Interview with Lei Lei of L3O Soaps
It's safe to say Lei Lei with L3O Soaps keeps busy - she's a small business owner, physician, and mother of two. Soap making allows her to be creative and unwind after a shift at the emergency room. Her cold process designs are bold and creative. Learn more about how Lei Lei got started, what inspires her, and her soap making tips.
How long have
you been making soap and how did you get started?
My
first experience with soap making was about 3 years ago when my husband bought me a
Bramble Berry cold
process kit for Christmas. I remember watching all the Soap Queen
cold process series and rereading the instructions over and over again. I was
missing one of the oils that wasn’t in the kit but I figured, what the
heck, I’ll just replace this oil with all this castor oil that was
included in the kit. Needless to say, the soap accelerated like crazy and I was left
with this interesting high castor oil content soap, which was surprisingly lovely to
use! The experience left me intrigued with soap making. I was a biochemistry major
in undergrad and absolutely loved lab work with all its beakers and pipettes and
titrations; I felt like I was in a potions class. But at heart, I’m a
maker - I’ve always enjoyed putting hands to materials and making
something new. At that time I had just had my second child, and as any mother knows,
a 10-minute shower can seem like an amazing break from the chaos. A beautiful bar of
soap feels like a unique luxury to an exhausted mom. Both of my children also have
eczema and the idea of making them something so wholesome and knowing all the good
ingredients that went into it gave me fuel to keep developing a recipe that their
skin would love. To this day, all my kids use is my cold process soap, and I love
that I can provide that for
them.
What advice would you give
to makers just starting their businesses?
The most
important thing for any makers looking to sell their product is to make a lot of
what you love making and be sure you love that process. It may sound hackneyed, but
in particular for customers looking to purchase artisan products, your love and
passion for your art has to come through the product you make. Once you decide to
sell your product, ask for feedback from people you trust: other artisans, family,
friends - be open to positive and negative feedback. Ultimately you may not change
anything, but you will never receive honest helpful feedback if you are not open to
change.
What is your
favorite type of product to make?
I love making cold
process soap. I have made other products such as bath bombs and scrubs and lotion
bars, but there’s something uniquely satisfying about cold process. The
stages of going from inspiration to planning a design and scent, adjusting the
design to fragrances that act as catalysts causing soap to seize or accelerate or
rice, getting ready to make soap and setting out my supplies, and being ready at the
drop of a hat to abandon all plans when something unexpected happens. This happens
to me less now but whenever I use a new fragrance, I feel a small adrenaline rush of
having to be prepared for whatever soapy disaster might
strike!
What inspires you to
create?
I can find inspiration from almost anything.
In general, I find myself drawn to moodier inspirations. My initial designs are
usually trying to recreate some sort of feeling, and it goes from there. In the last
year or so, I’ve been trying to curate my inspirations into categories and
have created themes around them in batched releases. I love creating a new little
logo for every theme, and it really pushes my creativity. My most recent theme was a
nerdy theme called 8Bit Love, and I had this idea of making a soap with heart embeds
that disappear or appear while you are using the soap, reminiscent of old school
games like Zelda or Super Mario Brothers. In the last year, I have had the joy of
playing with a French bakery theme, a garden theme, and nautical theme and have more
ideas than I can keep up with for the future!
How did
you come up with the name for your business?
My
husband and I brainstormed quite a bit on this one, and I really loved the idea of
having some sort of reference to chemistry. Finally, we came up with L3O to stand
for 3 letter Ls (Lei Lei Lye) and 1 letter O (Oil) - the make-believe compound that
results in soap! I also like that it is not immediately clear what the name means
and offers a bit of
intrigue.
What is your favorite
Bramble Berry product and why?
There are so many good
choices! Bramble Berry is
definitely my go-to for fragrance oils. I love that every
fragrance’s behavior in cold process soap is described, and the fragrances
are all phthalate free. I also appreciate that there are a lot of complex blends as
well as simple note fragrances so I can blend my own. My favorite blends are Rose
Quartz, Island Escape, and Flower Child. I go through large bottles of Orange 10X
Essential Oil (honestly orange makes everything better)! My recent favorite is the
Botanical Garden release, all the fragrances are knockouts and I look forward to
planning some soap designs around them!
Tell us
something unusual or unique about yourself!
I am a
physician and specialize in emergency medicine, and though making soap is a hobby
business, I feel that it is an essential part of my well-being. I love my
speciality, and it is a genuine privilege to have taken care of countless patients
in the worst times of their lives. I can never replace that with any hobby.
