Jessie's Cosmic Garden
Specialty Handmade Soaps
Locally made, unique and luxurious cleansing
for your one-and-only birthday suit!
The Cosmic Garden Soapmaker's Story
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The Soapmaker’s Story
I started making my own tallow-based soaps using Four Eagles Farm’s sheep tallow in the Autumn of 2012. In 2013 I branched out into liquid soaps and vegetable-based bar soaps, which led to some pretty fancy recipes by the end of the summer. I offer a selection of my favorite handmade bar soaps and will, in the future, offer special soaps to augment these unusual ‘standards’.
A number of people make good basic vegetable soap in this town. These soaps work well, although I would ask if the solid fat is vegetable shortening. This is a common vegetable soap ingredient, substituting for coconut oil, but, if it is shortening, it is artificially hydrogenated. All of my soaps have tallow or coconut as the solid fat. Another point, I probably don’t need to make, is that my soaps are out of the ordinary and make fitting gifts for those who love useful, handcrafted items.
Soaps at the grocery store are loaded with chemicals for this that and the other advantage. Sticking with a castile soap there is the least harmful option. Liquid soaps though entirely different to make from bar soaps, offer a lot of options for hand soap, dish soap, clothes washing soap, cleaning soap, etc. Aside from the liquid hand soap, which I currently offer along with the unique bar soaps, liquid products are presently in the research and development stages.
FIY: These bar soaps, and all soaps historically and most currently on the market (other than glycerin-based soaps), are made with Sodium Hydroxide (Lye). Liquid soaps are made with Potassium Hydroxide (also Lye). You will see these basic chemicals in the ingredient lists. They are the bases that drive the acid-base reaction, which creates soap from fats and water-based fluids. Inquiries by email are welcome (contact us).
Cheers!
Jessie
Handmade One-of-a-Kind Vegetable-based Soaps
The Breakfast Bar
Creating this bar of soap was easy. I was imagining a steaming bowl of oatmeal with a puddle of cream on top, a river of honey flowing through the cream and sprinkles of cinnamon and nutmeg. The vanilla seemed to top it off nicely as did the wavy cut. Now, that morning shower can be a warm up for a good breakfast. And, the oats add a mild exfoliation and good skin tickle to jazz up the day.
Ingredients: Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, a full pint of raw Jersey Cream per batch from my Local Milk Share Membership*, Ground Oatmeal, Jessie’s Cosmic Honey, Ground Cinnamon, GSE, Organic Vanilla Fragrance Oil, and Essential Oils of Cinnamon Leaf and Nutmeg.
*Kid Creek Pastures (http://www.kidcreekpastures.com), Jacob and Shawna Barr, farmers. The benefits of raw cream and or milk to the skin are profound. I use low temperature during my reactions to maintain the goodness of all raw food ingredients, though I imagine all enzymes would be denatured by the saponification reaction.
Believe me, it’s a bit of a personal sacrifice to give up the cream but Hattie, Beatrice, and Fiona will offer more the next week.
6 oz 2.4 x 4 bar: $5.50
3.5 oz 2 x 3 bar: $3.25 (half-bar, good sink size)
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You Take the Lime and the Coconut
Well, you know the song …
For some reason, lime and coconut are great companions in drinks, desserts, curries and soap! This is a luscious bar for the skin since I’ve added the coconut cream layer from canned coconut milk ... why not? Coconut is the magical source of sudsy bubbles — for great lather and a rich bar. Including lime zest, which adds a bit of exfoliation, seemed, somehow, imperative.
Ingredients: Olive Oil, Coconut Oil, Distilled Water, Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Avocado Oil, Coconut Cream, GSE, Organic Coconut Fragrance Oil, Lime Essential Oil and Lime Zest.
2.5 x 4 6.4 oz. bar: $8.30
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Savon Saveur Luxury Bar
What’s amazing about this soap is the list of ingredients. The oils are nearly identical to those that make up my normal skin moisturizer. You can expect the ultimate in skin nourishment and conditioning when you use it. It can multi-task as both a facial cleansing bar and a luxurious bath treat. Get out the candles, soft music and sink into the tub. Calendula petals were added before pouring into the mold for a dash of color and healing vibration. I’ve cut some of the bars in half to provide a sink-sized bar as well as a bath bar.
