Soaps – Coastal Carolina Soap Blog

It Goes Beyond Handwashing

You’ve heard it for over a week: Wash your hands. Wash your hands before you leave places, when you arrive at the next place, and after touching someone. This is, of course, in addition to washing your hands after going to the bathroom and before you eat. If you can’t wash your hands with soap and water, then you should use a hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol. It’s old news by now.

Since the days of (1) wash your hands and (2) don’t touch your face, we’ve learned of other ways to reduce transmission of the coronavirus. We are currently in the midst of a recommended (not required) social isolation. It’s recommended that people not gather together in groups of fifty or more. If you think you’ve been exposed to the virus, you should self-quarantine. Blah, blah, blah. We’re only on day three, and if you’re like me, you’re probably beginning to think that Jack Torrence in The Shining (Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie) wasn’t really all that crazy. If nothing else, you can at least understand him better now.

Soap and water are still the best tools to get rid of viruses on your hands.

What does it mean to be socially isolated? It means to stay away from people, to keep at least six feet between you and anyone who doesn’t live in your home. It doesn’t mean you have to stay inside all the time. It doesn’t mean not going places you may need to go. It means to spend most of your time on your own turf. It means to walk in places that aren’t heavily populated. You can take a walk with your dog in your neighborhood. You can even take a walk on the beach. In fact, exercise and sunshine help boost the immune system.

You can go to the store, and you don’t need to personally boost Charmin’s CEO’s yearly bonus. You don’t need to horde everything to the detriment of others who also need those same groceries and hygiene items. Just, when you go, pick times that are slower. Sunday after church time isn’t that time. Neither is senior citizen day – unless you’re a senior.

If we act wisely, we’ll be on the other side of this curve soon. Unfortunately, we’re just on the upward climb, so we’ve got a few or several more weeks of being isolated and inconvenienced. We have weeks more of anxiety and uncertainty, particularly with the rapid declines in the stock market. It has been said, “Keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs.” Those who keep their heads will have the better chance of survival.

How does that happen? Anxiety and worry flood the body with neurotransmitters that compromise the immune system. It’s so hard to keep our heads during trying times like this, but we can if we try. My secret weapon? Mindfulness practice. Mindfulness practice allows the brain to take a rest for a little bit, better enabling it to deal with crisis situations.

To learn more about mindfulness, click here. You can scroll down about a quarter of the way down the page to get steps for mindfulness meditation, but the areas before that and the video provide some excellent and fascinating information on the effects of mindfulness on the brain.

If you need soap for all that handwashing, click here. And don’t forget to pick up some moisturizer to combat the inevitable dry skin.

Stay safe and stay well.

Joy-Sparking Soaps

“Does it spark joy?” This seems to be the question we’re hearing most commonly lately as the Konmari Method of tidying up sweeps throughout the country. We started “doing the Konmari thing” last weekend, and I’ll be talking about that process soon in future posts. As I was spending time to myself yesterday, letting thoughts drift in and out of the ether, I spent a bit of time focusing on my products. I make them, I use them, and I so often take them for granted, so this was a great chance for me to remember the joy in each product.

How to approach this? Do I start chronologically to my making journey? Do I begin with the core four of my brand? I’m going to begin with Au Naturel. This soap began as Soap of Milk & Honey (and Oatmeal!), and it brings happiness. When I made my very first batch of this soap, I knew pretty much nothing about gelling temps and how both insulating the soap and sugars in the soap increased them. I’d insulated my mould and left it alone. When I unmoulded my soap the next day, it was dark and had caverns, complete with soapy stalactites and stalagmites. Plus, it oozed oil. What in the world??? My gelling temperature had gotten so hot that it caused separation. Over time, the oil absorbed into the soap, but there was no fixing the caverns. It was divine to use, nonetheless. It’s so rare that a bar of this soap makes it to my shower that I do a happy dance when the stars align and it happens. This one is an incredible, gentle, uber-moisturizing head-to-toe treat.

