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Reader review and hands on with bath bombs!

Bath bombs from the Soap Making Advice ebook recipes

Recently a fellow blogger wrote a review of the Soap Making Made Easy ebook package and shared it on her blog, including a hands on review of the soap making process, producing her first batch of bath bombs!

Here’s the recipe that Alyssa used, based on one of the 50+ recipes included in the Soap Making Made Easy ebook package:

Ingredients
1 part citric acid
2 parts baking soda
Witch Hazel
Colorant
Fragrance
Dome-shaped mold (I used mini-cupcake tins)

And the final result looks great, gift boxed and ready to go as a unique and personal gift this Christmas.

You can read Alyssa’s full review on her blog My husband’s watching TV while I’m watching the baby.

Thanks Alyssa!

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All natural, all the time

Soap making: All natural, all the time

The latest in our series of soap making inspiration:

Have you ever wondered why commercial soaps can leave your skin feeling DRY, IRRITATED and ITCHY?

Are you concerned about the ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT of commercial soap making processes and products?

Making your own soap at home can ensure control over the quality of the ingredients and is a more environmentally friendly option for you and your family.

Learn more and get started on our free blog at https://soapmakingadvice.com/

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Who doesn’t want to save money?

The latest in our series of soap making inspiration:

Do you want to be able to create cost effective and meaningful gifts for your friends and family?

Do you want to express your creativity while making a product that is practical and useful?

Have fun creating healthy, environmentally friendly soaps and save money at the same time – after your first batch of soap you will be making savings!

Learn more and get started on our free blog at https://soapmakingadvice.com/

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“Soap Making Made Easy” book review on curious-soapmaker.com

Soap Making Made Easy by Michelle Gaboya

Earlier this month, Evik from curious-soapmaker.com posted a comprehensive, honest review of our Ebook package, including “Soap Making Made Easy”, “Soap Recipes” and “Soap Making: A Quick Guide” on her blog and shared with her readers.

Below are some comments that Evik shared about the Ebooks, which you can read in full on her blog (see here for the full review). Thanks to Evik for sharing this review and for your honest feedback.

Here are some of the comments that Evik shared in her review:

The two chapters on natural colorants and scenting (with tricks on how to test those before adding them into the soap) show Michelle knows her craft well and really gives everything she knows.

Michelle is a soap making professional and has over 10 years of experience creating handmade soap. Our aim was to put all of this information together into one ultimate resource, and we haven’t left anything out. In fact, if we ever publish an updated version of the books (as we have recently) we will contact everyone who has purchased the ebook package and send them the latest version, so you will always have the latest soap making information at hand.

She added also tables of oil and (!) fatty acid characteristics (the latter is unfortunately in many books ommited), as well as an impressive troubleshooting section.

Our aim is to provide as much information as possible covering the basics of all aspects of soapmaking. When starting out in soap making, it is inevitable you will make mistakes and we know how frustrating this can be – so we have covered off as many potential issues as we can think of in our troubleshooting section.

Of course, if you are having trouble with anything that we don’t cover in the book, you can always contact us through the blog and we will help you out as best we can – then share with our readers so keep building up our soap making knowledge base.

It is a pretty neat e-book written for beginners, guiding you simply through the basics of the process of soapmaking (cold, hot, liquid) and much to my surprise also through packaging, selling, FDA regulations and even liability!

Here at Soap Making Advice we focus on sharing as much information on the basics of soap making as we can. We hope and aim to give people interested in soap making all the knowledge and tools that they need to get the most value out of their time and money, because soap making is a very precise, potentially expensive, but ultimately rewarding hobby.

We also love helping people nurture their entrepreneurial spirit and if we can inspire or otherwise assist in earning a little pocket money selling soaps through local markets or stallholders, we are more than happy to do so.

And the cherry on the top is that with this books comes with two additional free books.

Soap recipes – 50 recipes, each with instructions, including the so important WHY’s (yes, including milk soap, shaving soap and soap bar recipes!).
Soap making: A Quick Guide – a summary of the most important aspects of making soap at home, from Soap making easy

That’s right, not only will you get the “Soap Making Made Easy” ebook, but we also include over 50 unique soap recipes and a quick summary soap making guide – both as a PDF and formatted for your kindle, apple iBooks or favourite ebook reader as well!

Yes, I can honestly recommend this book and I do so. I myself have learned some new tricks and recipes!

All this for less than the cost of one batch of soap – save your time and money in the long run and get all the information you need to kickstart your soap making career!

Read Evik’s full review on her blog here.

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The Soap Making Made Easy Ebooks are now available for Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks and all major Ereader devices

Soap Making Made Easy by Michelle Gaboya

After many months in the planning, we are excited to announce (finally) that all 3 of our Ebooks:
Soap Making Made Easy;
Soap Recipes; and
Soap Making Made Easy: A Quick Guide;
are now available for Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks and all other major Ereader devices!

