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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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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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Troubleshooting Your Soap Making Process

Making homemade soap is a challenging yet rewarding hobby. Flickr Slam Szapucki

Making homemade soap is a challenging yet rewarding hobby. Photo courtesy of Flickr user Slam Szapucki.

Producing your own homemade soaps is a fantastic hobby with a great range of healthy benefits.

As with anything however, the process is vulnerable to a number of difficulties, which can affect the outcome of the final product. Recently, a reader contacted us on Facebook with an issue on how to stop white bubbles appearing in her soap. Following on from this, we thought it would be a good idea to cover off on some other issues that you might be facing.

Below is a list with some of the most common difficulties that you might encounter while producing your soap, as well as a cause and solution for each. Continue reading “Troubleshooting Your Soap Making Process”

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How to get rid of white bubbles in soap

Soap bubbles, Flickr Keith Williamson

We are always willing to help with any questions you have regarding making soap at home, or any particular issues you are having with your soap making process.

Recently we were contacted on our Facebook page by JJ May with an issue she has been having:

…to get rid of the white bubbles that appear on the top of the soap once poured, [I’ve been told] you should spritz with surgical spirit. This is all well and good for getting rid of the bubbles but it’s also making my soaps stink like Deep Heat rather than the beautiful fragrance they were intended to be. Can you suggest any other methods?

To help out JJ May, here are a few suggested remedies, which we also cover in our comprehensive Ebook “Soap Making Made Easy”. Continue reading “How to get rid of white bubbles in soap”

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Which Soap Making Colorants Do You Choose?

There are many variants for soap colorants

There are many variants for soap colorants – Photo courtesy of Flickr user necrocake.

Soap Making Colorants—which one to choose?

There are several different soap colorant options that are available for soap makers.

Natural soap colorants are more favored by expert soap makers as it is much safer to use. You can get amazing results with natural dyes and you don’t need to go the synthetic route to get soap that people buy. The best soap making advice I can give you is to try the natural dyes and see how things turn out. Of course you’ll need some practice but this is part of the learning process when you make your own soap.

For example, saffron can give your soap a yellowish glow, indigo root can be used to give your soap a deep blue color and Moroccan red clay can be used to give your soap a brick red color.

Continue reading “Which Soap Making Colorants Do You Choose?”

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Lye Soap Making

This article briefly explains the properties of lye and the importance for lye as part of the soap making process. Please click here to read our full, comprehensive article on soap making with lye, including a free basic soap recipe, or to learn more about homemade soap download our free soap making guide.

You may have asked this before, what exactly is lye?

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 making soap, you would 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.

Continue reading “Lye Soap Making”