“It really started with my sister” says Terri, “she showed me how to make soap and I completely fell in love with it. For me, it combines creativity, science, and pure magic”.
"I was living in Miami at the time - where we grew up - and was intrigued with all of the different things that were readily available in such a climate - things that just grew everywhere" says Lisa, "and so I wondered what could be done with all the local botanicals." "So then I wanted to learn to make soap with all of the local ingredients and give them as holiday gifts to friends and family" says Lisa.
"I went to New York at that time, and with one single batch of soap under my belt, I called Terri to to show her the soap and asked if she wanted to make some right then and there" Lisa adds, "knowing Terri's love of fragrances, I whipped out all of my brand new little bottles of essential oils and as she went through each one of them her eyes widened and I knew we would be soaping that very afternoon."
We then set out to learn everything we could about natural soap making.
Right from the start we gravitated towards areas of the process that sort of called to us, individually. "I made a bee-line for the scents" says Terri and Lisa adds, "Terri has an uncanny sense for scents - pun intended. That is her obsession and seems to be where her inspiration lies. I will always defer to her on the scents!"
"And you are all about the additives," Terri says, "the leaves, the twigs, the roots, and the best way to lure out their constituents."
The soaps are made with only ingredients found in nature. That’s what inspires us and generates the curiosity and mystery for us in soap making.
“We never intended to make a business of soap making - it was just something we both loved and wanted to spend time together - making soap everyday. But then we had too many soaps and no more room to put them in our New York apartments. I decided to offer them for sale on Facebook and to our surprise we sold them all in a matter of days”, Terri says, "The response was pretty overwhelming." We repeated this with the same results each time.
We use the purest essential oils for the scents and the colors are made from various roots, powders, purees, infused oils and other natural colorants. We feel that this is what makes our soap so special.
Lisa is a graphic artist with a Masters Degree in Fine Art from Yale and a former International runway model.
Terri is a former actress, and has starred in shows such as DYNASTY, NORTH & SOUTH, GENERAL HOSPITAL and AS THE WORLD TURNS (to name a few).
Both Lisa and Terri live and soap in New York City.
In order to make the product called soap there is only one requirement - which is two ingredients - oil and lye. The admixture of these two ingredients causes a process called saponification whereby the two materials are transformed into a third completely new material leaving behind no trace of the two original materials. So, in the final product there is no oils, there is no lye - there is just soap. Pure soap. That's alchemy!
Now for the Sisters part.
In addition to the oils and lye we use many different ingredients depending on the process we’re using, and the type of soap we'd like to make. It’s important to us to have the best ingredients from reputable vendors. We did a lot of research to find out who carries organic, unrefined, non-GMO, and high quality ingredients and that’s who we use.
All of our soap bars are made from scratch. We use all natural products such as cocoa butter, shea butter, beeswax, coconut oil, avocado oil, sustainable palm oil, and olive oil to name but a few. Our essential oils are organic, whenever possible, and our colorants are completely natural consisting mostly of herbs, roots, and leaves in oil infusions
Not to limit ourselves, we make a diverse selection of soaps; some of our soaps have animal products such as tallow, lard, goat’s milk and yogurt, while others contain only vegetable products - they are vegan. We also have a palm-free soaps as well.
So you can be sure that when you’re buying from SistersAlchemy, you are buying all natural, handmade, soap bars. We know you’ll love them as much as we enjoy making them!
