While their products had come rather highly recommended, I had held off on placing an order with Prairie Creations for quite some time, largely due to the fact that they don’t allow for orders outside of the US to be placed through their main website, requiring you to place it by e-mail instead. But, when I decided to do so, the proprietor Krissy was extremely helpful, and quick to respond.
One thing that really sets Prairie Creations apart is the ability to customize the amount of fragrance they use in the soaps or creams they make. They’re able to do this because they custom-make most of their products to orders, although their website does also list a number of pre-made products that can be ordered as well without a wait.
That having been said, they were reasonably swift to do so. I placed my order which included 4 different types of custom scented soaps and creams, and it was shipped out 9 days later. Not ideal if you need something ASAP, but for those of us with enough stock that you’re not going to run out, it’ll do the trick. Although apparently that turn-around time wasn’t typical, as she claimed they were particularly busy that week (their website says that they’ll usually get orders out the door by a Friday if it’s placed in time to make the soaps on either Tuesday or Wednesday.)
On to the scent. For this one, I chose their “Lick me all over” scent, which they describe as “A wonderful exotic fragrance with base notes of raspberry, cantaloupe, and watermelon, middle notes of jasmine and violet, and fresh top notes of grapefruit and kumquat.” This seems like a perfectly apt description, although as a rather complicated aroma, I wouldn’t necessarily be able to pick out any of the individual notes. But it’s nice and fruity and sweet with a bit of some florals.
As anyone following my reviews should know, I prefer a rather strongly scented shaving soap, so I really appreciated the ability to pick between lightly scented, heavily scented, and regular strength. Naturally, I chose the heavily scented. And delightfully so, it was fairly strongly scented, without any noticeable fading throughout the shave.
The soap itself is designed to be a “faux Martin de Candre”. She kind of reverse engineered it using some of the same ingredients, however significant substitutions were made as well to try and provide a better shave, such as using aloe vera juice instead of water. I can’t tell you how well it matched, not having tried Martin de Candre, but I can tell you that it’s a darn fine soap. Or, well, at least they call it a soap. But if so, it’s one of the softest soaps I’ve ever seen; I’d be rather tempted to just call it a cream.
Anyways, it lathered up readily, and provided a great balance of glide and thickness with what I would consider a moderate amount of water; a bit of experimentation revealed it was moderately flexible with regards to water content.
By the time the 3rd pass rolled around, however, I did start to feel a little bit of irritation / burning, probably from the extra fragrance. It wasn’t really much, but then again, I am blessed with rather irritation-free skin, so those of you with sensitive skin would probably do best to stay the heck away from the heavily scented versions.
Anyways, once the shave was finished, that went away fairly rapidly, and overall my face felt rather smooth and moisturized.
Anyways, it lathered up readily, and provided a great balance of glide and thickness with what I would consider a moderate amount of water; a bit of experimentation revealed it was moderately flexible with regards to water content.
By the time the 3rd pass rolled around, however, I did start to feel a little bit of irritation / burning, probably from the extra fragrance. It wasn’t really much, but then again, I am blessed with rather irritation-free skin, so those of you with sensitive skin would probably do best to stay the heck away from the heavily scented versions.
Anyways, once the shave was finished, that went away fairly rapidly, and overall my face felt rather smooth and moisturized.
- 9/10 Scent Pleasantness
- 9/10 Scent Strength
- 8/10 Lather Quality
Several sizes are available, ranging from $15 for a 4 oz jar to $25 for 10.5 oz. There’s no extra charge for picking any of the scent strength levels.
Overall, I’d say I’m rather pleased with this soap… cream… whatever it is. It’s an easy 8/10.
Ingredients: Shave Soap (Stearic Acid, Aloe Vera Juice, Potassium Hydroxide, Glycerin, Castor Oil, Palm Kernel Oil, Jojoba, Tocopherols, Raw Silk Fibers), Fragrance
Agree it’s no MdC. Only thing that comes close is LA shaving soap in my opinion. Not stirling, not prairie. And close only goes so far. Strop shoppe makes some very nice soap as well-when you can get it.
I’ve been a long time supporter of Krissy and her soaps, both shave and hand. I have 8 tubs on hand. I recently tried “DDC” Tangerine scented, because it’s marketed as an MDC alternative. I had high hopes. It’s a good shave soap, but it’s no MDC. It just didn’t give me that “wow” factor I got from MDC.
Few soaps do that.
Well, if you like Krissy’s soaps, you should try her pre-shave oil and her after shave balm. I use both daily.
Soaps and creams differ by formulation, not consistency. So the rather hard Dr. Selby’s 3x Concentrated Shaving Cream is still a shaving cream even though it’s hard, and if the Prairie Creations soft creation is a soap, it’s still a soap even though it’s soft. Consistency is beside the point.
I’m going to have to order some more Prairie Creations. I’ve *really* liked those that I have, including shave sticks.
Obviously that is true (also pointed out by Al Raz in his recent interview. But my reaction is, “so what?”
While, to a producer it might matter that the difference between a soap and a cream is how it is produced. To a user consistency is more important to how one might go about preparing a lather, so that is hardly “beside the point” Or at least that’s the way it seems to me. For example, Omega is labeled “crema” but I treat is as a soft soap when lathering.
I’ve become very fond of the term “croap” which on the forums is used to describe soft soap/harder creams. I really don’t care if it is produced as a soap or as a cream if it lathers and protects.
Well, if the B&B FAQ is to be believed (link below), the fact that it uses more Potassium than Sodium hydroxide, increasing the water solubility and allowing it to be quite soft, would make it more a cream than a soap from a formulation perspective as well.
http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/Shave_creams
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