Kelly LaGrange has an interesting search history.
The owner, manufacturer and self-styled “alchemist” of Connecticut-based Scream & Sugar Soap Co. has spent the last five years growing a business that combines her love of horror movies and thrash metal with a love of self-care. Her soap bars and bath bombs are topped with hand-painted, molded figures like Ouija board planchettes, Jason masks from the “Friday the 13th” films, severed fingers with running blood and the occasional intestine.
Part of the challenge, LaGrange said, is figuring out how to represent life-like gore on a soap product.
“I have a bath bomb that’s a piece of toast with intestines on top of it,” LaGrange said. “When I first made the bath bomb, I realized I don’t know how to paint this to look realistic. I had to go onto the internet and start looking up a ton of pictures to see what intestines look like.”
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That means online research to make custom soaps for macabre motifs, like the inch-long axes she recently molded to top a Lizzie Borden-themed soap bar she’s working on.
“Somebody wants me to do a Lizzie Borden soap. She’s been studying Lizzie Borden and doing VLOGs on the whole Borden story for the past couple of years,” LaGrange said. “I have to study Lizzie Borden now to figure out how to make a soap that represents her.”
Scream & Sugar started out of LaGrange’s Lebanon, Connecticut, home around 2018. She makes all of her products — bath bombs, soap bars, whipped-soap sugar scrubs, lotion, body wash and solid shampoo and conditioner — right in her home. Her soap bars and bath bombs are her best sellers. The molded bath bombs can feature movie characters like Jason, Art the Clown from the “Terrifier” films, Michael Myers from the “Halloween” movies and Annabelle of “Conjuring” fame. Some are formed into pentagrams, bats and coffins. There’s even a Halloween take on a Care Bear complete with bright, orange “fur” and a pumpkin on its belly — there’s also a zombified undead version of the bear.
The soap bars are made using cold saponification, or cold processing. It’s a more traditional, scratch-based process for making soap using natural fats or oils and lye. The Scream & Sugar bars aren’t like some of the neutral-colored artisanal soaps one might find at a farmer’s market. They have names like "Blood & Honey." A cream-colored bar with streaks of blood-like red filling a honeycombed top and running down the side, it’s made using raw, local honey. There’s also the "Kraken," with swirling shades of light and dark blues cresting at the bar’s top like a stormy sea frozen for a moment in time. There’s also the purple and black, candy corn-topped "Trick or Treat" and "Man of Your Dreams," a "Nightmare on Elm Street"-themed bar colored in thick red and green stripes like a Mohair sweater and topped with Freddy Kreuger’s iconic fedora and claws.
“I found my niche,” LaGrange said. “Starting in the '80s, I was a young kid who ended up watching ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ ‘Friday the 13th,’ and when I was a teenager, I really got into the ‘Evil Dead’ and ‘Army of Darkness’ movies. I love comedy and horror. I started making these things because I thought it was fun and other people were like, ‘Whoa, nobody else does this. This is cool.’ So, I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ll do more.’”
LaGrange said she started making bath bombs around 2018.
“I was tired of spending hundreds of dollars at the mall,” she said.
So, she started looking up recipes online and comparing ingredients. After some trial and error, she had a few bombs she was proud of. She made them for herself and for friends and got some good feedback, so she decided to start selling.
But staying true to herself — to her gothy, thrash-loving, counterculture roots — was just as important as creating an all-natural product that spoke to her “girlier” side. Thusly, Scream & Sugar Soap Co. was born with a name to represent the dichotomy of a woman who enjoys wearing her black and orange Halloween town T-shirt with her sparkly purple crocs.
“I thought the name described the dual sides of my personality,” LaGrange said. “Bright and sparkly and festive (on one side), and the other side of me is black metal and goth. ... I don’t want to be pigeonholed into making black soap all the time. Sometimes I want to make Barbie soap, too.”
But after a few trips to some local markets around Lebanon, she found her niche in shows that lean toward the spookier side like the now-defunct Rock and Shock festival in Massachusetts and the Warren’s Seekers of the Supernatural Paracon (now called Phantasmacon) in Connecticut. She’s also traveled the country with the Oddities and Curiosities Expo, which will soon take her into Canada for her first international outing. Online, Scream & Sugar has shipped the soaps and bombs all over the world.
Lindsey Mahoney, a candlemaker from Groton, Massachusetts, found LaGrange and her soaps at the Freaks, Antiques and Oddities Convention in Salem about four years ago.
“I bought some stuff, but I couldn’t bring myself to use it right away because it was so pretty,” Mahoney said. “When I started actually using it more, I realized it actually helped my skin. I have keratosis pilaris (a skin condition that causes drying) and it was the only thing that didn’t dry out my skin. So, I was a big, big fan.”
Now, Mahoney said, she’s a “forever fan” constantly buying LaGrange’s soaps in batches of 5-8 at a time. She’s got favorites, like "Witching Hour" and "Black Mass" and looks forward to new creations like the "Prince of Darkness," which she hopes to order soon.
“Everything is so beautifully crafted. Even her bath bombs look like little works of art,” Mahoney said. “It ('Prince of Darkness') has got swirly, rainbow colors and crystals. I don’t even know how she does it. It’s like she’s a wizard or something.”
LaGrange said she also hopes her products can help with mental health. LaGrange said she felt a little different growing up. She was always into the arts and would constantly explore different pursuits and try to create things she saw and liked herself. Expensive dresses at a Renaissance fair — she’d learn to sew and make them herself. An interesting belly dancing performance — she learned to belly dance and performed in Chicago for a decade. Cool album covers and band posters — she learned graphic design and does all the design work for her products.
It's part of what she calls her “neuro-spicy” brain. As an adult, she was diagnosed with ADHD and some of what she thought made her “weird” began to make sense. Now, she hopes her soap and self-care products can help other people living with neurodivergent conditions like ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder. Part of neurodivergence is a struggle with executive function in the brain. According to ADDitude, a magazine focused on neurodivergence from WebMD, personal hygiene can be a struggle for a neurodivergent brain.
“A lot of people who have a hard time getting into the shower because of some mental issues, it helps because it’s not just maintenance, it’s something to look forward to. As silly as it sounds, something as simple as one little decorated soap bar can actually get someone out of a funk,” she said.
Scream & Sugar Soaps are available for order online or in-person at one of the many markets LaGrange travels to.
860.777.1027
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