At Moondance, we strive to manufacture the finest handmade natural and nearly natural cold-process soaps. All of our feedstock and ingredients are food-grade - vegetable oils, lye, essential oils and fragrances, perhaps some corn grits or ground oatmeal. Each batch, each slab, is a personal promise we make to ourselves. These bars are our babies. We hand-cut every bar, dry them, and wrap them for you.
Our handcrafted soaps start out as pure vegetable oils and aqueous sodium hydroxide (standard lye dissolved in water). These are mixed together where the lye saponifies the oils into fatty acid salts and glycerin. As this chemical reaction takes place, natural essential oils or fragrances, and in some of our recipes ground corn or oatmeal, may be added before the solution traces, or begins to thicken. The tracing soap is poured into molds where they continue to cure and harden. Batch-manufacturing of handmade soap demands careful attention to come out right.
After a few days in the mold, the natural soap is popped free, allowed to cure and stiffen a few more days, cut into logs, then bars. Each bar is allowed to dry for an additional 3 weeks, then trimmed and wrapped. Each of our categories of bar soap starts life in this fashion. Learn more from our What's in It page for our traditional handmade soaps. We use the same techniques for our Natural Baby Soap, Foot Soap, and Pet Soap for Dogs. Even our Mens Shaving Soap is batch-processed, 'though we use different molds to accommodate the shaving mug sets.
Goat Milk Soap
Each of our milk-based soaps is made with local Goat Milk from area farms. Natural Goat Milk Soap is popular among our customers as a gentle facial soap, or for sensitive complexions.
Natural Baby Soap
Baby Soaps need to be the gentliest imaginable, and we take great effort to insure our all natural baby soap will soothe and cleanse your precious one as gently as possible.
Foaming Liquid Soap
This unique dispensing pump takes our organic castile liquid soap and whips it up with a bit of air to create Fabulous Foaming Soap. This is one of our newer products, and a big hit for folks who like pump soap dispensers.
Mens Shaving Soap
Remember the old Burma Shave shaving soap billboards? Shaving was a ritual, with shaving mug soap, a razor, soft shaving brush and your personal mug. We've brought back the joy of simple quality to this personal chore -- and you'll fall in love with the a shaving brush soap gift set. Shaving soap needs to hold a rich lather, avoid irritating the skin, and rinse clean. Ours will lather up and moisturize what needs to be shaved. Our mens shaving soap also comes as part of an attractive shaving gift set (for both men and women).
Care of your handmade soaps
Our handcrafted soaps contain no synthetic hardening agents. We highly recommend that you store your soaps so that they do not rest in a puddle of water for a prolonged period of time. (This is why we also offer wooden soap decks and acrylic soap saver sleeves.) If allowed to dry thoroughly between uses, your handcrafted soap will last as long as, or longer than, the detergent "soaps" you may be accustomed to using
Body Butter and Lip Balm Skin Moisturizers
Body Butters
Our natural body butters and lotion bars are all super moisturizing, made with natural rich oils such as Shea Butter, Cocoa Butter, Coconut Oil, Jojoba Oil, Beeswax, Vitamin E and essential oils or fragrances. Body butters will soften your skin as they soak in and are absorbed. We do not add water to the body butter, so it remains thick and creamy unless you heat it to just about body temperature.
Care of your Body Butter - Because we use premium cocoa butter and avoid synthetic emulsifiers as additives, over time your body butter tub may develop small spherical beads of cocoa butter in the creme. Don't worry - that's completely natural. To remix a beaded butter, just gently heat it in the microwave for 10-20 seconds. With just enough time to liquify the butter, but not scald it, you can use a spoon to stir homogenize your butter back to its smooth creamy self. It only takes a few swirls, then set the tub aside to allow it to cool back to room temps.
Lotion Bars
Lotion Bars are your perfect portable skin moisturizer to go. Our Lotion Bars have the same fragrances and skin-licious content as our super moisturizing body butter cremes, with just a bit extra bees wax to stay solid in the tube. Imagine a 'lip balm' for the rest of you. Our Lotion Bars are ideal for folks who work at keyboards or other tactile tasks where you don't want to get a creme on your fingertips. Just pop off the top, turn up a little lotion, apply directly to your knuckles, the backs of your hands, elbows, knees or whereever needed. Cap the bar and rub in a little love to your thirsty skin. Portable enough for pocketbooks, desk drawers, backpacks or back pockets, take your favorite body butter fragrance with you in a Lotion Bar.
Lip Balms
And we haven't forgotten the most obvious skin of all - your lips. With a fragrance for everyone (including the no-fragrance 'all natural' and the tea tree healing blend), our lip balms are perfectly lip-smackable. Chapped lips happen any time of year: summer boating, spring and fall gardening, and of course winter inside or out. Chap lip balms are pocket-sized protection for your lips. Works great on chapped fingers and palms too if you don't have your lotion bar handy.
Herbal Bath Teas, Effervescent Bath Tabs and More Bath Treats
The same care and craft that goes into our handcrafted soaps is applied to our Bath Tub Teas, fizzy Bath Tablets, Bath Salts, and Massage Oil. Bath Teas bring that special herbal bath soak experience home to your own tub. Fizzy Bath Tabs scent and bubble stress away.
