Salish Soap makes handcrafted soap and wellness products to nourish your skin and well being. Our soaps are known from their beautiful esthetic and incredible scents. All soaps are cold process made using high quality, primarily organic oils and butters. This is the traditional soap making method hand mixing oils, butters and lye. Beyond soap, we also make bath salts with dried flowers, paw balm for dogs, rich butter cream to nourish your skin, candles and sugar scrubs.
All are handcrafted here in Victoria, BC. See what we have at www.salishsoap.ca.
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How long have you been running your business and what inspired you to start this business?
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I’ve been making soap for nearly a year now. It was part of a diy kick I was on of learning how to make many things from scratch. Then I found some true soap artists online and was inspired by what they created. I wanted to try and I started to really enjoy the process.
Have you always been involved in this type of business, or did you do something different before?​
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My background is in marketing but my corporate job stagnated and I needed a new creative outlet that had nothing to do with the corporate world and that got me off of my computer. I was looking for something tactile and that wasn’t related to revenue and metrics….but being in a creative zone. I also wanted to use high quality ingredients and have something that was visually and olfactorily stimulating. I draw people in with the scents and creative designs.
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Tell us about the products you offer and how you came to decide what products to sell?
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Primarily cold process soap with high quality oils but more recently I’ve started to offer bath salts, face masks and candles. One of my other hobbies is gardening and I’m looking for ways to bridge the two. My bath salts contains dried roses, calendula and rosemary from my garden for instance.
Do you make your products yourself or source them from somewhere?
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All made by me – that’s my favorite part.
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What is the process of making your product?
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The soap making process is so interesting, I actually had no idea before I started. In it’s simplest form, it’s oils, lye and water. The process doesn’t start there though – you have to start by developing a recipe that will give you the results you want. It has to be a specific blend of oils, and the quantity has to precise correlate with the amount of lye and water, and scents are regulated so you also have to calculate the amount of scent that can be used and each one is different. In short – it is a lot of work just developing the recipe. You then want to think through you design, your game day plan and then prep everything because once you start, it can’t be paused. From there, each batch takes roughly 1.5 to 2 hours. You start by adding the lye to water (outside because of the fumes) – this process heats up the -now- lye water so you are gloved and outside. Then as that cools, you start warming up your oils, matching temperatures with the lye water, mixing, separating for different colors and adding scent. Then you pour or create the design you want and let it sit for 48 hours. After that – my favorite part – cutting where you get to see how your design worked out and then it cures for 4 weeks. Voila … your handcrafted artisanal soap that smells incredible.
​What does a typical day look like for you at the market and who are your main target customers?
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Market days are fun, I really enjoy the community of other vendors and the folks that come by. My day is generally just packing everything up, dropping my cute little pup off at daycare and then coming on site to set things up.
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​And finally....Can you share a memorable experience or story from your time as a market vendor or maybe something fun that nobody would know about you?
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One of my products is a toy embedded in soap for kids. My favorite market moments are when the kids eyes go wide looking at the little toys and then soon enough, they are tugging on their parents’ sleeve to come over and look. Warms my heart every time.
