Why Fancy Free Bar Soap Is Boring

Cooking is chemistry. But chemistry is not cooking. LOL! If you know....you know.

As part of my medical laboratory science training, I had to learn a lot about the human body. Skin vs. Mucous Membranes. Mucous vs. Blood. Good bacteria vs. Bad Bacteria. Symbiotic vs. Parasitic. Acidic vs. Alkaline. One thing that stood out to me was how the human body is so dichotomous. The perfect representation of how two totally opposite things can be true at the same time. While the hair, skin and vagina prefer a acidic pH, our internal organs prefer a neutral to slightly alkaline pH environment for optimal performance.

Too much acid can burn. Too much alkaline can burn too. Gotsta be balanced. LOL!

When trying other handmade soaps, I noticed that no matter how many essential and moisturizing oils were in the soap, I would still feel sticky and ashy after using them. Once I ventured into saponifying (the process used to turn oils into soap) I realized why. Lye (NaOH) is used to break bonds in fatty acids and create soap. Lye is one of theeee most alkaline materials used in personal care product production. Yes. We used oils. But we added lye to change the chemical structure of the oil as well as the pH. Leaving us with an alkaline component of the oil, causing our skin to dry out if we don't add an ingredient to bring the pH back down to skin friendly levels.

My Fancy Friends were asking for soap and shower gel. Liquid soap is tricky. Very tricky. So I figured something out with the bar soap. I figured out a bar soap that was simple to manufacture, could easily carry fragrance and still be gentle on the skin. Since, soaping isn't the Fancy Factory's specialty, we haven't gotten the point where we are making soaps with unique molds or pretty colors. We focus on the quality, efficacy and fragrance. Ultimately, we want to be clean and smell good.

I say all of that to say, Fancy Free bar soaps are simple on purpose. The soaps will give a good lather, not stripping your skin of oils and leave a light fragrance to carry you through the day or add to the layers of whipped shea, lotions or perfume you apply afterward.

We know that some of our Fancy Friends prefer shower gel, so we are still working on that. Our list of product development requests is long but the shower gel is at the top of our "new releases" that are soon to come.