However, clinical medicine currently does not leave a whole lot of room for
creativity. I find that making soap is excellent therapy and a nice counterbalance
to the occasional grief and chaos of the emergency
department.
Another unique fact about myself is that we are also a maker family! My husband is also a maker, and founded his own company Wedgewood Rings, making and selling bespoke artisan wood/metal rings. In our house, it is not unusual for us to excitedly share what we made that day, knowing the other person understands precisely how it feels! He has been amazingly supportive and honestly my biggest fan.
If you were to give one of
your products to a stranger, what would you choose and why?
No question, I would give them bars of soap. My favorite right now
is probably a toss-up between the Spring Fern - made with
the Greenhouse Fragrance Oil from the most recent Botanical Garden
release by Bramble Berry, or the House Tyrell one
from my 8Bit Love Release because it is such a beautiful home-brewed blend of roses,
marjoram, and rosemary. Soap is simple and keeps well. It is beautiful and can be
displayed; and it is ultimately what I’m most happy doing and I love
sharing that with everyone I can.
What are some of
your other hobbies and interests?
During my free
time, I try to stay pretty active. I like to rock climb and do yoga. I love rock
climbing for the adrenaline rush, and I think people are often surprised to learn
that strength is less important than technique. There's nothing like
getting to the top of a route that you know pushed your limits on; it is scary and
exhilarating at the same time. Yoga keeps me balanced and mindful, and always
grateful for what the mind and body can achieve together. We recently started
taekwondo with our two boys (6 and 4) and I think it’s pretty cute to see
us all in our doboks! The boys love it, and we get a workout as a family. I feel
that it is very important to stay physically active, whether it means you are
hitting the gym or just taking a walk with a friend, your body and mind will love
you for it. There are so many different ways to get active. Do not give up, you will
find something you love doing eventually and it will not feel like work! I
promise!
My husband and I have recently started rewatching Game of Thrones in anticipation for the final season while painting dungeons and dragons miniatures. It is great how time flies when you are painting tiny wizards and orcs! Yes, we are huge nerds. I also enjoy photography, home DIY, drawing on my iPad Pro, and when I have the space, I promised myself I would get a kiln and get back to throwing on the wheel.
Have you ever experienced a soapy
fail? How did you work through it, and what did you learn?
I would be SHOCKED if there were any soap makers that didn’t
have any soapy fails. I remember one of my first soapy fails was a blend of two
different new fragrance oils and this hanger swirl I had planned on doing. The
fragrance hit the soap batter and immediately turned into a goopy seizing mess and
the soap looked chunky and crumbly - not at all the look I was going for.
Because I loved the fragrances so much, I decided to test a small batch with the
individual fragrances and found that one caused ricing with no acceleration and the
other caused acceleration. I had found a great fragrance blend for making a chunky
solid mess. To this day, I use the jasmine fragrance that riced in an
“orange jasmine
nigiri sushi” soap, where I take advantage of the ricing
appearance for the sushi part of the soap. The most important lesson I learned from
this soapy fail is that maybe your original idea won’t work, but be
flexible and sometimes a difficult ingredient can offer a more creative
solution!
Jasmine Orange Blossom Nigiri Soap
What is your
number one soap making tip?
Don’t
be afraid to try new techniques, stay lighthearted, and accept that even the best
soap makers have surprises and failed batches. Sometimes a soap I had imagined does
not go well, and my instinct is to be terribly disappointed and dejected, but now I
try to take it as a learning experience. I retrace my steps and try to figure out
where things possibly went south.
What do
you love most about creating bath and body products?
I’ve dabbled and made a lot of things in my past, and
the best part about soap making is taking good, wholesome ingredients and through
the magic of chemistry, the marriage of triglycerides, and a strong base, making a
product that people love to use and empowers people to control what they put in and
on their bodies. My soaps are handmade in my home kitchen with a ton of love and
care. The second best thing is the maker community, which emcompasses an amazingly
supportive and empowering bunch of folk who love sharing their craft and
open-heartedly teach their skills. I feel enormously thankful for all the support
given to me all these years by complete strangers and am overjoyed to help others
when I get messages or questions. Feel free to ask! I am terrible with video and
editing, but if someone messages me about how I did a certain soap or created a
certain look, I usually try to respond quickly and help my fellow
makers.
Thank you Bramble Berry team for allowing me to share my story; I hope that other makers can take away something helpful or inspiring! I’m happy to share my story or help with soap making questions, just message me on Instagram or Facebook. -Lei Lei
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