You can now take full advantage of all the great features of Ereader devices, such as:

– Optimised for reading on portable devices;
– Easily add to your Kindle, iPhone, iPad, Nook, or other Ereader;
– Adjust the font style;
– Adjust the font size;
– Hyperlinked Table of Contents and chapter headings, to navigate quickly;
– Bookmark favorite sections or recipes to easily access later;
– In-built search for the entire book; and
– Many more features.

We have tried to make the Ebooks available through multiple Ebook platforms, so you can decide which is the best option for you.

There are a few options for purchasing the Ebooks, broken down below:

Purchase directly through our website

This is our preferred sales channel and so we offer the best deal exclusively through our website – you can download ALL the different Ebook formats through our sales page for the price of 1.

That means you will get the newly designed PDF books, the .mobi format for Amazon Kindle AND the .epub format for iBooks, etc – all for the price of a single book!

By purchasing through our website you get the following bonuses:

1. An exclusive discount package for all 3 Ebooks, not offered anywhere else; and
2. All 3 versions of the Ebooks for the price of 1, an offer only available through our website.

Click here to purchase through our website.

Purchase in the Amazon Kindle store

If you would prefer to purchase through the Amazon Kindle store, all 3 of the Ebooks are available through our Amazon profile here – or search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ on your Kindle.

Purchase through the iBooks Store

The Ebooks are also available for purchase through the iBooks Store – just search for the title of the book, or search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. You can still buy the Ebooks through our website here and easily add them to your library via iTunes.

If you need help with this, contact us and we can help get set up.

Purchase on Smashwords

All 3 Ebooks are available in many other formats for a wide variety of Ereaders through our Smashwords publishing platform here.

Purchase through your favorite Ebook store

We have worked to ensure all 3 Ebooks are available for all major Ereader devices. Through our publisher, our Ebooks should be available for purchase through Sony, Barnes & Noble, Nook and all other major Ebook stores – just search by author ‘Michelle Gaboya’ to find them.

If for any reason you can’t find our Ebooks, please contact us and we will help solve the problem, or purchase through our website here to download the appropriate Ebook format.

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Making Your Own Herbal Soap With A Free Soap Recipe!

Anyone can make herbal soap at home, with ingredients that are readily available in any grocery store or supermarket. Photo courtesy of flickr user nico paix.

Anyone can make herbal soap at home, with ingredients that are readily available in any grocery store or supermarket. Photo courtesy of flickr user nico paix.

Herbal Soap Making has become very popular in recent times, although herbal soaps have been pushed out of the spotlight somewhat since the invention of synthetic soap making processes, which tend to yield a more consistent and cheaper product.

However, there are still many reasons to make your own herbal soap. You have control over the quality of the ingredients you use, so you know what the quality of your final product will be, and you can customize your soap any way you like. You can ensure that only natural ingredients are used, and minimize the environmental impact from waste materials for at least your own soap consumption. Handmade soaps make great inexpensive and unique gifts, and are a great alternative for people who find that commercial soap products are often too harsh for dry or sensitive skin. Perhaps most importantly, making your own soap will give you a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Anyone can make their own herbal soap, with ingredients that are readily available in any grocery or soapmaking supply shop. With the ease and convenience of internet shopping, it’s now even easier to get the exact ingredients you want. Continue reading “Making Your Own Herbal Soap With A Free Soap Recipe!”

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Soap Making For the Holidays, And A Free Recipe!

Photo courtesy of Flickr user theogeo

Christmas is just around the corner! Have you found the perfect Christmas gifts yet? Why not make your own gift with elegant soaps your family and friends will love and cherish.

With simple soap making recipe you can easily create elegant soaps.

Here is a simple soap making recipe for those of you who haven’t tried making soap yet.

A lovely gift idea for friends and family would be to make your own homemade soap. A personalized gift that you made yourself would proclaim so much more thoughtfulness than just buying one.

Making olive oil soap is fairly simple and easy. Try out this homemade olive oil soap recipe.

Soap making ingredients:

One 18 ounce can of lye (Make sure the lye is labeled for soap making. Some lye are too harsh, while some others are not strong enough to make soap with)
Distilled water – 5 cups (plain tap water has chemicals and impurities that can cause soap making problems)
Heat proof container for mixing the lye
Large stainless steel pot for mixing soap
Spatula (rubber or silicon)
Plastic container with lid (which will serve as the soap making mold)
Blender or beater

How to make the soap:

1.Before starting, make sure to read carefully the Manufacturer Safety Data Sheet on the lye. Lye must be handled with extreme caution.

