Ingredient Information | Pleasant View Soaps

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Ingredients

Nourishing Oils and Butters

Traditional soap-making animal fats such as lard provide excellent conditioning and creamy lather, do not clog pores, and give a hard thus long-lasting bar. Many consider animal fats to be superior to vegetable oils for these reasons. The soaps you will find at Pleasant View Soaps include a blend of quality oils and butters resulting in an old-fashioned product that is a pleasure to use, as well as affordable.

Shea butter, cocoa butter, mango butter, olive oil, sweet almond oil, apricot kernel oil, castor oil, safflower oil, and coconut oil are wonderful plant-based oils included in many of these varieties of soap, each lending their special characteristics to the bar.

Cocoa Butter:

Cocoa butter is a protective and moisturizing skin softener full of antioxidants, and imparts a very light chocolatey aroma. The cocoa butter in the products from Pleasant View Soaps is organic and unrefined.

Shea Butter:

Shea butter is extracted from the African Karite tree and is packed with vitamins E and A, providing healing and hydration for dry or mature skin. It penetrates the skin deeply, giving elasticity and a smooth feel. The shea butter in the products from Pleasant View Soaps is organic and unrefined.

Mango Butter:

Mango butter is a creamy butter pressed from the mango seed; it gives a hardness to bar soaps, along with easily-absorbed conditioning for dry skin and lips. Mango butter is a rich skin emollient with healing and protective properties.

Apricot Kernel Oil:

Apricot kernel oil is a light, non-greasy oil high in Vitamin A and essential fatty acids. It is an easily-absorbed oil that is very conditioning in soap. It is similar to sweet almond oil and has softening and moisturizing properties.

Avocado Oil:

Avocado oil is a rich oil that is high in vitamins and wonderful in formulations for mature, damaged, or sensitive skin. Try our Skin Soother and Carrot Calendula soaps, which include moisturizing avocado oil.

Castor Oil:

Castor oil in soaps produces an outstanding fluffy lather. It is a humectant which attracts moisture to itself, providing softening and conditioning effects. It is used in higher amounts in our shampoo and shaving bars to boost the bubbles naturally.

Coconut Oil:

Coconut oil is a very important ingredient in cold-process soap-making; it contributes towards a hard, thus long-lasting bar. It gives the soap an excellent lather and good cleansing action. Coconut oil is in all of our soaps except the Laundry Lye soap.

Olive Oil:

Olive oil is a favored conditioning oil and makes a hard, thus long-lasting, bar of soap with a flat creamy lather. Soaps made with olive oil are especially mild and gentle, great for your face, babies, or those with sensitive skin. 100% olive oil soaps are considered "Castile" soap and are best kept dry between uses.

Safflower Oil:

Safflower oil is a mild cold-pressed oil with a high concentration of linoleic acid, lending superb moisturizing qualities to soaps. The safflower is in the sunflower family.

Sweet Almond Oil:

Sweet Almond Oil is a gentle oil with a mild, nutty scent, similar in composition to the oil babies produce to soothe and soften their skin. It is high in essential fatty acids and vitamin E. It is easily absorbed by the skin, helping it to store moisture and relieve itching and inflammation.

The Benefits of Milk-Based Soap

Goat's milk lends an additional nourishing element to soap with its vitamin, mineral, and fatty acid content. Local and unprocessed farm-fresh goat’s milk brings a creamy skin-conditioning quality to the soap and is what gives it the characteristic caramel color, as the sugars in the milk caramelize during the soap-making process. Some of our milk soaps contain Jersey cow's milk, with an even higher cream profile than goat's milk. Either way, milk boosts the skin-loving benefits of our natural cold-process soaps.

dairy goat

baby goats

Jersey cows

dairy goat

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Meet the farm animals that provide milk for our goat's milk and Jersey cow's milk soaps!

Essential Oils and Fragrance

Using soap that smells nice is high on the list of reasons for choosing a soap. Whether your favorite is an herbal, citrus, spice, earthy, or garden-inspired scent, we strive to provide naturally-fragrant and aromatically-authentic varieties, using 100% pure essential oils when possible. The soaps you'll find here are either scented with pure essential oil blends for a gentle, fresh, and wholesome bar, or with high-quality skin-grade fragrances to give you a wide variety of luscious scents that are a treat to use. The fragrances we use are phthalate-free. Plain, unscented soaps are also available for those who prefer no scent added - though even our unscented varieties have a subtle "soapy" aroma. Everyone has their own unique tastes, and Pleasant View Soaps supplies many appealing choices - there's something for everyone!

Botanicals

Herbs, spices, oatmeal, or other botanical additions provide all-natural color, a touch of exfoliation, and a sprinkling of beauty and texture to the soaps.

Lye

Sodium hydroxide, or household lye, is an important part of cold-process soapmaking, used to convert the base oils into true soap and glycerin, in a natural process called saponification. When the soap is fully cured, the lye has been completely transformed, and there is no longer any remaining. The soap you buy from Pleasant View Soaps is superfatted with extra conditioning oils and has been cured at least 4 weeks to give you a mild bar that will be kind to your skin. It's not your grandmother's "lye soap" which could be harsh and super-cleansing.

However, we do offer a special product called Laundry Lye soap, which simply contains lard and lye, like the old-fashioned soap, as some customers are looking for help with stain removal, poison ivy remedies, a bar for homemade laundry detergent, and more. While it doesn't contain any additional oils, it is not lye-heavy -- to ensure a non-irritating and useful product.