The next soap that harkens back to my humble beginnings is Goat’s Milk & Lavender, originally Ooh La Lavender. This is another goat’s milk soap, and I still have a bar from the original batch stashed away on a rack. I want to use it, because after nearly 11 years, it’ll be so incredibly mellow, but then again, I don’t, because it’s special. This is another one of those soaps that brings happiness when I get to use it, partly because of the rarity of the event. It has lavender oil in it along with vitamin-rich goat’s milk. It’s incredibly moisturizing and has a completely relaxing fragrance.

The next soap that has been a part of my collection from the early days is Lemon Grove Gardener’s Soap. Back in the days when I made soap exclusively by the melt & pour method, I made and sold this scent in a bright yellow glycerin bar. In fact, one night I dreamed about how to make, package, and market four soaps that were scented with these four custom created scents I’d developed. Lemon Grove was one of them. It is a special blend of essential oils, and when I started making cold-processed soaps, I decided to craft this into a gardener’s soap, complete with cornmeal for grit and calendula petals for interest. This one shows up in my shower more frequently than the other two soaps mentioned here; in fact, there’s a sniglet of a bar of this one in my shower now.

In my next post, I’ll be sharing with you the joy that I feel with my “core 4”: Outer Banks, Crystal Coast Morning, Kure Beach, and Ocean Isle.

Which one of these is your favorite or on your must-try list?

Double Your Happiness with Manic Mint Soap

Owning a bottle of spearmint essential had long been a dream of mine. When I could afford it, either I didn’t think about it or my suppliers didn’t have it. When I couldn’t justify the expense… Well, there ya go. Finally, last month things aligned so that I could barely justify it when it was time to restock lavender oil, so I went ahead and splurged.

The bottles of oil came and… Ohhhhhhh!!! One whiff of the spearmint oil and I was blasted away in a zippedy-doo-dah moment of euphoria. The scent was pure, crisp mint that brings to mind amazing chewing gum and carried memories of my grandma’s out-of-control mint bed that wasted little time racing from its spot near their pool in the back up to the driveway. Suffice it to say, I was blissed out!

I’d been yearning for this spearmint oil for one simple reason: To make a spearmint-peppermint swirled soap. But how to design it? Then my Facebook memories reminded me of this stunning black and white mantra swirl I’d done ages ago and I thought, Why not? It’d been years since I’d done that particular design last, and it wasn’t particularly hard to do.

This is that swirl coming to be.

Sure, this soap is fabulous from the top side, but what about the slices? Unfortunately, you have to wait to see that as the soap is still a bit soft to unmould. The best places to check it out are my Facebook page and my Instagram feed; I’ll be showing off the slices around Friday of this week. It’s just two days away!

I hope you enjoyed this behind-the-scenes view of a swirl coming together. These beauties will be ready to add some zippedy to your doo-dah in less than 4 weeks. Be sure we’re landing in your inbox because email subscribers get first dibs on all new products. I just received a new fragrance today to try, so that’ll be one of my next soaps to show off to you.

Sneak Peek – Pouring & Cutting Outer Banks Beer Soap

This week, I’m going to let video rule the post. A couple of weeks ago, I made and poured a batch of Outer Banks Beer Soap. I didn’t record the making of this soap, because no one wants to watch saturated fats melt (5 minutes of boredom) or my mixing the soap (30-60 seconds of noisy boredom). Here I’m showing the pouring of this soap followed by the slicing of it.

So, what do you think of this little sneak peek? I don’t do them often, but every now and then, it’s fun showing off how we make the magic that we do.

Soaps Bear Memories and Share Happiness

It’s spring. Well, it’s supposed to be spring, anyway. Everything in me leans towards cleaning – cleaning up and cleaning out. The soap rack is no exception. As I’m constantly making new soaps and restocking my supplies, I also spend time getting rid of soaps that aren’t saleable. Usually these go into donate piles with one or two meandering upstairs to the basket in our bathroom.

One Monday, my younger daughter was waiting for her sis and me to catch up with her at the church where my teen goes for her language arts class. My daughter had noticed a sign with a bin underneath; one of this church’s ministries was collecting toiletries for migrant workers. Being especially compassionate towards non-native-born Americans at this particular point in our nation’s history, she said, “Mom, you could donate some soaps.”

