Star Soap is a very small kitchen operation in the UK: one dad, one ten-year-old, and a curing rack that takes up more space than anyone planned.
How it started
It began as a school-holiday project. My daughter Neva wanted something to do that wasn’t a screen, and I wanted her to see a thing through from start to finish — the measuring, the waiting, the bit where it goes wrong and you try again.
Soap turned out to be the perfect project. There is real chemistry in it, real patience, and at the end of four weeks you have something people actually want. The first batch was uneven and smelled faintly of nothing. The fourth was good enough that friends started asking for bars.
How we make it
Every bar is cold-process, made in small batches by hand. We weigh the oils, blend the lye solution, bring the batch to trace, add the essential oils and botanicals, and pour into a wooden mould. Then the hard part: the loaf rests for a day, gets cut into bars, and cures on an open rack for four weeks.
Curing is what separates handmade soap from the supermarket kind. The water evaporates slowly, the bar hardens, and the lather gets creamier. You cannot rush it, which is a useful thing for a ten-year-old to learn — and, if I am honest, for me too.
Who does what
Neva chooses the scent combinations, mixes the botanicals, designs the labels and has strong opinions about which colours go together. The lye, the heat and the sharp knives are mine — that part is not negotiable, and she wears goggles for the rest of it.
The Sleepy Lavender bar is hers: she added the chamomile after deciding the original was “too awake for bedtime”. She was right.
What we won’t use
No palm oil. No synthetic fragrance or colour. No SLS, no parabens, no plastic in the packaging, and nothing tested on animals. Every bar lists its full ingredients on its own product page, in plain English — if you cannot tell what something is, we have not explained it well enough.
Questions about an ingredient, an order, or whether a bar suits your skin? Email rosen@starsoap.co.uk — we usually reply within a day.