El Dia De Reyes Soap (by Silk Road Trading Company)

[naeelah]

The Day of Kings, the Celebration of the Magi. In Mexico, on January 6th, children place their shoes by their windows. If they have been good during the previous year, the Wise Men tuck gifts into their shoes during the night.

Hot cocoa with cinnamon, coffee, and brown sugar.

Water, saponified free-trade palm kernal oil, coconut oil, soy oil, shea butter, jojoba oil, castor oil, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab perfume oil and henna powder.

I'm going to need a lot of extra bars of this!

It smells exactly like the fragrance oil. Very rich, creamy chocolate -- a lot like a plate of freshly baked brownies -- with a small pinch of cinnamon, and a splash of coffee. The coffee doesn't really stand out to me, it just kind of makes the scent deeper and richer. The aroma is nice and strong, and very fragrant in the bath. It leaves the faintest hint of chocolate on my skin after drying off.

The bar is a light, creamy brown with a white core. That reminds me of those trashy, cream-filled Hostess cupcakes, so combined with the chocolate aroma, it makes me pretty hungry. The bar is very soft, even a bit squishable, so it melts a bit faster than average in the shower. This has good lather, the thickest of any BPTP soap that I've used, so far.

Compared to other BPTP soaps, my skin actually seems a little dry, but perhaps that's only coincidence. The ingredients here are the same as other recent soaps, which I find very moisturific, but perhaps the actual balance of ingredients is slightly different (which could account for the different texture). I'll update after I've used this one longer.

[QueenFae]

Amazing, fabulous, rivaled only by the actual fragrance oil itself. This was my favorite fragrance from the winter LE's, I ordered 2 bottles; how could I not love this soap? Gorgeous and strong smelling, the coffee note really comes out when the soap is wet. I only wish I had ordered 3 or 4 more bars of this, an awesome smelling soap!!!

:D

[terrenity]

I have no experience with the oil, so I can't make comparisons there, but the soap is pretty delicious! The coffee note is predominant to my nose, backed by a dry, bitter, slightly spicy cocoa. I'd rather hoped for brownies, but this is more like high quality unsweetened chocolate, or maybe an unsweetened mocha. The scent is actually fairly light (though it is several months old), and doesn't really leave a discernible smell after washing it off, which is fine.

 

The bar itself is a pretty toffee-color with cream swirls and little dark flecks. Lather is good, though not quite as moisturizing as my Samhain soap.

 

Color association: Very dark, slightly dusty brown.

[copyshopclerk]

This is lovely, and I think the most strongly scented BPTP soap I've tried so far (it scents not only my bathroom but my bedroom as well) and I just unwrapped it about a week ago so I'm impressed it stayed this vibrant even though the Yule soaps came out last December! I actually think the coffee aspect comes out more strongly in the soap than it did in the oil. I think the scent lingers a bit after washing with it, but with no throw and it doesn't stick around forever, which is good because it is a nice light scent if I decide to not wear an oil, but isn't so heavy that I can't put on anything other than El Dia afterwards!

 

I really love the Trading Post soaps & can't wait to get more!

[Blood onmy hands]

I was gifted a bar of El Dia De Reyes soap and have been avoiding it, because so many of the BPTP soaps have dried my skin out like mad and just generally disappointed me by having little to no scent that I can detect. But I ran out of soap in my kitchen today and decided to give this one a go. I was pleasantly surprised.

 

This soap actually had pretty good fragrance (though I don't think I would ever recognize it as smelling like the oil of the same name). It was still very light & subtle, but I could definitely notice it when I lathered up. It had a nice, creamy lather and smelled like caramel coffee with a hint of cinnamon sugar. My hands felt squeaky-clean afterwards, but they actually weren't badly dried out, and the soap did a great job of stripping off the scent of a perfume oil that I wasn't loving, lol. Later, it managed to make my hands smell clean after I had peeled and chopped an onion and some garlic. It doesn't leave any fragrance on my skin either.

 

This is definitely more drying than my usual bar soaps, but it's still pretty good (and not as drying as some of the other soaps I've tried from this line), and I like how well it removes other fragrances from my skin. I think it will be a decent kitchen soap

 

ETA: I may have spoken too soon. My hands are sucking up lotion and feeling pretty dry again :/. This still isn't as bad as the Perversion soap was for me, though. I'm torn. Part of me wants to save this soap for onion&garlic-duty, but I'm not sure I could stand this dry feeling on my hands afterwards. These soaps are so harsh on my skin for some reason.

Edited July 7, 2008 by Tania