My initial reaction was consternation; I don’t have any soaps on hand that I’m discontinuing completely. As we were sitting at breakfast the next morning, though, I looked up at my soap rack, which was behind her. And I paused, my mind calculating its unseen contents (the shelves are high from a sitting position). She said, “What?” And I smiled.

“I have some soaps we can donate,” I told her. Her dimple popped out and she got excited. I didn’t have many; you can see the pile isn’t terribly big. I had some Burberry soaps that didn’t behave well in the mould and came out all weirdly quadrilateral but not particularly rectangular as they should. And I had some cucumber soaps that were eventually to have these beautiful dragonflies applied to them before I determined that those soaps are cost-prohibitive to create and discontinued them. One of those bars made it to the basket; its age will guarantee a mild soap and a wildly fluffy lather.

While I was busy elsewhere, the Hubby and she pulled down and wrapped the soaps. She was so excited to bag them up and put them in the bin! That felt good to me, too, and the space on my rack was certainly welcome.

Women wash hands more thoroughly than men -Study

You Can Take It Back Home With You

Do you ever go to the beach and wish you could bring something back home with you? Other than the tons of sand in towels, beach toys, and shells, that is?

When I was growing up, we had really hard well water. After a while, of course, the minerals from the water would build up on our hair. Every time we went to the beach, Mom would luxuriate in how the soft beach water made her hair feel – soft, light, and conditioned. When my parents built their house some 20ish years ago, one of their top priorities was a water softening system, because Mom wanted her hair always to feel soft and not weighted down.

Also when I was growing up, my grandparents had the best water. They lived 20 minutes from us (so nowhere near the beach), and that water made the most amazing coffee! It was so good and turned this one-cup-a-day drinker to a 3-cup drinker while I was at Grandma and Grandpa’s. When I was in high school, my grandparents got a place at the beach so Grandpa would have someplace to stay when he was fishing. Welcome beach water! It had the same sweet flavor of my grandparents’ water, but even better!

Fast forward several years to my meeting Peter and spending time at his parents’ beach house. I was living in a place with awful municipal water; I had to add lemon juice to make it palatable to me. But the beach house… One sniff and I knew the water would be as incredible as at my grandparents’ home. I tasted it and was sent back to their house while I was growing up. Cup after cup of the smoothest coffee went down while I sat or stood on the dock, savoring the delicious flavor dancing on my tongue.

Fast forward a few more years, and since we couldn’t bring enough water back to keep me satisfied, we went to where the water is. We moved to the beach, and the water is almost as smooth and soft as what my Grandparents had. (And I certainly drink enough of it!) A little farther east, and we discovered the water at Kure Beach is reminiscent of that which was at the beach house. I can bring a little of that back with me, and I do every time we’re there.

Moving to the beach isn’t an option for many people. Some can’t afford it, some prefer living elsewhere, and still others love the idea all the way up to hurricane season, when the idea doesn’t seem quite as winning. When you can’t turn your vacation into something more permanent, you can bring the beach back home with you (no vacuuming required).

Wherever your vacation takes you along our glorious North Carolina coast, we have a soap for you so you can savor those vacation memories just a little bit longer. Starting on the northern part of the coast takes you to world-class surfing, wind-swept dunes, and wildly primitive beaches. Outer Banks Storm captures this area with its rustic cedar-shingled homes and the sharp tang as a storm blows in from the sea.

Go south just a little bit and the southern Outer Banks takes you to Crystal Coast Morning. You know those mornings at my in-laws’ beach house I mentioned? I captured them in this scent – sans coffee. Zippy and fresh, this scent is like waking up on a late autumn morning to an empty beach in the off-season when the air is pure and crisp and all that tickles your ears are the sounds of waves kissing the sand.

Keep going a little further south and you arrive at our gorgeous Cape Fear beaches. The Cape Fear River meanders its way from mid-state to the ocean and lends its name to this region. Surf City, Topsail, Wrightsville, Carolina, Kure Beaches… Each wonderful in its own right, depending on what you’re looking for. We generally go to Kure Beach. It’s a quiet beach with a fishing pier and lifeguards, as well as a public bath house and free parking. And I mentioned the water, right? Kure Beach Afternoon is pure ocean with a slight tangy zip underscored by a whisper of sunscreen. It’s hanging out at the beach with a bunch of other local home educating families on a beautiful late summer day as clouds scuttle overhead.

