Artistic Creator & Owner
Meet the creator and owner of The Dark Island Soap Co. Chiara, originally from Edinburgh, now resides in the beautiful Stirlingshire countryside with her fiancé and two daughters. At the end of 2022, Chiara studied for and completed a business diploma in soap making, learning about the importance of creating cold process soap safely. She is a fully self-taught soap maker, and made her first cold process soap at the end of December 2022. Along with being a traditional soap maker, she is also a certified Usui Reiki practitioner, who is training to become a Reiki Master Healer in the Autumn of 2024. A natural healer, Chiara already has a diploma in Shamanic Energy Healing and Crystal Energy Healing.
At The Dark Island Soap Co. we make our cold process soap from a base recipe of organic natural oils and raw, unrefined and organic shea butter. Cold process soap making is the original, traditional method of making soap by combining fat or oil (animal or plant based) with sodium hydroxide (lye), then blending in an addition of essential oils, fragrance oils, and/or colourants as required. This treatment causes a chemical reaction called saponification which takes up to 48 hours, and the final stage of "curing" (which hardens the bar) takes between 4-6 weeks. Our recipe is created by us, exclusively for us, so you won't find the exact ones anywhere else! Since early 2023, our soaps are now at least 90% organic, vegan friendly and cruelty free!
