The majority of the plant oils we use are organic.
Almond Oil
Extracted from the seeds of almonds, this oil is a superior humectant having natural water retention properties. It is also a wonderful emollient that is soothing and softening to the skin. All of these properties make this oil an excellent choice for very dry skin. Absorbed in to the skin, almond oil has cleansing, anti-inflammatory and nourishing properties for the skin.
Avocado oil
Extracted from the pulp of the avocado fruit, this oil is high in monounsaturated fat that is rich in vitamin A, D, and E. It also contains lecithin and amino acids. All of these nutrients work to beautify and anti-age your complexion. This highly therapeutic oil is known for its healing and regenerative properties. Avocado oil has properties that rebuild the skin cells as well as improve the elasticity in skin. This helps to give your skin a more youthful, dewy, radiant look. Avocado oil is commonly used as massage oil. It’s also added to many moisturizing creams and hair conditioners due to the fact that it’s so soothing to the skin. It’s an excellent moisturizer that softens the skin and is especially beneficial for dry, scaly skin and scalp. It has antiseptic qualities that are beneficial for treating acne, scrapes and burns, keeping infections away as well as speeding up recovery.
Babassu Oil
This oil is extracted from the Babassu palm tree, which is native to Brazil. This oil has similar properties to coconut oil in that it helps to create a harder soap bar that is longer lasting. It is a superior moisturizer that is beneficial for all skin types from dry to oily. It gently moisturizes and truly softens the skin without leaving an oily sheen. Due to all these wonderful qualities, Babassu Oil is a main ingredient in all of our soaps.
Beeswax
Beeswax is the natural wax made by honeybees in their hive. It’s a wonderful emollient, attracting moisture to the skin. It soothes and softens the skin. It’s often used in natural skin care products such as moisturizers and cosmetics because it is a thickening agent and emulsifier, keeping oils together. It contains vitamin A, which is essential for human cell development, therefore aiding in skin regeneration and the healing of wounds. It’s antiseptic properties help to prevent skin infections. Beeswax is also a wonderful anti-oxidant, protecting against free radical damage.
Castor Oil
This oil is taken from the castor bean, which is found in the tropics of Africa and Asia. It contains a high level of unsaturated fatty acids, and is known for its immune strengthening qualities when taken internally. It is also commonly used internally to treat gastrointestinal problems. Castor oil has been shown to be useful in treating arthritis, since this oil has anti-inflammatory properties. As a topical treatment for the skin, it has been shown to be therapeutic in treating a wide variety of skin conditions, ranging from rashes to sunburns, due to its soothing properties. Used internally or externally, it is an antioxidant that fights the effects of free radical damage. It is a very lubricating oil, making it an excellent skin moisturizer. Being a superb humectant, this oil attracts and retains moisture to the skin. Castor oil blends well with other oils to make for a more moisturizing bar of soap.
Cocoa Butter
This oil is derived from the Cocoa tree, predominately grown in Ghana. Organic Cocoa butter is most commonly known as a main ingredient in chocolate and suntan lotions. Cocoa butter has a pleasant aroma which is probably just one of the reasons for chocolate’s popularity as well as it’s common use in suntan lotions. For soap making, it is a very beneficial oil because not only is it an extremely moisturizing and healing oil for dry chapped skin, but it helps to create a longer lasting soap bar with more lather. Cocoa butter is high in antioxidants and vitamin E, helping to prevent and counter the effects of free radical damage to the skin. This helps to diminish wrinkles. When cocoa butter is applied to skin, it aids in creating a clearer, smoother, more subtle quality to the skin.
Coconut Oil
Coconut Oil is an excellent oil for soap making for so many reasons. This oil creates a fluffy lather as well as adding hardness to the bar. Coconut Oil has wonderful cleansing properties. Coconut oil is a superb carrier oil for other oils in the soap. This oil works wonders in softening the skin. Coconut Oil is non greasy and light in texture, absorbing easily into the skin without clogging the pores. This oil feeds moisture into the skin, creating a youthful, radiant glow, making it especially beneficial for dry or mature skin types.
