RAWHIDE SOAPS & LOTIONS WAS CREATED DURING THE WINTER OF 2016...
AND NOW FOR THE REST OF THE STORY...
My 99 year old mother came to live with myself and my two sisters 3 years ago. The last 8 months of her life she was with me. I couldn't leave her for more than an hour alone so I spent a lot of time in my house. I needed something to do! My daughter, Molly, is a young entrepreneur in Park Rapids MN having opened The Good Life Cafe 7 years ago and 3 years ago opened Molly Poppins Gourmet Snacks featuring 20 kinds of fresh popcorn, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and other snacks. We were brainstorming to find other products that could be added to Molly Poppins. We came up with olive oil soap...she sells olive oil so the leap to soap was made. It might be might be a stretch but that's what we did!
My mother made soap when I was a young. She made hers out of bacon grease she saved in a canister by the stove. Nice white soap sometimes a bit lye heavy but it got the job done! She would put bars into a mesh bag, throw into the washing machine and pull it out when she thought she had enough suds! We used it in the shower too. She never added any fragrance or color so it wasn't pretty...that was 50 years ago! She stirred her soap by hand and I remember it took a long time for her soap to reach trace.
So now I'm making soap and love creating wonderful products with so many great fragrances and colorants. Don't worry, I'm not hand stirring my soap. With immersion blenders, I can reach trace in seconds! Soap led to lotion and now I'm hooked on creating products that are the RawHide way "be kind to your hide".
WHY HANDMADE SKIN PRODUCTS?
I have spent my whole life with dry chapped hands. Going from one lotion to another trying to get rid of the itchy dry feeling your skin has especially in the winter time. I would always stock up on the lotion during sales at Bath and Body Works. it helped in the short term but never conditioned my skin. My soap was always the cheapest I could find - Dial, Irish Spring etc. Whether you use a bar soap or liquid, they are all pretty much the same. They lather and clean well, but may leave your skin feeling dry, tight or itchy. Why? Because the main ingredients in mass produced bath products are better called detergents than "soaps". Their packaging doesn't even say "soap". Instead we see bath bar, beauty bar, shower gel, body wash. They all use powerful cleaners that strip our skin and hair of essential oils. They even break down proteins in skin and hair, making skin rough and dry and our hair lifeless and dull. then you have to buy the moisturizer and conditioner to repair what the beauty bar did!
One of the main ingredients is sodium lauryl or laureth sulfate (SLS). It cleans by corrosion. It is used commercially to clean floors, carpets, cars and degrease engines. It's made out of coconut oil! They take all the good qualities out of coconut oil only to keep the lather and cleaning properties. And there are nasty chemicals that can get absorbed into your into your body through your skin.
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There are many more nasty, harsh chemicals used in skin care products. Do your research and you'll be sold on hand crafted body products - Rawhide "be kind to your hide"!
