Enter this unassuming store front on Venice Boulevard in Mar Vista, CA and you’ll find the amazing smell of vanilla, lavender, and mint wafting towards you. It looks like your mother is baking cookies in the back kitchen, but rather the friendly staff is making hand made batches of soap from the freshest of natural ingredients, including olive oil, honey, shea butter (flown in from Africa), flower petals, fresh herbs, and even Quartz sand from Lake Tahoe.

Started in the Venice Beach kitchen of Jolie Chitwood, this soap maven took her aromatic concoctions public with the opening of Soaptopia. 100% natural, Soaptopia’s body products are made of pure essential oils and salts and are not only good for the body but environmentally friendly to boot. We went wild for the Warm Your Form Dr. V’Nilla bath oil (so sweet it’s better than cake), the 50/50 (the most amazing body lotion ever, trust us!) and the scented soy candles that not only give light, but can be massaged into the skin after melted. And let’s not forget the soaps… grapefruit, vanilla, orangesickle fudge, lemon rosemary, oatmeal and clover… you’ll have a hard time choosing.