October 21 - Alvin C Baker Harvest Craft Fair in the Alumni Gym at Maryville College.
November 11 - Holiday Handcrafters Fair at the Great Smoky Mountains Heritage Center in Townsend.
November 25 - Downtown Maryville Holiday Market inside White Star Station.
December 2 - Christmas on Broadway inside Creative Spark Studio.
]]>-Soap boxes are made with recycled cardboard and can be recycled again.
-Orders are shipped plastic free in cardboard boxes with paper tape and paper packing materials- all of which can be recycled on the customer end.
-I do not make any products that would require plastic packaging such as bottles or shrink wrap.
-I recycle packaging materials from my supplier orders.
-I make a conscious effort to minimize disposable products in my process. This includes using washable towels instead of paper and washable reusable utensils instead of disposable paper or plastic.
If you spot a missed opportunity for Salty Crossing to be greener, please don’t hesitate to contact me with your ideas!
]]>Real soap consists of 2 major parts- oil and lye. Most Salty Crossing recipes use a variety of oils to achieve a balanced bar. Each oil offers different qualities to the recipe— some make big bubbles or plentiful lather; others offer gentle cleansing but don’t lather as well; some make the soaps harder and last longer; others make the soaps soft and dissolve easier.
Mango butter, coconut oil, avocado oil, walnut oil, olive oil, grapeseed oil, and castor oil are commonly used in Salty Crossing soaps. All recipes are palm free.
You can’t make soap without the chemical reaction known as saponification! So yes, all Salty Crossing soaps contain lye. All are ‘super fat’ recipes which means there’s more oils than the added lye can saponify. Those extra oils help keep the soap gentle on your skin.
During the soap making process, the lye is dissolved into a liquid before being combined with the oils. The possibilities here are many, but the most common are distilled water or goat milk or coconut milk.
All natural soaps are often scented with essential oils, which you will see listed individually in the ingredients. The ingredients in synthetic fragrance oils tend to be proprietary and not made available to makers. These types of scents will be listed as ‘fragrance’ in the soap ingredients. All fragrance oils used here at Salty Crossing come from reputable suppliers and are phthalate free, responsibly sourced, vegan and cruelty free.
In natural soaps, the colors come from clays- like green French clay, or purple Brazilian clay. They might also come from plant based additives like cocoa powder or indigo powder. You will see these ingredients listed individually.
Other soaps may use a combination of micas and pigments, which will appear as ‘colorants’ in the ingredients list.
I’m Elizabeth- owner, soap maker, order packer, customer service rep....you’re getting the picture right?
I started making goat milk soap in 2019 labeled under our farm name, Cross the Creek. I really LOVE our goat milk soap, but it started nagging at me early on that under our farm name everything I created had to include a product from our farm. I was full of creative ideas better suited for other types of soap.
In early 2021 I decided to take the plunge; start over at ground zero building a new brand: and embrace a wider variety of soaps— and so Salty Crossing Soapery was born.
I love pushing the limits of my skill to create unique soap designs. I am a self-taught artisan, relying on trial and error mostly, with a bit of help from other soap makers who generously share their knowledge online. My fancy soaps are created through a multi-step process that begins with the graphic design of the soap; computer drafting of any necessary tools; and 3D printing those tools. It is not unusual for a soap to be in this planning and preparation stage for days or even weeks before it is poured into the mold. I enjoy every step of the process- with the exception of the dishwashing at the end!
I grew up on the eastern shore of Maryland. Though I do love our little farm in the foothills of the Smoky mountains, it would be fair to say the Chesapeake and the Atlantic will always have my heart. When you see that I’ve made yet another water or beach themed soap, know that’s just my way of pouring a little piece of my heart into the mold.
I share my life and home with ‘my boys’- husband and son- and chaos is the word I typically choose to describe that life. Currently 17 goats, 2 chickens, 3 dogs, and a cat live on our farm. There’s never a dull moment here, and while I complain about it often, I don’t know that I would really want it any other way.
Family and goats and soap take up just about all of my time, but I occasionally find a few minutes to quilt or make some jewelry as well. (Exciting, right?)