Ingredients: Distilled Water, Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Almond Oil, Apricot Kernel Oil, Shea Butter, Jojoba Oil, Kukui Oil, Sugar, Organic Lychee Fragrance Oil, GSE, Borage Oil, and Calendula Petals from Jessie’s Cosmic Garden.
6 oz 2.5 x 4 bar: $11
3 oz 2 x 2.5 bar $5.50
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"No More Bottles" Shampoo Bar
If you are keen for innovation and a shower free of shampoo bottles, try this shampoo bar out for size. It contains the best of everything for your hair’s condition and it cleanses beautifully. A periodic rinse with diluted cider vinegar will take care of any shampoo buildup and refresh the scalp. All shampoos build up and this bar is no exception. I’ve wavy-cut the bars so we can get a good scalp massage while shampooing.
Ingredients: Distilled Water, Coconut Oil, Olive Oil, Castor Oil, Palm Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Almond Oil, Kukui Oil, Jojoba Oil, Argan Oil, GSE, and Organic Bayberry Fragrance Oil.
6.5 oz 2.5 x 4 bar: $10
3.5 oz 2 x 2.5 bar $5
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Handmade One-of-a-Kind Tallow-based Soaps
The Homesteader Bar
For the ardent locavore, this bar of soap could meet the 150-mile radius criteria for local, just like the produce at the Grub Club. Fact is, when the chips are down, and that is as far as you can go for ingredients, it must be admitted that there are no coconut palms on our horizon in Mt. Shasta. For the hardened fats in soap, our ancestors relied on animal fats. And, in fact, most bar soaps at the supermarket are still tallow-based. There is a lot of tallow available to the soap industry as a bi-product of the beef industry (not especially healthy). Soap can be made from lard but it isn’t very high quality.
I saved the fat and rendered tallow from the lamb I butchered and those I buy already butchered from Devon Strong at Four Eagles Farm in Montague. They are consciously raised lambs since Devon uses biodynamic farming practices and Spirit-guided slaughtering. Alternatively, if sheep fat is unavailable, I also have a stash of beef tallow from the grass fed herd at Kid Creek Pastures. both are superb source of tallow and I do render three times to reach a high level of purity.
On the homestead, they would have rendered the fat from the animals and combined it with lye for a simple, functional bar soap that you probably wouldn’t write home about. It would get you, and the laundry, clean though. I reached out of Shasta a few miles and imagined Olive Oil and Almond Oil coming up from down valley as they do through the Grub Club's 150 mile radius. Their addition brings this soap well into the civilized world. In fact, it is one of the silkiest soaps ever.
Well, folks, if you were homesteading then, you might add in the buttermilk left after butter churning, as I did, a quarter cup or so of warm honey, and maybe some Lavender and Clary Sage scent from the herb garden. The soap looks and feels a lot like butter — yum.
Ingredients: Thrice-rendered Lamb Tallow, Distilled Water, Olive Oil, Sodium Hydroxide, Almond Oil, Almond/Calendula Oil, GSE, Lavender and Clary Sage Essential Oils.
6 oz 2.5 x 4 bar: $7.00
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Handmade Vegetable-based Liquid Hand Soaps
I like the idea of hand soap in a pump bottle at the sink. It is hygienic if you keep the spout of the pump clean, easy to use, and creates no mess on sink or soap dish. Since making my own soaps with ingredients that meet my health-conscious comfort level, I’m not so sure I’m up for what I find at the store, even the natural products at the organic stores. After all, organic cleaning and other products are an industry. Huge batches are made, thickeners area used to allow greater dilutions, shelf life is necessarily expanded, and so forth. So I started making my own and they are fine — wonderful even. I’d like to share them with you.
This is the only product I make, thus far, that comes to you in a plastic container. I don’t like the idea of glass at the slippery sink, especially with kids around, so have made this exception. And, I expect to see the bottles back for refills and not in the recycling bin. Are you aware that we ship all plastic recycling to China for reprocessing into plastics — this at a tremendous cost to the health of their people living downwind from the polluting processing factories. Just because we can recycle doesn’t mean it’s right. What it does mean is that more money will be made off it as it sails around the world wasting fuel.
Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Potassium Hydroxide, Distilled Water, Castor Oil, Vegetable Glycerin, Sugar and a choice of essential oils or fragrance oils.
8 oz plastic bottle with pump: $11.50 refill $10.50
Your choice of the following organic scents:
Grapefruit and Red Ginger
Lemon Verbena
Vanilla Chai
Unscented
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