Welcome to Auntie Clara’s Handcrafted Cosmetics!
We’re a small, family owned and operated enterprise making luxurious handcrafted soap in small batches.
Please browse our site and let your eyes rest on some of the finest, most beautiful artisan soap you can find – all proudly handmade in Somerset West, South Africa.
Enjoy!
Latest From Auntie Clara's Blog:
Lye Calculation Using a Saponification Chart – Tutorial
A couple of weeks ago, just as I was pulling into a parking bay at the local mall here in Cape Town, my niece #4, who is in her final year of high... READ MORE
Coffee River Soap and How To Make Glycerine Rivers
A while ago fellow soapmaker Karol Dulmanis posted a picture of a coffee soap in one of the Facebook groups I belong to. The beautiful soap had an interesting dappled look with light... READ MORE
Seasonal Soap
Cape Town is suffering from a catastrophic lack of water. The winter rains are coming to an end and the relentlessly dry, hot, beautiful summer season is upon us. For several years the... READ MORE
Snail Beldi and Mushroom Soap – 2017 Edition of Soap On Holiday
After last year’s holiday trip to Italy and the trip to the US and UK the year before, we decided to go back to our native Finland this year. It was a good... READ MORE
From Tadelakt To the Titanic – How To Use Soap
A while ago I made some big bars of all-coconut laundry soap. I took some pretty pictures and posted them in a couple of soapmaking groups on Facebook. To my surprise several soapmakers... READ MORE
Mäntysuopa – Finnish Pine Soap
To Finns nothing spells out ’C L E A N’ more clearly than the natural pine wood smell of mäntysuopa, Finnish pine soap. It’s the smell of long, lazy childhood summers, saunas, lakes,... READ MORE
Double, Double Toil and Trouble: Snail Soap
Here, close to the southernmost tip of Africa, our summers are warm and dry. The rain falls in winter when low-pressure fronts sweep in from the south. This is the heartland of South... READ MORE
Bubble Soap With Dip n’ Drip Soap Beads
A couple of weeks ago I was experimenting with finely marbled agateware soap. In the process, I accidentally let one of my low-water soap batches get hard enough to lose its plasticity. Not... READ MORE