Reason 5: When it's gone, it's gone. There's nothing left collecting dust on the shelf. There's no odd feelings about trashing or donating something because it held some sort of sentimental value. You use it; it's lovely; and then it's gone.
Reason 4: Every bar is unique. While handmade soaps from the same batch may be pretty similar, no two bars are exactly identical. It's an easy way to guarantee the gift you give will be different and remembered.
Reason 3: Who doesn't love a good bar of fancy soap?! With fun designs and a huge selection of scents, there's sure to be something for just about everyone on your list.
Reason 2: It's an excellent opportunity to snag a little something for yourself as well! Life is stressful. Don't be afraid to allow yourself a tiny bit of self love.
Reason 1: It's an excellent opportunity to support a small business. It might take a little extra effort to order from that soap makers website instead of the big box store. Or you might even find them at a local artisan market. Either way, that tiny extra effort will shine through in your gift.
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Most soap ingredients fall into one of a handful of categories- oils, lye, water or other liquid, fragrance, color, and additives. It is typically in the fragrance and colorant departments that we see disagreements about what is natural versus what is not.
Salty Crossing soaps labeled natural are either unscented or scented only with essential oils. These essential oil blends are made with care to be sure they do not exceed the safe usage levels for soap. Soaps in the natural collection do not use manufactured fragrance oils.
There is a wide array of colors that can be achieved using clays, activated charcoal, and plant powders. Those are the sort of ingredients you will find in Salty Crossing soaps carrying the 'all natural' label.
In the end, the goal here is to always be transparent on the label in order to allow shoppers to make an educated decision about what goes on their skin. If ever you have a question about Salty Crossing soaps, please reach out via the Contact form!
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Edgar Kameraki created the Oasis Swirl technique, and this month Soap Challenge Club members were fortunate enough to have him teach us! The set up and pour is a bit complicated, but the results are absolutely worth it. This technique creates a really unique design with so much depth and endless possibilities for color.
I made two attempts at the technique this month. My second attempt, In the Rainbow, is my experienced category entry. My first attempt, Sweet Summer, was entered in the bonus category. The differences between each batch are very subtle as I made only a couple small adjustments to the colors from one design to the next.
Many thanks to our teacher Edgar Kameraki for not only creating this unique technique, but then also being willing to share it with us! Also, Amy Warden of the Soap Challenge Club- who brings us all together each month with a new challenge and opportunity to test and hone our soap making skills. Each month our challenge is made possible by generous sponsors and this month that sponsor is Stephanie Graham of Micas and More !
Update 10/26/2022: On a whim, I decided to enter my last 2 bars of this Farm in the Foothills soap in the American Dairy Goat Association Body Care Competition. The bars in this competition are evaluated and judged based on criteria from the Handcrafted Soap Makers Guild. Those criteria include not only appearance qualities, but also functional aspects such as foam and feel. I am pretty chuffed to say I learned yesterday that my fancy little barn soaps won third place in their category- embracing the design so near to my heart while still offering a great lather and feel!
You can view a full list of the bath and body competition winners here: 2022 ADGA Bath & Body Products Competition
April 2022 Soap Challenge:
The objective for the Soap Challenge this month was to use the sculpted layers technique "to create a landscape or design inspired by a National park, National monument, or other famous or recognizable landmark." I knew right away that I wanted to create a soap with our barn silhouette. I had been kicking around the idea of doing a soap featuring it for quite a while, but my original intention had been to 3d print an extruder disc to make that happen. After reading through the tutorial and watching the videos, I was pretty sure I could make it happen by printing layer scrapers instead, so off I went.
Special thanks to Travis McKenzie at DesignByMcKenzie.com , who designed our farm logo several years ago. He was able to send me the digital file of our barn silhouette in record time when I asked for it, which saved me untold hours in producing the scraper for the barn layer.
The more I worked on the design, the more I felt like I was getting in way over my head. I had never 'properly' sculpted a layer before. Sure there were times that I kind of casually pulled a scraper through a layer to get a certain effect in a loaf, but the technique Roxanne had lined out for us and the overall objective of the challenge really demanded far more precision than I had ever attempted.
