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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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Liquid Soap Making Method

Practice makes perfect when it comes to your liquid soap. Photo courtesy of flickr user arenamontanus.

Practice makes perfect when it comes to your liquid soap. Photo courtesy of flickr user arenamontanus.

This post covers off on just one of the many soap making methods available to you as a soap maker. Please click here to read our full, comprehensive post on the various options, with benefits and drawbacks, breakdowns of the process and much more covered for all the most popular soap making methods.

Many soap making hobbyists start out by making bars of solid soap, because it is a fairly simple and straightforward process. Making liquid soap can be a bit trickier and takes some practice, but it is just as much fun and your final product is just as useful.

Knowing the basic soap making method for solid bar soap first is certainly a bonus. This is especially so as one of the more popular methods of making liquid soap involves making it from bars of solid soap, and the other is very similar to the hot process soap making method. Continue reading “Liquid Soap Making Method”

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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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Your Guide to Soap Making

Soap making is a precise hobby so it's important to focus and work at improving your skills. Photo courtesy of Flickr user vastateparksstaff.

Soap making is a precise hobby so it’s important to focus and work at improving your skills. Photo courtesy of Flickr user vastateparksstaff.

Ingredients

It is fun making your own soap, but you must pay attention to your ingredients. When you read the label on the soap that you have purchased, you will surely get the impression that a lot goes into making a bar of soap. This simply isn’t true.

There are only two things that are required to make a bar of soap: fat and lye. Of course, the more sop making additives you add to your soap, the more luxurious it would be. But again, the basic bar is just made of fat and lye. You have to make sure the ingredients you use in your soap is of the highest quality as this will make or break your soap.

Are you going to put herbs? Have you thought of the type of colorant you will use? What fragrance oil is right for you? Continue reading “Your Guide to Soap Making”

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The Basic Soap Making Ingredients

All soaps consist of a few key ingredients. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Foot Fingers

All soaps consist of a few key ingredients. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Foot Fingers

Soap-making is a delicate process, but the ingredients used to make soap are fairly simple: oils, lye, water, fragrances, colorants, and other, optional additives. The fats and oils used in soap can be derived from either animal or vegetable fat. Typically, soaps made from vegetable oils are softer than those made with animal fat.

The most useful oils for soap-making are fixed oils – oils that can be raised to a high temperature without evaporating. Fixed oils include a variety of base oils, such as olive, palm and coconut oils.

There are two types of fats used for soap-making: saturated fats and unsaturated fats. Saturated fats make a hard soap. Continue reading “The Basic Soap Making Ingredients”

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Natural Soap Colorants

There are many natural options for coloring your soap. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jules-stonesoup

There are many natural options for coloring your soap. Photo courtesy of Flickr user jules-stonesoup.

There are many options when it comes to coloring your homemade soap. Artificial colorants are often more vibrant than natural colorants, but many people like the idea of using all-natural ingredients in their soap. This post focusses on natural soap colorants, but you can read more about the various soap colorant options in our comprehensive post by clicking here.

There are also safety concerns with some artificial colorants, and they can have some unanticipated effects on the final soap product. If you decide to use natural colorants for your soap, there are endless possibilities to choose from, and you can give your soap almost any hue you desire.

Many of the natural materials you can use to color soap can be found in your kitchen, or local supermarket, and many are already used to color food and drug products. Continue reading “Natural Soap Colorants”

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Synthetic Soap Colorant Options

Synthetic soap colorants can be used to great effect. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Horia Varlan

Synthetic soap colorants can be used to great effect. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Horia Varlan.

Many soap makers prefer to use natural soap making colorants for their soaps, as opposed to synthetic ones. However, if the natural colorants don’t work for you, or are too expensive or unpredictable, there are a variety of synthetic colorants that can be used.

This post focusses on synthetic soap colorants, but you can read more about the various soap colorant options in our comprehensive post by clicking here.

Pigments, micas, and FD&C colorants are some of these.

Pigments are colorants that were originally mined, but now, due to FDA regulations, are manufactured in laboratories.

Many natural oxides contain toxic materials, so the FDA chose to approve only synthetic colorants for use in soaps and cosmetics.

The synthetically made pigments have the same molecular structure as the natural ones, but they have a low enough concentration of toxic metals that they are considered “safe” by the FDA. Pigments tend to be pretty stable, and the color that they will impart to your soap is predictable. The liquids are extremely easy to use, but the powders must be mixed with liquid before they are added to the soap batter, and they may clump.

The easiest way to liquefy the colorant powder is to: Continue reading “Synthetic Soap Colorant Options”