And finally, we come to Ocean Isle Beach, easily one of the jewels of our Brunswick County Beaches. This island is paradise just after the season ends when it’s still warm enough to enjoy the beach but the isle isn’t thronged with tourists. My teen and I enjoy weekends away each year to a resort on the island. Wide, powdery, sandy beaches; calm waters; and the rustle of palm fronds overhead as we sit on our balcony or float in the pool. It’s a beach vacation made for chillin’ and sipping something cold and fruity while all the stress melts away. That moment became Ocean Isle Beach. A crisp ocean scent mingles with sweet fruits as you remember what it was like to watch your cares blow away on a warm breeze.

Which one of these jewels of the beach would you want to bring back with you? What memories will you love to capture in your shower?

Pouring Flip Flop Soaps

They’re he-ere! The absolutely adorable flip flop soaps are poured and nearly wrapped, all ready to deck your bathroom in coastal Christmas flair. I decided to take you behind the scenes and show you how I make these soaps. They’re a bit of work, but the results are so totally worth it! Check it out!

Pouring Flip Flop Soaps from Sara Nesbitt on Vimeo.

These charming soaps come in two festive scents: Sleigh Ride, a brisk fragrance that blends mint, vanilla, and pine; and Christmas Spice, a lovely spicy seasonal scent that has been a favorite among my customers for fifteen years. Not only would these look awesome in your bathroom, but they make unique stocking stuffers and thoughtful gifts for the beach lovers in your life. I invite you to pick yours up today. Quantities are very limited, and I don’t think these will be around for long.

Au Naturel is the BEST Soap for Troubled Skin

Do you have troubled skin? Problem skin? Skin that acts like a hormonally moody teenager – acting right one moment, irritating you the next? Then have I got a soap for you! At event after event, through Facebook messages and emails, customers often ask me,

I have psoriasis and eczema. Do you have any soap that will cure that?

My answer is always, “No. None of my soaps will cure skin diseases.”

However, I have a lot of customers who have tried Au Naturel (formerly known as Soap of Milk & Honey – and Oatmeal) and have come back with nothing but praise for it with reports that it has helped their skin tremendously.

So, what is it that makes people desire this soap? It’s true that it won’t cure anything. The goat’s milk is vitamin-rich, containing vitamins A & E, both excellent for the skin. The oatmeal helps soothe skin. The honey acts as a humectant in addition to the naturally occurring glycerin, drawing moisture from the air to the skin. There is no added fragrance in this soap, and it has a lovely natural toasted oatmeal scent that comes out as the soap saponifies. If I had to sum up what, exactly, makes this soap so skin-friendly, I’d say its nakedness makes it shine.

Because very little I experience in my life as a professional soapmaker and vendor surprises me, having people tell me last year that they needed soap that’s even more naked than Au Naturel about knocked me off my feet. I learned that some people are very sensitive to oats and can’t use products containing them. Yet, they wanted an incredible goat’s milk-based soap without fragrance or oatmeal. For those people, I whipped up this little gem in January.

To call this a Castille soap would be a misnomer, though its only oil is olive oil, so it has the gentleness of Castille soap. It contains goat’s milk, with all its rich moisturizing properties and vitamins. It also has honey to lend its moisturization. This little jewel is Nude Beach, an ultra-gentle soap that will make your skin feel spectacular. Like Au Naturel, this one, also, is unscented.

So, which is it? Do you want to go Au Naturel or take a detour to the Nude Beach? Either way, both of these soaps will be kind to your skin, whether it’s young or old, particular or easy-going.

A Word About Pricing

It has recently come up to me: “How come this soap is so much more expensive than soaps like The Perfect Man?” The soap is question was smaller and lighter, and certainly would lead someone to wonder how come it carries a higher price per ounce than soaps made with the cold process method.

Let’s take flip flop soaps as an example. Flip flop soaps weigh in at a hefty 5.75 ounces and sell for $10.00 each. In contrast, The Perfect Man weighs in at a smooth 5 ounces but costs two dollars less per bar. It all comes down to ingredients and labor.

