About Us

We love our soap!

We have always enjoyed a variety of hand crafts, including quilting, painting, woodworking, knitting, and spinning. Back in 2003, when Cyndy first thought of adding cold-process soap-making to her craft skills, it never occurred to us that we were about to find the answers to our troubling skin sensitivities.

Little did we know that many bath bars are detergent, not soap! If the ingredients include soap at all, they also include lots of unnecessary synthetic additives. Further, the moisturizing glycerin that should be in the soap is actually removed and sold as a by-product. Real, pure soap combines natural fats and oils, lye, and water, with glycerin forming in the chemical reaction. By making our own soap, our skin could enjoy a pampering cleansing, not the harsh cleansing that it had been subjected to.

Now, even with our hard water and dry mid-western winters, we are able to enjoy scented and naturally colored soap without suffering any irritating consequences. And we love to follow up with our body oils and lotions! They feel good and smell delicious!

The Straddle Creek Soap Shop opened its doors way back in 2009. In 2013, we had grown to include not only soap, but lotions, lip balms, and more. Our family had grown too! And we found we needed to put the Soap Shop aside and give our family more time to grow together. It was a good choice!

Now, in 2025, after many life changes for our whole crew, The Straddle Creek Soap Shop is reopening with the original bar soaps--all formulated and designed by Cyndy--that started it all!

The Straddle Creek Soap Shop is a small family run business situated in beautiful Northwest Illinois. Our home-based shop is surrounded by rolling hills, limestone bluffs, and of course, the Straddle Creek. We are blessed and awed by God's creation.

We share our home with dogs, cats, honeybees, and chickens. The flower and food gardens keep us all company.

All the products at The Straddle Creek Soap Shop are formulated and created right here on our farm. And it's all used by our family.  We won't sell you anything that we can't stand behind.

Pamper your skin. Enjoy the pure luxury of real, handmade soap!