Teach Soap

So this past Saturday I was at a craft show one town over from where I live. It was a very LARGE show. There must have been at least 150 vendors. Well there was another vendor there that was selling handcrafted bath and body products. I was actually really excited. (Competition does not phase me.) Anyway, I went over to her booth and introduced myself. So far I have not met any other people who make soap or anything else of the sort in person. Her business seemed to be mostly bath bombs but other than that she had a few soaps, some sugar scrubs, and what she called whipped Shea butter sorbets. (Like a lotion only really heavy on the shea butter. Like a whipped butter almost only she had water in it. Well to say the least she was very ignorant and rude. I told her to have a nice day and then took her business card and walked away. If had not been immediately so rude I would have actually bought some of her stuff but with the attitude she gave me there was just no way I was going to give her my money.

Anyway, so today I was cleaning and going through all my stuff from Saturday. (I always take a break and leave my sister in charge so I can meet new crafters. I was going through all the business cards I had collected and found hers. Well, of course, I visited her website. On her website there were to things she had that would require a preservative. I looked at the ingredients and saw GRAIN ALCOHOL listed as the preservative on her whipped butter. She even put in parantheses used a preservative after that.

Now here is where I am confused. I thought that in the United States that you were not allowed to sell grain alcohol (without a license) even if it was only used in a bath and body product. Usually when I see a soaper doing something illegal (I double check my facts first) I report it to the FDA. Think I should? I could swear you couldn't sell anything with grain alcohol in it. Advice?

It looks like it depends on which type of grain alcohol it is. Ethanol is a grain alcohol and it is legal, even common for cosmetics. I wouldn't report her unless you can confirm that it is Moonshine in the products. I don't like it when people are rude as it does tend to rub people the wrong way. I visited a craft show recently and there were 2 handmade soapmakers there. One ( a guy) was rude and turned me off completely from his m&p products that he advertised as made from scratch. And another lady, that was so sweet and wonderful to talk to. If I had any money on me at the time (I was only there because my mom wanted me to go), I would have purchased one of her soaps. They were very pretty and obviously cp. Not that there is anything wrong with m&p but I don't like dishonesty on the sellers behalf.

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Haven

Thank you. All I could find online was that you had to have a license for grain alcohol so I thought I would ask here.

I could be wrong but I didn't see anything about a license for it. Maybe one of the experts will know. I would hate to be knowledgeable about someone selling illegal items and not do something about it.

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Haven

You can buy perfumer's alcohol legally on the net. If she used alcohol as a preservative you would need it at least at 20% which will make the product very drying.

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

And there's always the question, is it really grain alcohol, or does she just think it is?

Anita

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Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

Yikes! Very drying does not sound like it would go well with something that is suppose to be moisturizing on the skin. Well I can't obviously know if she is using perfumer's alcohol or not but now I'm glad she was rude and I didn't buy anything from her...