Noel Resident Makes Homemade Soap
Gesica Gydira of Noel has been making homemade soap for 15 years and is now selling it at the Pineville Farmers Market.
“I made it as an endeavor to get my skin healthy,” she said. “I had a lot of problems with psoriasis.”
She said she made soap with her grandmother when she was a child.
“I used to go over on the weekends and stay with her. She made basic lye soap. She rendered the tallow. I learned how to render tallow, but it was so long ago I had to learn again.”
Tallow is fat from meat. She said she may not do any more rendering since she learned she can use beeswax or lard, which is already rendered.
She has also learned how to make soap without using any fossil fuels, she said.
“Handcrafted soap is always more expensive than what you can buy at the store,” she said. “I try to use high-quality food products out of the kitchen like they did 100 years ago.”
Gydira said it takes a couple of hours to make the soap and get it
“I try to use high-quality food products out of the kitchen like they did 100 years ago.”
Gesica Gydira
just right. Once it is in the mold, it takes 12 to 24 hours to firm up. Then she cuts it and it cures for 21 days. After it cures, she packages and labels it.
She has had people test the soap to make sure it performs like she thinks it does. For example, she has a shaving soap made with goat’s milk that comes in scents such as clove, lavender, lily and lilac, lemongrass, and orange and pine. She was looking for a secret ingredient to get an extra close shave and found it, she said. She had a friend in Kansas who got a five o’clock shadow at four, she said, and since using her shaving soap, his shadow does not show up until six.
Also, she had a friend whose dog was allergic to her grass, and the friend asked her to come up with a soap for the dog. So she invented a “petacular” soap, which repels ticks and fleas.
She knew some people were allergic to essential oils and had very sensitive skin, so she created an oat and honey soap that is gentle enough for babies and people with very sensitive skin.
She also sells an outdoor soap that people can rub on their clothes, arms and legs to repel ticks and fleas, she said.
In addition to selling soaps, she grows African violets that she also sells at the farmers market. She also is an artist and works in oils, acrylics and graphite.