 770-486-0715 or check out www.scentsationalsoaps.homepage.com.

A basic vegetable soap recipe

Ingredients:

5.3 ounces coconut oil

7.5 ounces olive oil

3.2 ounces palm oil

2.3 ounces lye

Always wear protective goggles, glove and other safety clothing when handling sodium hydroxide or potassium hydroxide.

While wearing safety goggles and neoprene gloves, combine solid lye and liquid, and stir well. Set aside and allow to cool (100°-125°F). This is best done outside while you are standing upwind.

Combine oils and heat gently. Once the fats and oils are melted, allow the temperature to drop to 100°-125°F.

Combine lye solution and melted oils. Be careful not to splash while combining the mixtures. Stir until the mixture traces. If tracing takes more than 15 minutes, which it often does, stir for the first 15 minutes, then stir for 5 minutes at 15-minute intervals. Tracing looks like a slightly thickened custard, not instant pudding but a cooked custard. It will support a drop, our your stir marks for several seconds.

Once tracing occurs, pour raw soap into your prepared molds. After a few days the soap can be turned out of the mold. If the soap is very soft, allow it to cure for a few days to firm the outside.

Cut soap into bars and set the bars out to cure and dry for four weeks. This will allow the bar to firm and finish saponification. Place the bars on something that will allow them to breathe.