This soap base costs more per ounce than an even larger quantity of oil or lye. Because of the limitations of moulds and the amount of soap I can make per batch, I could make three soaps, start to wrapped, in 12 hours; there is a lot of wait time in there in which my mould is tied up, unusable. On top of that, it takes about ten minutes to make, wrap, and label each bar of soap with those fabulous layers, not including the wait time, which I spend doing other things. By contrast, I can make 33 bars of soap in 40 minutes (with another 15-20 for wrapping/labeling). The soaps do have to sit for weeks to saponify and cure, but there it is: 33 bars in one hour versus 6 bars in one hour.

Here’s another of my melt & pour creations…

This little gem took a full 20 minutes to make. Yes. TWENTY minutes. A full third of an hour. And that doesn’t include wrapping and labeling.

While making these soaps can be enjoyable every now and then – it’s fun to watch a bar develop, layer by layer – they simply aren’t cost-effective to make for sale. That pelican was a diminutive 3-3.5 ounces but retailed at $12.00. Sure, he’s cute, but as fabulous as my soaps are, I don’t expect my customers to pony up $12.00 to look at a bar of soap.

Instead, I would much rather play with cold processed soap, experimenting with swirls and colors, playing with scents and sometimes, being completely WOWed at what’s revealed when we slice up the slab or the log of soap. Even though I might use the same colors and techniques between batches, because of the very nature of the creation, no two will ever be the same, and that’s exciting to us.

As our business has evolved and continues to evolve, expect to see much fewer novelty soaps and a greater number of artfully designed soaps using the cold process method. We enjoy having so much control over both the ingredients and the design, and, frankly, we don’t have 10 minutes or 20 minutes to spend making one bar of soap. We do, after all, want to clock out at some point during the day!

Garden Fresh for Spring

I love spring bulbs. Daffodils and hyacinths are my favorites. Planting bulbs in October’s chill is hopeful. We’re anticipating seeing those bright blooms after six months of cool (or cold), dark days. And the smell! Oh my goodness, there’s nothing like the subtle sunny smell of a bright yellow daffodil or the sweet aroma of a pastel rainbow of hyacinths. When I was a child, we had daffodils lining our driveway and hidden among the natural areas in the yard; I still smile thinking of those yellow spots amongst the greens and browns.

Several years ago when we lived in our townhouse, we planted some bulbs. There were so many! We’d gotten a little bit crazy, and in the back in front of the raised bed were crocuses and tulips, and in pots, one on either side of the sidewalk leading to the front door, were hyacinths. I was thrilled the first time I saw the first bud peeking up between the green leaves – thrilled, that is, until the snow buried the young blooms. Obviously, they didn’t do well that year, and, frankly, I was a little disappointed when my mystery bulbs of promised “assorted colors” turned out just to be pink and lavender. Don’t get me wrong; they were pretty before they got the deep freeze, and they did smell nice, but I’d hoped for more variety.

Then came the next spring. I did not realize that these bulbs I’d planted so lovingly a year-and-a-half before were technically tubers and had multiplied. Greatly. And the colors I’d longed for had arrived. Now, in addition to the pink and lavender, I had rich purple, white, dark pink, and yellow blooms, and each time I passed them, their sweet aroma with that hint of spice greeted me. I was in love!

My bulbs didn’t survive the move and resettlement. Trying to finish settling into a new home with a new baby and new routines just didn’t leave much energy for dealing with bulbs. Other plants grace the yard, different blooms and colors, but I still look forward to the autumn when I can see the freshly mounded dirt under which my bulbs are buried and the excitement of the little green shoots giving way to riotous blooms of color come spring.

To sort of tide me over until that day comes, I found a lovely hyacinth fragrance that perfectly reminds me of those glorious flowers. Some floral scents just don’t translate well into their fragrance oil counterparts, but this one is simply lovely. Yearning for a bit of springtime? Grab a bar of this gorgeous hyacinth soap to experience spring in your shower (especially for you folks that are having a white Easter). If you like spring flowers, you’ll love this soap!

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