I put my barn design on hold and went on a quest to create a more simple design as a practice attempt. When I am at a loss for ideas, I often stand at my fragrance oil shelf and sniff things looking for inspiration. I was doing that when I realized I had this great watermelon fragrance oil that I purchased last summer and had never used because, well, life happened. That soap ended up being my Bonus Category entry and you can read more about it here.
I do not milk or raise goats any longer, but the memories of hanging out the barn aisle door on chilly spring mornings to get a glimpse of the sun rising over the Smoky mountains will forever be etched in my brain. That is why it was so important to me that this was a goat milk soap, made with some of the last Cross the Creek farm milk that I so carefully squirreled away in our deep freezer.
I went through way too many mental gymnastics trying to work out the best way to use some of our goat milk in the soap. In the end, I used a 1.1:1 lye to water ratio for my master batch calculations in the awesome spreadsheet Roxanne provided us. Separately, I calculated the recipe at 1.8:1, and subtracted the water amounts between the two. I used that difference in water amounts as goat milk, which I added to my master batch oils. To make the spreadsheet calculate correctly, I added the weight of the milk to the weight of the fragrance oil I used and entered that in the fragrance box of the spreadsheet.
The first time I poured the soap, I did not set the depth of my scrapers before starting, and I made an error scraping one layer a notch too deep, which made my loaf a bit short. That batch would have made an ok entry, but after a day of sulking, I hiked up my britches and made myself pour a second attempt. This time I was sure to set and triple check the depths for all of my scrapers before I started. I feel like my two practice runs (and an overabundance of stubbornness) paid off in the end.
As always, special thanks to Amy Warden for orchestrating this grand thing called the Soap Challenge Club! I am constantly learning because of these monthly challenges, and I can say with certainty that my soaping skills are far better because of it.
Roxanne of Caprica Soapery provided us with an excellent tutorial and an awesome spreadsheet for calculating the amount of soap needed for each of our layers. I am super excited for other sculpted layer designs in the future!
This challenge was sponsored by the incredibly talented Belinda at Love Your Suds . Belinda is always out there in front, making cool tools for other soapers!
I created this watermelon soap as a warm up to my experienced category entry this month. I was able to use the same scraper for all 3 scrapes of the rind, by just adjusting the height each time.
As always, special thanks to Amy Warden for orchestrating this grand thing called the Soap Challenge Club! I am constantly learning because of these monthly challenges, and I can say with certainty that my soaping skills are far better because of it.
Roxanne of Caprica Soapery provided us with an excellent tutorial and an awesome spreadsheet for calculating the amount of soap needed for each of our layers. I am super excited for other sculpted layer designs in the future!
This challenge was sponsored by the incredibly talented Belinda at Love Your Suds . Belinda is always out there in front, making cool tools for other soapers!
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I had a lot of fun letting my entry for this month’s challenge evolve! For starters, I did not see the ‘complex’ embed part coming! Reading through the requirements, I was suddenly struck with fear. I had never done a complex embed! As defined in the guidelines: “a complex embed is created by joining two or more formed pieces of soap dough”. The most complicated embed I had ever tried was mixing some colors together and extruding swirly rounds for ‘planets’.
I purchased a lovely large extruder from I Dream In Soap (tools and materials list with links below) as a Christmas gift to myself, but I had barely had time to practice using it. I dug through all of the extruder discs I ordered to go with it, and found but 2 sets that were meant for a complex embed- the pumpkin and the orange. My lightbulb went on. I had also recently purchased Orange Patchouli fragrance oil from Nurture Soap. Patchouli is not a fragrance I’d choose for myself, but every. single. time. I do a market someone asks for Patchouli, and so it was on my list to make before my first spring event.
So there I was staring at the orange extruder discs and sniffing the Orange Patchouli fragrance bottle in desperate hope of inspiration when it hit me. I could use the orange extruder disc to make a peace sign as well! I just needed to trim out the two extra ‘legs’ and voila!
Once I knew I would have an orange and a peace sign, the flower crown for the top was a no-brainer. Blue sky, puffy clouds and hearts rounded out the plan. I made some soap dough and started extruding. I ran out of white before cloud number 3 was done, so I rearranged the design a tiny bit.
