If you are running out of soap at home, it’s probably time to visit an art studio.
Confused? There is a new handmade soap business in town that sells its aromatic bars out of a space that hosts art and poetry sessions — Arrieta Art Studio on Front Street.
The collection at Lola’s Soap is, in a way, a work of art — as Pat Wood, the founder of the business said, “Each soap is different from the other.”
Each is of a different pattern and a different colour. Since Wood makes them in small batches and cuts them one bar at a time, she said it’s hard to make them look the same even if she tried.
“It is exciting when I start cutting it because I never know how the pattern will come out.”
Wood offers lavender, sweet orange, cinnamon, lemon, eucalyptus/lemon, eucalyptus/peppermint, lemongrass, pink grapefruit and black coffee soaps — with lemongrass being her personal favourite.
Though the soaps have been for sale only since November 2022, with a grand opening at Arrieta Art Studio on March 4, they are now flying off the shelves.
“It's doing really well, and there's a lot of good feedback. Now I have repeat clients coming in,” said Wood.
Overwhelmed by this bubbling interest from her customers, Wood has now decided to expand her one-woman team to include her daughters as well.
“I intend to get them to help me make the soaps because I can foresee that it's going to be good and demand is going to go up."
But why are these soaps lathering up so much attention?
Making soaps from scratch
Wood, an outreach worker at a transition house in New Westminster, had never imagined she would one day be in the business of making soaps — she first started making them simply as a way to heal her skin.
When Wood was diagnosed with breast cancer over a year ago, she had to take up radiation treatments that made her skin so dry and itchy that she had to get a prescribed lotion for it, she said.
But the lotion wasn't effective enough, and she had to keep re-applying it often. She wanted a more permanent solution.
One day, Wood and her daughter went to a local community market in Sechelt, and they brought home five handmade soaps, she recalled.
“They helped me quite a bit; they were pretty good.”
Wood thought, “If it helps me, it will help other people.”
So Wood started reading up about the process of making handmade soaps — familiarizing herself with words like “lye” (sodium hydroxide, which's a key ingredient in making soaps), and “saponify” (the process of the lye and oil ingredients reacting to create the soap).
Wood realized that soap making was not rocket science, but simple chemistry.
She referred to several recipes and came up with her own unique process.
Each soap takes about four to six weeks to make. A predominant ingredient in them, she said, is the oil (could be coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, jojoba oil, or animal-based ingredients such as ghee or tallow), which is mixed with lye and essential oils and poured into a mould, where it's left for 24 hours to coagulate.
After that, the soaps are cut into bars and left to “cure” (a term used in soap-making to refer to the process of saponification) in the open air for about a month.
It took about three months of trial and error for Wood to get the shape and consistency of her soaps right.
Soap-making as therapy
Wood’s husband, who often complained of itchiness on his skin and scalp, was the first one to try the finished bar. To their surprise, it worked wonders for him.
“He even used it as a shampoo. And he came to me and said, ‘This is really good,’” said Wood.
Wood then gave the soaps to her friends to use, and got a similar feedback: “I know a lot of people who have psoriasis. And they testified that the soap helped calm it down.”
From her own experience, she noticed that her soaps did a better job at keeping her skin hydrated than the lotion she had been using.
In fact, she has been lotion-free (except on her face) ever since she started using her own handmade soaps.
Wood started to realize that maybe she had a winner.
So, in November 2022, she started selling her soaps to the public.
And soon, bars of soaps filled her little condo (in Surrey). ”The whole house would smell like all different kinds of scents.”
So eventually, she started renting out space at Arrieta Art Studio, where the soaps are now left to cure.
For Wood, though soap-making can sometimes get exhausting (“I'm still recovering. It will take me five years to really declare that I'm cancer free”), she said it's always “exciting.”
“It helps me emotionally, mentally and physically; being that I'm recuperating, I need to be active. I need to keep myself busy instead of just moping," she said.
"In a way, it's therapeutic for me.”
You can buy Lola’s Soap (Lola is Filipino for grandmother; named so as an ode to Wood's Filipino heritage) at Arrieta Art Studio (707 Front St.). All soaps can be bought by appointment only. Message Pat Wood on Instagram to book an appointment, or to request to mail the soaps.