Grape Seed Oil
This odorless oil is derived from pressed grape seeds, predominately from France. Texture-wise this oil is very light and very easily absorbed into the skin, leaving no greasy feel behind. Grape seed has amazing therapeutic benefits for the skin. It has superior emollient properties making for a potent moisturizer that softens and soothes the skin. It also has astringent properties, so it aids in tightening and toning the skin. It contains very strong antioxidants known as proanthocyanidins that aid in skin regeneration, and fight free radical damage. This is a superb oil for healing sun damaged and wounded skin. It is also an excellent oil for restoring a youthful look to mature skin.
Hazelnut Oil
Ingested, it’s a wonderful oil for salads and cooking, containing lots of vitamins, minerals and proteins. It is high in antioxidants and low in saturated fat. Topically, this is a highly unsaturated oil that is very easily absorbed into the skin, leaving absolutely no oily residue behind. It is a powerful anti-aging oil, which is an excellent long-lasting moisturizer that firms the skin, and also has properties that aid in the production of new elastin and collagen. This is an amazing oil for helping to promotes a youthful subtle complexion, which is especially beneficial for mature skin. Hazelnut oil is a versatile oil, due to its astringent qualities that reduce excessive oiliness, refine pores, and tone the skin.
Olive Oil
Ingested, it is probably one of the most common cooking oils due to its distinctive flavor, cultural traditional uses, and health benefits. Olive oil is rich in monounsaturated fat and antioxidants like chlorophyll, carotenoids and vitamin E. Olives have a compound known as oleuropein, which helps to prevent plaque from sticking to your arteries, therefore helping to reduce diseases associated with high cholesterol. Extracted from ripened olives, this oil is usually at the top of many natural soap and natural skin care product manufactures list of ingredients. This is due to the fact that it’s a very nourishing oil. It has superior penetrating ability, attracting external moisture to the skin while leaving a protective coating that leaves the pores breathable to perform daily functions such as sweating and exfoliating. Olive oil promotes a smooth radiant complexion, helping to maintain the elasticity of skin. High in antioxidants, it is an anti-aging oil for the skin, fighting free radical damage. Olive Oil also makes an excellent conditioner for hair and nails.
Palm Kernel Oil
Palm Kernel oil is a beneficial oil for cooking because it is high in vitamin K, which is important for bone health as well as coagulation of the blood. Palm Kernel oil is also more resistant to oxidation under high cooking temperatures, and it also promotes a longer shelf life. It comes from the extracted seeds of the African Palm tree. Palm Kernel oil is an excellent choice for soap making because it pulls all the oils together for saponification . It aids in creating a harder bar of soap, preventing the soap from melting too quickly. It also creates a bar that is very cleansing, as well as mild to the skin. We tend to use organic Palm Kernel Oil more than Palm oil because it is more moisturizing to the skin.
Shea Butter
Shea Butter comes from the fruit pit of the Karite tree in Africa. For centuries, Shea Butter has been commonly used not only in Africa, but worldwide, as one of the best healing and moisturizing oils. This oil has amazing medicinal properties. Here are just some of them to name a few:
- It reduces exposure to the sun as it acts as a sunscreen.
- It’s a superb moisturizer that leaves the skin soft and supple, excellent for dry ashy skin.
- It helps to rejuvenate skin pores and add elasticity to skin.
- It helps to regenerate skin cells to help heal scars, burns and stretch marks.
- It’s great for mature skin in that it helps to fade wrinkles.
- It heals skin rashes.
- It’s an excellent moisturizer for your hair, preventing the hair from breaking and fading while it strengthens hair follicles.
- It works to heal bruises quicker.
- It aids in draining toxins from sore muscles.
Shea Butter has been shown - to have amazing results in healing dermatitis, eczema, athlete’s foot and sunburn.
Essential Oils
Essential oils are excellent for the skin. They’re a great way to get smooth glowing skin, which is why we use them in our skin care products. That being said, essential oils should always be diluted with a carrier oil because applying them straight to your skin tends to be too strong, and can burn your skin. The general rule is 1 drop of essential oil to 1 ml of a carrier oils. Carrier oils are plant oils such as olive, grape seed, etc, that are not essential oils.
Basil Essential Oil
This essential oil has a fresh sweet and spicy aroma. It improves the tone and appearance of the skin, giving the skin a more vibrant glow. Basil oil has anti-inflammatory properties making it an excellent oil for helping to heal skin irritation, small wounds, sores and eczema. This oil contains vitamin C which helps to boost skin cells’ metabolism and maintain collagen boosting elasticity of the skin.
