Making homemade soaps started out as a hobby for Mandy Cook, some 10 years ago. Now, hand crafting soaps has turned into a full fledged business for the Niles resident, which includes handmade soy candles and hand knit products.

“My friend started doing the melt and pour soaps,” Cook said. “And I said I thought it would be really cool to make our own soap from scratch.”
Cook set out researching various processes and settled on the “cold process” which consists of oils, lye or sodium hydroxide.

“When you combine them, the oils eat up the lye and when they combine they make soap,” Cook said.

Gibs Goods, the official name of Cook’s business, named after her four-year-old daughter Gibson, hosts a variety of handmade soaps in various fragrances including tea tree oatmeal, pomegranate and lavender.

“I do a chocolate lavender soap and that is kind of different,” Cook said.

She’s also made beer soaps and soaps using cornmeal for a rougher texture.

Depending on the type of soap, Gibs Goods’ soaps can include either essential or fragrance oils. Some soaps include detergent, she said and without them “it’s better for you and it’s better for the environment.”

Tapping into her natural sense of creativity, Cook looks for inspiration for her soaps online and just about anywhere. The chocolate lavender was something she just came up with, she said, because she’d never seen it before.

Each is made using certain base oils, including olive oil, cocoa butter and palm oil and palm kernel. Each soap is wrapped with an eco friendly wrapper: made of used magazine pages with a Gibs Goods tag on the front.

It was an idea she came up with for an eco-friendly contest she’d entered online and the idea stuck.

Since she started her business, Cook has sold her soaps at the Buchanan Farmer’s Market and just recently made an appearance at the Niles Bensidoun French Market on Saturday.

“It went real well,” she said. She will return on Thursday.

Some of her soaps are also available exclusively through Almost Home on Front Street in Buchanan.

Along with her handmade soaps and soy candles, Cook offers handmade necklaces and knit goods — she’s started making “lavender babies,” small, knitted bags filled with lavender and corn cob.

Some of her necklaces are available at Grace in Three Oaks.

As she sits outside the collectible shop Across the Street on Second St. in Niles, passersby stop to greet Cook, one wearing one of her necklaces.

What has begun as a small operation is growing. Cook said she has many repeat customers but the busy mother of two, Gibson’s younger brother Sylas is 2 years old, said she hopes Gibs Goods will grow.

“I’d like to do more,” she said. “Eventually I’d like to keep growing.”

Her products will also be available at the St. Mary’s Craft Bazaar in Niles in November and at the “All Things Handmade and Vintage” bazaar at the Elks Lodge on McKinley in South Bend, Oct. 2.

For now, interested customers can find Gibs Goods on Facebook and they can email her at gibsgoods@yahoo.com to order. Cook said she’s also been willing to do different fragrances for customers but they should email her for details.