Name: Chelsea Petrich
Location: Sugarhouse, UT
Medium: Soaps & Essential Oils
Chelsea Petrich has let her long running obsession with scent remain at the helm of her life, she’s always known it’s what she’s here to do. She found herself, feet planted firmly on her path forward, because she trusted that tug.
The first time I asked Chelsea to describe herself, she told me she was a “mad scientist”. That ability to recognize her authentic self and to claim it struck me, it also speaks to her sense of humor and her quirky way of being in this world. Everything Chelsea does, she approaches with equal parts reverence and science fiction. As she describes her relationship to scent she tells me, “smells have always been memories, for me they are actually a form of time travel”. She marvels at the feeling you get when you encounter a familiar scent. You know that feeling, don’t you? You walk into a place and recognize a certain smell and suddenly you’re transported back to a very specific time or place, a little magical blip in the timeline. And it’s those little hits of magic that she’s been chasing her entire life.
Chelsea grew up a curious kid who loved to play and explore. Born in Midvale Utah, she moved out to Bluffdale when she was 8 years old. In Bluffdale, she spent her time on her family’s land gardening with her grandpa and exploring the natural world. When she describes this time in her life she paints a picture through the scent of sagebrush, ponds, dirt, wet grass – the earthy scents that were the backdrop of her life.
When she was 11 she found her first aromatherapy book at the local library. When she tells this story you can feel the excitement of that little girl, of the door opening before her. She was transfixed. That year for her birthday her dad took her to a local apothecary, where she combed through endless shelves of essential oils and hand picked a collection of viles to take home with her. Here lie the beginnings of this mad scientist’s laboratory. She worked with recipes creating her own bath blends and bug repellants, in her words, “they were absolutely awful!”. And like all good scientists, she kept experimenting. At 16 Chelsea participated in a foreign exchange program and found herself in Avelin, France for 3 weeks. She travelled to Paris and visited world renowned perfumeries, she had landed smack-dab in the mecca of the fragrance industry. She goes on to say that this trip was the catalyst for so much in her life, that “the world suddenly opened up”. Sometimes the universe really does drop us right where we belong, nudging us to keep finding our way home.
Chelsea now owns her own soap making business, Soaper Hero (see, I told you she was funny). She describes soap making as “super alchemy”. She gets to take her love of scent and make it a tangible thing that then becomes a part of someone’s daily ritual. She uses all natural ingredients and colorants, incorporating beautiful butters, oils, clays and botanicals.
The final product is one that invites you to use it with intention, to slow down a bit, to honor your home-body.
We asked Chelsea to speak to the heart of what it is she’s bringing into our homes, and into the world.
You’re obviously so passionate about this project. How has this process been like home? Crowded countertops and messy dishes, amazing smells in the air, my favorite music playing. I imagine this is how a baker feels as they get lost in the craft. Every time I melt the oils & butters, or swirl colors in the pot, I feel like I’m stirring a new story. Sometimes a memory. Nothing takes me back in time to old homes & chapters like smell does.
I grew up in the country with a lot of nature and open space. The grass, earth, rivers, garden vegetables, even a frozen winter morning had a unique fragrance to it. Grass on Sunday smelled entirely different than Tuesday’s grass. The nicest smell of all existed in the vacuum closet of my childhood home. I’d shut myself in there and breathe up the bliss. I’m not sure what made it the most wonderful, and I haven’t smelled it since. I wanted so badly to recreate these smells for later. When I found my first book at the library on aromatherapy, that was it for me. I was obsessed with all the blending!
Soap to me, IS home.
Why does homemade soap matter? It matters because the ingredients haven’t been bleached, stripped or modified into words we can’t even pronounce. Made with love, care and precision out of oils, butters, clays and botanicals that your skin recognizes, and knows how to hold. Coconut oil, olive oil, shea butter, walnut powder, kaolin clay…. amazing and REAL, just as we are. This work is made from my hands, instead of a machine. Especially today, the human touch matters.
What’s possible when we’re in love with our home-body? Soapmaking for me, has always been an expression of love to the body. Showering, a daily ritual where we are intimate with ourselves, our unique shapes, and what we might consider to be our imperfections. Each part gets the same love as the rest with a bar of soap. Maybe a little less caress for the hard-to-reach spots, but the intention is there! The entire process is a reminder that we are worthy, in our entirety.
My hope is that as a person falls more in love with their home-body, the process of cleansing will slow down. More intentional, more ceremonial rather than a daily chore to check off.
Amen to that, friends!
Come smell for yourself and grab a piece of the magic here at The Shop at cityhome.