Carrot Seed Essential Oil
This essential oil has rejuvenating effect on the skin. It’s excellent for dry, sun-damaged, mature, or wrinkled skin. When your skin gets dry and cracked, or if your skin looks dull and tired, then applying a moisturizer made with carrot seed oil will help to get your skin’s glow back. It will also help to smooth your skin and increase cell regeneration of the skin. It helps fade skin scars, and rejuvenate the tone of aging skin. Carrot Seed Essential Oil can be used on all skin types.
Cassia Essential Oil. This oil is a variation of cinnamon essential oil. It’s darker in color and tends to have the same benefits for the skin. It just has a softer aroma, which is why we use it in our oatmeal cinnamon soap.
Catnip Essential Oil
This oil has a grassy aroma, kind of like that of fresh cut grass. It’s called catnip because some cats love the aroma and become quite energetic when nipping at the plant. Cats love it; bugs hate it. That is why we use it in our bug repellant. This essential oil is one of the strongest natural bug repellants. Its known to keep away various insects such as mosquitoes insects and flies. This oil is excellent for soothing bug bites by reliving the itching and irritation. It has anti-inflammatory properties that help to soothe irritated skin. It helps speed up the healing process of broken skin as well.
Citronella Essential Oil
This oil has a strong lemony citrus aroma. It’s probably most well known as a very potent bug repellant. Citronella is very effective at keeping bugs such as mosquitoes, flies, ticks, and lice away to name a few. Citronella contains anti-oxidants that slow down the aging process of your skin. Its compounds contain antifungal properties as well as properties that speed up wound healing. This oil will make your skin glow and helps to block UV rays.
Cinnamon Essential Oil: Everyone recognizes the strong sweet aroma of Cinnamon This oil is very beneficial for the skin. It has anti-inflammatory properties that are excellent for treating skin problems such as dermatitis, eczema, rashes and itching. It improves the appearance of fine lines by plumping the skin, which in turn stimulates blood flow to the face. All in all it helps give you a glowing complexion.
Cypress Essential Oil
This oil has a clean, spicy, slight woody evergreen aroma. It is an astringent, providing antibacterial support to the skin. This oil helps to heal acne, and strengthen the structure of the skin tissue.. Cypress Oil firms and tightens loose, sagging skin as it stimulates muscle tissue, allowing skin to become more firm.
Eucalyptus Essential Oil: This oil has a clean, strong minty aroma. There is also a different breed of Eucalyptus that has a more lemony aroma. This type of eucalyptus is a strong bug repellant. Many types of bugs, such as mosquitoes, do not like the aroma. This type of eucalyptus is what we use in our bug repellant. This oil is also an excellent moisturizer. It contains anti-inflammatory, antiseptic and antibacterial compounds that are helpful in treating acne and eczema. It’s also an anti-aging oil in that it tends to tighten skin, which reduces the visibility of wrinkles.
Frankincense Essential Oil
This essential oil can be described as having a warm pine aroma with citrus and spice. It has antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties that benefit the skin, making it beneficial for acne-prone skin. It’s excellent for aging skin, improving the skin’s elasticity. It’s an excellent toner, reducing the appearance of pores, and evening out skin-tone. It helps in protecting existing cells, and promoting new cell growth. For this reason, it helps reduce wrinkles, tighten skin, and fade out scars. It’s also helpful in soothing dry, chapped skin.
Juniper Berry Essential Oil
This oil has a pleasant woody, peppery, pine aroma. Juniper Essential Oil has antibacterial, antiseptic, astringent and detoxifying properties for your skin. These properties, make it quite helpful in the treatment of acne, eczema, dermatitis, and psoriasis. This oil balances oily skin, and unclogs pores, which is especially helpful for acne-prone skin. Juniper Berry Essential Oil is also helpful in reducing puffiness, and firming the appearance of your skin. Juniper Berry Essential Oil is excellent for all skin types.
Lavender Essential Oil
This natural essential oil is an excellent choice for all skin types – such as dry, oily, sensitive or aging skin. It has a beautiful floral aroma, and can calm down stressed skin. It has anti-fungal, anti-inflammatory, and antibacterial properties, so it can be quite useful in helping to heal many skin conditions. It also helps to regenerate skin cells, so it works well on aging skin, sun spots, and scarring. Many dermatologists recommend lavender essential oil to treat acne, as it greatly decreases bacteria that can otherwise cause infection. Lavender Essential Oils can easily mix with just about any other essential oil, which makes it quite versatile.
