In the last few years, there has been a virtual avalanche of so-called "handmade soap" in the marketplace.  Unfortunately many of the offerings are not real, handmade soap from scratch.  Often these bars are simply "Melt & Pour" bases that have been melted down, artificially dyed, artificially scented and/or decorated, like the soap kits you buy from your local craft store.  These bars are usually transparent but they can also be opaque. There is even a "goat milk" based melt & pour.  To make matters worse, the consumer is often misled by advertising hype from the salesperson or from text on a website stating these bars are gentle on the skin because they "contain no lye" or that the base was made by "boiling vegetables" or that some of the ingredients in the base come from "pure mountain berries," etc, etc.  These statements are misinformation.  The most serious misinformation is "we don't use lye to make our soap", inferring that other soap do contain lye.  The truth is ALL SOAP, even handmade soap are made from lye. Lye, or sodium hydroxide, is the catalyst that causes saponification -- the chemical reaction that turns fats and oils into soap -- but the sodium hydroxide does not remain in the soap because it has reacted with the oils and fats to be chemically changed into soap.  Don't be fooled by names like, facial bar, luxury bar, beauty bar or deodorant bar.  IF IT WAS NOT MADE WITH LYE, IT'S NOT SOAP!  Some companies still use the name soap even though their product is not soap.  If the ingredients don?t contain "lye, sodium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide or the word saponification or saponified" then it's not soap; you can be assured that what you are purchasing is a detergent bar - which, for many people, is extremely drying.  If the vendor declares that they are selling a true soap but that they did not use lye, it only means that they are selling you a product that they produced by simply melting down a pre-made commercial base made with lye.  Handcrafted soap leaves glycerin in soap.  In commercial soap making, glycerin is often removed and sold as a by-product. They most definitely did not make the bar from scratch.