Our First-Ever Soap Making Workshop! March 8, 2016 15:26

 The first BE Beautiful organic skin care workshop at our store was a success! We made sugar scrub soap bars, which are aromatic and exfoliating bars of all natural soap. The main components of the soap base are hemp oil and glycerine, including many other moisturizing oils such as olive oil, palm oil and coconut oil. We added our own organic sweet almond oil, organic rice bran oil and an additional portion of organic hemp oil. In our recipe, we want the soap to not only get you clean, but also leave your skin feeling hydrated and healthy. Most commercial soaps dry out the skin because they fail to include these natural oils. Our other secret ingredients include organic granulated sugar, rose clay powder and lemongrass & grapefruit essential oils. See photos below from the workshop to see our process, and consider participating in the future! 

We started off by melting our soap base together using a double boiler. 

Then we mix together the essential oil blend (lemongrass and grapefruit) with organic sugar.  

A hint of rose clay powder gives the soap a beautiful color when it's finished.

Ladies at the workshop mixing the ingredients!

After we mixed the oils with the sugar and clay, we poured the hot soap base into the bowl and blended it all together. You must pour the mixture into the molds quickly so that it doesn't harden too fast!

Aerial shot of our work table-- so much going on at once! The herbs in the middle are dried lemon rind and dried majoram, for added exfoliation and health benefits.

Marissa, Ini, Dana and shop owner/ head of production Bi Li! We are so excited to continue these workshops and continue collaborating with our friends and neighbors.

Waiting patiently for the soap to harden and cool. 

There you have it! Flawless organic soap made by a very talented and enthusiastic group of women.  

Great energy, resulting in amazing final products. As we waited for the last batch of soap to cool, we painted some soaps with mica powder (a naturally occurring mineral used to color powdered makeup), for presentation.

Adding a little color with the mica powder. Some of the soap is yellow-green because it does not contain rose clay powder. You can also layer the colors by pouring in the yellow mixture first and then adding the rose-colored mix on top shortly after. We did a lot of experimenting!

 If you are interested in our organic skin care workshops, send an email to earthspeaksbrooklyn@gmail.com! We are working towards making our BE Beautiful brand a cooperative effort between us and our customers/ members of our community. If you live in Brooklyn or NYC in general, you would qualify to participate in our work exchange. Eventually, we would like to embrace a shared economy where our members can work and help us create products and spread the word of our business. In return, everyone can take home our goods and learn a great deal about how to make hand crafted, organic skin care products. This is our long-term goal. 

For now, we are having a few specialty workshops, and allowing participants to take home some handmade skin care products that they made that day for a discounted price. Let us know if you would like to be on our email list to receive occasional updates and information about future events and workshops!