Handmade soap is natural and good for your skin.There's a lot of chemistry that goes in to making soap. At the most basic level, it's a chemical reaction. In order to make soap via cold process method, skin-loving butters and oils — or fats — and lye are combined in a process called saponification. One of the main benefits of cold process soap making is having complete control over ingredients. Cold process soap has no added detergents, which strip the skin of its natural oils.Additional ingredients may be added to increase the skin-loving benefits.

Hold up, is lye natural?

Some people are afraid to use soap made with lye. However, if lye wasn’t used, you couldn’t make soap. All you would have is a puddle of oils. In fact, there’s no lye left over after the saponification process—it’s been turned into soap! Lye is purchased by its chemical names: sodium hydroxide (NaOH) used for making hard soap, or potassium hydroxide (KOH) which is used for making liquid soaps.

Many commercial soaps ARE NOT SOAP. Yes, you read that right. They are preserved synthetic detergents.

Detergents originated in 1917 in Germany. The commercial store-bought “soap” we know today came into existence during WWII. Detergents are synthetic, often petroleum-based, cleansers that strip your skin of its natural oils. The problem is your body needs its natural oil to keep your skin healthy. These preserved detergent "soap" bars can lead to skin disorders, rashes, and allergic reactions.

Commercial soaps contain toxic chemicals.

Even if you happen to find a bar of real soap at the store, it might not be all that great for you. Many commercial soaps contain chemical-based colorants, dyes, fragrances, lathering agents, preservatives, and other “things” we can’t pronounce. The synthetic ingredients in them dehydrate and age skin, cause allergic reactions, and have been linked to various forms of cancer. Some commercial “soaps”, toothpaste, and body washes even include triclosan, which can promote cancer. Pretty scary stuff!

Commercial soap lacks moisturizing properties. With all of the work commercial soap manufacturers put into adding “stuff” to their product, you wouldn’t think they would spend time removing "good stuff" from it, but they do. 

Real handmade soap contains glycerine. Glycerin is a naturally occurring byproduct of the saponification process — that’s the chemical reaction that we call soap making. Glycerine draws moisture from the air to your skin, leaving your skin soft and moisturized. You won’t find any soaper out there extracting all the goodies from their soap to upsell you the 2nd product. 

So what do commercial soap manufacturers do with the glycerin they remove from their soap? They sell it separately, or use it in a second product—moisturizer. Yup, they take one good bar of soap, extract the moisturizer, and then sell it to us as a second product — both of which may contain harmful chemicals.

Bliss Naturals soap is the real deal – distilled water, saponified organic butters & oils, natural exfoliants such as raw organic cane sugar, colloidal oats & sea salts, non-toxic fragrances & essential oils, and natural colorants like turmeric, spirulina, rose clay and micas. (Mica is a natural stone mineral with shiny flakes. When mica is ground into a powder, you get mica powder. Because it is naturally produced, it's a particularly well-loved ingredient among organic and natural beauty brands, and is safe to use on all skin types with no side effects.) Each of the ingredients used in our soaps are chosen based on their effect on the final bar - moisturizing, exfoliant, odor removing, lathering, etc.

What is Saponified oil? 

Saponified oil is basically oil that has been converted to soap by mixing/reacting with an alkaline sodium compound. Saponification is a simple chemical reaction where an acid (oil) reacts with an alkali (lye) to make salt (soap) & water.  So mixing olive oil with lye gives Sodium Olivate, which is the soap of Olive oil or simply Saponified Olive oil. Glycerin is an additional byproduct of this reaction which is super nourishing and helps to absorb moisture to your skin throughout the day.

Is lye a toxic chemical? 

People often ask me if our soaps have lye in it since they think lye is a toxic chemical. Lye is sodium hydroxide (NaOH), which in fact is made from Sodium Chloride, or table salt. It’s environment friendly and 100% biodegradable unlike most toxins and chemicals that get absorbed by the body and disrupt our organ and systems.

Lye only got a bad name because of its high pH. The pH of lye is 14, neutral pH (where our bodies function) is 7, and the pH of hydrochloric acid is zero. So just like acidic things which have a low pH, alkaline things can also burn the skin, so extreme care is needed.

Without lye, you can’t make soap. ALL soap whether organic or not is made with lye (sodium hydroxide). To convert the oils that are greasy into soap that cleanses it has to be reacted with lye.

So why don’t we mention lye in the ingredients? Good question and the answer is simple: That there’s absolutely NO LYE in Bliss Naturals soaps. Confused, right? Well, we have carefully formulated our soaps so that only the precise amount of lye is added which helps to turns the oil molecules into soap molecules.

Occasionally you will receive a bar of soap with a light colored or “frosted” white top and/or sides. This is called SODA ASH. It’s a natural occurrence that happens sometimes when unsaponified lye reacts with the carbon dioxide in the air. It usually disappears after the first use of the soap. Some soaps get it, and some soaps don’t…it’s really a random coin toss, although a lot of people agree that it appears due to the temperature at the time of making the soap. Soda ash is completely safe and harmless to the skin, it’s just one of those things that happens from time to time during the soap making process.