Jeff Barnhart
Most-Used Tool: Twin immersion blenders
Website: BlueSkySoaps.Shop
Soap-making runs in Danyah Arafat’s family. Her father, born and raised in the Middle Eastern city of Nablus, worked in his family’s soap factory as a young adult.
“I remember visiting the soap factory as a child when we went on a family trip and seeing the open soap vats ready to be filled with oils and lye, the finished soap cakes stacked to the ceiling curing and waiting to be wrapped,” Danyah recalls.
She didn’t become reacquainted with soap-making until October 2019, when she went to a soap-making class with a friend at a local brewery, of all places. Then a passing interest, Danyah didn’t pick it up again until after the pandemic hit and she was furloughed from her job.
“Family and friends began asking if I would open a shop and sell my soap, so I thought, ‘Why not?’” Danyah says. “That’s how my little company Blue Sky Soaps was born.”
Danyah officially launched Blue Sky Soaps LLC in September 2020. Since then, she has been blending soap batter, pouring it into molds and sending the final products to customers all over the state and country.
Her family’s soap-making history, combined with being a sixth-generation Texan on her mother’s side, provides Danyah with the inspiration she uses to make her products.
“Blending these two unique parts of me together… just made perfect sense,” Danyah says. “That I was always meant to do this, and that I was quite good at it. I’m carrying on an old family tradition with Texan style.”