Lemongrass Essential Oil
People love the sweet citrus aroma of Lemongrass. This essential oil has detoxifying and regenerative characteristics, which are excellent for producing glowing skin. It helps minimize microbial growth on your skin, and is very effective in minimizing large pores and acne conditions. It’s quite useful as an astringent, skin-toner and fungicide.
Patchouli Essential Oil
Patchouli essential oil has a musky, sweet, spicy aroma. It was very popular during the hippie generation. This oil is excellent for all skin types but is especially beneficial for aging skin. It stimulates skin cell growth and reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. It has antiseptic, antifungal, and antibacterial properties that make this oil effective in helping to treat skin problems such as eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis, and acne.
Peppermint Essential Oil
This oil can be described as having a cooling refreshing minty aroma. This oil has astringent properties, and helps to tone while providing antimicrobial and antiseptic properties. This oil has been shown to be effective in treating dermatitis, ringworm, sunburn inflammation, and oily skin.
Rose Essential Oil: We all know the gorgeous floral aroma or roses. This is a sought after oil due to the aroma. It’s also a very expensive essential oil due to the fact that it takes a lot of roses to make this oil. This oil is particularly great for dry or aging skin. This essential oil contains many therapeutic compounds (particularly antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory compounds) that are known to quicken the healing process. For this reason, Rose Essential Oil can hone skin texture and tone. It also has abilities to manage many skin conditions, like psoriasis and dermatitis.
Sandalwood Essential Oil
This essential oil has a beautiful, exotic, sweet, creamy and warm aroma It is one of the most expensive essential oils because it takes 15 years before you can harvest this oil from the Sandalwood tree. If we use it in a product, we use it sparingly due to the exorbitant cost. Although this oil is excellent for all skin types, it is especially beneficial for treating dry skin due to its moisturizing properties. The active ingredients in Sandalwood Essential Oil have strong anti-inflammatory properties, soothing inflammation and redness, which is quite beneficial for problematic skin.
Spearmint Essential Oil
This oil has a clean, fresh, cooling and minty aroma which is milder than peppermint, but still uplifting. This oil is excellent for exfoliating the skin, removing dry flaky skin and revealing the fresh skin underneath. This brightens the skin. It balances the oil secretions of your pores, leaving your skin feeling soft, but not greasy. It’s works well for all skin types, and is especially helpful for acne sufferers.
Star Anise Essential Oil
This essential oil has a fresh, spicy, sweet, and strong licorice aroma. It’s a powerful aroma that is quite effective in masking foul odors. It’s marketed for fishermen as it is one of the few essential oils that can mask the fishy smell. This oil is an excellent skin toner which reduces the appearance of wrinkles, giving you a smoother skin. It’s an excellent moisturizer that hydrates dry skin. It has strong antiseptic, antifungal, and anti bacterial properties, making it excellent for treating and preventing all kinds of skin conditions such as acne, dermatitis, and infections.
Tangerine Essential Oil
We all know the sweet citrus aroma of tangerine, but many of us don’t know how perfect this oil is for skin regeneration. The properties of this oil help stimulate and grow new skin cells. It is a light and non-greasy oil that deeply penetrates the skin making it very effective in anti aging the skin. It helps to soften fine lines and wrinkles, while improving the tone of your skin, making you look more youthful.
Tea Tree Essential Oil
This popular essential oil is an excellent choice for oily and sensitive skin because it’s a strong anti-fungal and antibacterial oil. It’s as effective as peroxide in killing bacteria and fungus without the harmful drying effects of putting peroxide on your skin. It also helps to regulate oil secretion, which lessens the likelihood of acne breakouts. This oil helps heal your skin, and can be used to treat minor cuts, scrapes, and burns, while gently soothing and cleansing the skin as well.
Ylang Ylang Essential Oil
Ylang Ylang has a beautiful rich floral aroma that a lot of people love. It works great on every skin type. This oil is excellent for treating oily or acne-prone skin. It regulates oil production, minimizes the probability and severity of acne breakouts. It stimulates and regenerates skin, slowing down the aging process, smoothing fine lines, improving skin elasticity and giving a more youthful appearance.