Please always note that when you are using Lye that Safety is top priority.

2.Pour the distilled water into the heat proof container. Then add lye carefully.
Always remember:

Add lye to the water and not the other way around.

Stir gently and with care. The mixture will get hot and will produce fumes for a few minutes.

Set the mixture aside to a safe place and wait for it to cool off.

3.Pour olive oil into the other large stainless steel pot and heat to approximately 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then remove the pot from the heat.

4.Once the container of the lye-water mixture is warm enough to touch, slowly pour the lye-water mixture into the warm olive oil, stirring the oil the whole time with your spatula.

Then, you can now use your stick blender or beater for short intervals, hand stirring in between.

You will notice the mixture starts getting thicker and more opaque which means trace is occurring.

Keep stirring until you see a pudding-like consistency.

5.Pour mixture into the plastic container with lid and cover with a blanket.

When it’s ready, pop it out from the container and stack it on brown paper lined shelves in a well ventilated area.

It takes approximately 4 weeks for soap to be aged and cured.

This recipe makes more than 10 pounds of soap.

Pack it any way you want it for a more personalized touch. Let your creativity run wild and don’t be afraid to use color and creative materials.

These handmade soaps will now be perfect Holiday gifts for your friends and family!

For more information on packaging and presentation of your soaps, be sure to check out our comprehensive Ebook package Soap Making Made Easy: Second Edition that reveals the best soap making techniques as well as recipes and tips on how to make your own soap at home.

It would also make the perfect gift for any friends and family who might be interested in soap making!

Take the next step

Download our FREE ebook, ‘How To Make Soap At Home’, by clicking here.

We also have a special offer on our Soap Making Ebooks range, with exclusive web bonuses and a risk free 60 day money back guarantee! Also available on Amazon Kindle, iBooks, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.

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Soap Making With Lye, And A Free Soap Recipe

Lye is one of the fundamental ingredients of soap making, so it’s important to understand how to use it properly (photo courtesy of flick user maoquai).

If you enjoy this article and want to learn more about making soap at home, get instant access to our free soap making guide which covers all the basic elements of soap making, or get 10 years of soap making experience in our comprehensive Soap Making Bible with exclusive web bonuses for less than the cost of your first batch of soap.

Lye is one of the three key ingredients in the soap making process.

Lye is a caustic alkaline chemical that dissolves substances like fat, and has a high degree of reactivity with other materials.

It is also known as Sodium Hydroxide.
If you know about soap or have been learning about making soap, you might know that almost all handmade soaps are made of Sodium hydroxide except for a few liquid soaps that are made of Potassium hydroxide.  Potassium hydroxide, unknown to many, is also a type of lye used to make liquid soap.

It is important to note though that potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide are not interchangeable in soap recipes. So to put it simply, basically all soaps are made from lye.

Lye is a very important ingredient in making soap as the hydroxide in lye binds with the fats to form soap. Lye is extremely caustic and can burn the skin.

When lye is mixed with water and oils, in a chemical process called saponification, the lye turns the fats and oils into soap.

Lye used to be made by soaking wood ashes in water, but now it is readily available at most hardware and grocery stores.

There are certain precautions which must be taken when working with lye for soap making; it is a corrosive chemical, which can cause severe damage to skin, eyes, and the respiratory system. Continue reading “Soap Making With Lye, And A Free Soap Recipe”

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Soap Making Basics: Soap Ingredients

Soap Making Basics: Soap Ingredients

Before you try to experiment with your homemade soap it’s important to understand the basic soap ingredients – photo courtesy of flickr user mommyknows.

There are a variety of reasons that people decide to make their own soap.

Some do it for a greater degree of customization; some because commercial soaps are too harsh for their skin; still others because it’s a fun and rewarding hobby.

To get started making your own soap, you will need to consider three things:

* Your ingredients;
* Using the right equipment; and
* Your soap making method.

The ingredients are, arguably, the most important component of the soap making process. Continue reading “Soap Making Basics: Soap Ingredients”

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Soap Making Fragrance Oils

Fragrance oils are a great way to add a personal touch to your homemade soap. Flickr Markhillary

Fragrance oils are a great way to add a personal touch to your homemade soap. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Markhillary.

Scenting your homemade soaps is a great way to personalise your soaps, and with such a wide variety of options is a matter of personal preference.

There are two varieties of oils that can be used to scent soap: fragrance oils, and essential oils. Either can be used, according to the preferences of the soap maker.

Fragrance oils are made from a mixture of aroma chemicals. They are commonly used when there is no essential oil available for a particular fragrance, or when the essential oil is far too costly or environmentally irresponsible to use.

Unlike essential type oils, fragrance oils can be part natural and part synthetic, or all synthetic. Continue reading “Soap Making Fragrance Oils”