Witch Baby Charms Summit With Homemade Soaps, Candles, Bath Bombs

SUMMIT, NJ — Summit residents can enjoy a charming new addition to town with Witch Baby — an occult bath and body store, selling handcrafted vegan and cruelty-free beauty products blended with natural herbs, crystals and oils.

The Summit location, which opened in June, is founder Chelsea Selby's third store. The two others are located in Cranford and Red Bank. What started as making her own beauty products in her kitchen with her baby has now become a locally renowned brand.

"I had always kind of loved beauty and dabbled as a kid," Selby said. "I used to make my own at-home hair masks and face masks and things like that."

Selby said this interest in creating her own products continued into her adult life.

"When I was a young adult, I was going through the recession, and I really couldn't afford high-end beauty products," Selby said. "I was making a lot of my own body butters ... and I noticed that using less chemical ingredients and more natural oils was improving my skin."

Selby said she studied cosmetology in high school and later went to college for holistic medicine where she gained a background in herbology.

But beyond her knowledge of holistic medicine, Selby said she believes she is a witch.

"I've been a witch for as long as I can remember," Selby told Patch. "The first time I told my mom I was a witch I was nine years old. I am heavily spiritual ... and I find being a witch is a very inclusive form of spirituality because you can be any religion and be a witch."

Selby said she was motivated to start her own business because she wanted to "be [her] own boss." She was also fired from a previous job when she was pregnant, and she said she no longer felt comfortable working for someone else.

"There was also a hole in the market," Selby said. "When I was shopping, I wasn't finding products that suited my personality."

Selby said she would rather use homemade products that made her smell "like a graveyard" than use the other fruity-smelling products she was seeing in stores.

In 2019, Selby opened her first store in Cranford, where she and her family live now. Then in 2021, she opened a second location in Red Bank, near where she grew up in Monmouth County.

Selby said she was attracted to Summit's downtown because she loved going on dates there with her husband, as well as exploring its arts and food scene.

With all the soaps, body butters, oils and bath products that Witch Baby sells, Selby said she tries to source the best ingredients possible. For instance, she said the body butter she sells is only made up of three main oils, whereas most other products would have a long list of chemicals.

"I come from a bit of a punk rock background," Selby said. "So for me, it feels like a good way to push back, and things like the palm oil in our soap is sustainable."

The packaging for all of Witch Baby's products are also sustainable. The soap jars are all made of glass, and the shrink wrap they use is biodegradable.

Selby said a unique aspect of her products is that each one has a different intention. For example, she has a "love" line where all the soaps and oils are made with scents and herbs that are used to attract love — whether that be a friendship or romantic love.

For the summertime, Witch Baby sells a Poseidon face soap, which is a seaweed bar hand mixed with cucumber, lime, watermelon, aloe, lemon and bergamot to gently exfoliate, clarify and soothe sun-beaten skin.

You can check out all of Witch Baby's products on its website. The Summit store is located at 73 Union Place.

Check out some of their intricate soaps on Instagram below:

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