The pour went mostly as planned. There was one little heart embed that I just couldn’t seem to place where I liked. I also left more space between embeds than my sketch showed, so my soap was taller that it was supposed to be. That left me mounding soap on top of the last embeds and trying to build the top up high enough to cover everything. It was quite a mess, but it all worked out.
The flower crown top was fussy and time consuming, but placing soap top embeds and piping leaves are already in my wheelhouse, so that part was fairly easy. (Thankfully!)
I can not even put into words the relief I felt when it was time to cut the soap and things actually looked mostly how I planned!
You can watch the whole pour on YouTube here.
I had intentions of pouring another complex embed for the bonus category, but I spent so much time on my main entry that I was pressed to design and finish a second.
I poured Feeling Lucky before Peace, Love & Oranges as a way to get some more practice with the extruder and placing cane embeds. These clovers are extruded in one piece, with discs from I Dream In Soap. I did a simple two color ‘one pot wonder’ pour- something else I had never tried and wanted to practice. This one is scented in Irish Spring from Wholesale Supplies. I just happened to have fondant cutters that were the perfect size to stamp the little gold embellishments on each clover.
As always, huge respect and thanks for those who put together these challenges and tutorials! As well as the sponsors who make it all possible! This was only my third challenge, but I think it’s fairly safe to say I’m hooked.
All colorants and lye from Nurture Soaps, as well as the Orange Patchouli fragrance Oil. Using my affiliate link to shop doesn't cost you anything, but is a nice way to help cover my materials cost. Cold process colorants here.
Irish Spring fragrance oil is from Wholesale Supplies.
All of my oils come from Soaper's Choice.
Extruder and discs from I Dream In Soap.
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For my first attempt attempt at this month's challenge, a soap I've named Tropical Twilight, the soap moved a little faster than I planned, so I ended up with wider swirls than I was hoping- but I love the bold colors.
On my second attempt, which I'm calling Tahiti Twirl, I increased the amount of water in my recipe and soaped at a slightly lower temperature. That produced the whispy swirls I was wanting- but it left my colors a little more muted than I liked.
It was a hard decision, but in the end I decided to submit Tropical Twilight in the Experienced category, and Tahiti Twirl in the Bonus category.
Both soaps were made with the same ingredients: avocado oil, water, coconut oil, mango butter, lye, olive oil, castor oil, grapeseed oil, fragrance, activated charcoal, colorants, and sodium lactate.
The fragrance and almost all colorants used are from Nurture Soap. The Seven Isles fragrance oil behaved wonderfully. Nurture colorants included Siren's Song, Sahara Gold, Alpine Green, and Coral Reef micas as well as Neon Green Pigment. Activated charcoal and a bit of Super Sparkle Light Gold mica are from Wholesale Supplies. All oils are from Soaper's Choice.
This is only my second time entering a soap challenge, as things got a wee bit hectic in my personal life last year. I'm thankful for the opportunity to learn and grow with this fabulous group of soapmakers, and also for all the sponsors that make it possible. I'm hopeful that there will be much more of this for me in 2022!
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The challenge for May was a column pour. The rules were fairly simple. You had to use a slab mold and the soap had to make its way into the mold by being poured over some sort of column. We were given the option of removing the column after the pour or using soap columns that could be left in the mold. The guidelines said ‘the goal is to create beautiful, contrasting lines of swirled colors.’
My entry is from my second pour attempt. I was inspired by a photo of a peacock feather and attempted to recreate that in the pour. I placed 2 half-round columns at the very end of my slab mold and elevated that end slightly so that the soap would flow away from the columns. I *thought* this would create teardrop shapes in the colors as I alternated through them- and it very well might have worked if I had not over blended my batter. Despite things not going as planned, I do still really like the final results.
Mold setup above. Nearing the end of my pour below.
Here’s the wet soap after swirling with a skewer.
I had a lot of fun planning and attempting this challenge. I’m thankful for the Soap Challenge Club and all the sponsors that help make it happen!
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