Is your handmade soap really 100% natural?

There are two ways to scent a handmade soap - one way is completely natural and the other is not. Many handmade soaps are called "natural" but they are not really 100% natural.  If you truly want to select a 100% natural soap, here are a couple of facts.

Essential Oil Natural Soap

There is a 100% natural process that extracts scent from the flower, leaf or stem of a plant. This process results in what is called an Essential Oil, where the ‘essence’ of the plant is derived from it. An Essential Oil is a natural scent, so the words ‘Essential Oil’ are what you want to look for in an ingredients listing for a natural soap.

Fragrance Oil Soap is Not Natural Soap

Some scents cannot be collected naturally or may be too expensive to extract for soapmaking purposes. In that case, a Fragrance Oil is created in a Perfumer's Laboratory to simulate a scent. When you see a Fragrance Oil or Fragrance listed as an ingredient in a soap or skin care product, you should STOP because that means the ‘natural soap’ contains an artificial scent, and is not a natural scent.  Many handmade soaps are also dyed with synthetic colors and not real fruit juices or earth's mineral pigments.

All the Soaps listed and our entire skincare line ranging from whipped body butters, mineral makeup line, lotions, shampoo are REALLY 100% natural.  That's why you won't see any exotic scents like coconut, mango, apple, etc in our store, because these scents are not strong enough to scent a soap.  Therefore, you will see stronger plant scents used like mints, coffee, citrus, lavender, and other herbal scents.  We at The Gourmet Rose really mean "natural" when we say it and if we need to color a soap, we will use fruit juices of raspberry, blueberry, and only mineral pigments from the earth.  If there is a need to preserve a product, we will use a natural plant derived product like rosemary extract or grapefruit extract; NEVER chemicals.  Essential oils are expensive and we only use the purest high quality undiluted essential oils, therefore we can bring you a very high quality "100% natural product".