Country Living Crafting Soap at Home
July 9, 2009 by Garden Crafts · Leave a Comment
Country Living Crafting Soap at Home
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars great use
i bought it used and it stll smells like cinammon great for doing all kinds of soaps!!!
5 Stars Wonderful Soap Making Book
This book is my favorite soap recipe book. I purchased this book when I was beginning to make soap. The instructions are very clear. The recipes provided are wonderful. These are my favorite soap recipes so far. I would recommend this soap book to anyone interested in making soap. The authors also know a great deal about essential oils and healing properties. This book provides some of that information with the soap recipes as well. Happy soap making!
5 Stars Surprisingly good!!
I didn’t really expect much when I read that it includes M&P recipes, but I was pleasantly surprised at how useful it looks!
Most of the book is concerned with recipes for CP soapmaking, with seven basic recipes (5 all veggie oil, one tallow, one goat-milk & veggie oil) and several specialty recipes. Without actually sitting down and counting recipes, I’d estimate that it’s about 75% CP recipes, 22% rebatch/remilled CP recipes, and 3% M&P and other misc recipes. Lots of good photos of the soaps that are REAL - their rebatch pictures look like the lumpy weird soap I get when I rebatch, which I found to be refreshingly honest.
I haven’t actually tried any of the recipes yet, but when I run them through online calculators they come up pretty good. I’ll probably take 1-2% off the lye for several of the recipes to be at about 5-6% superfat, but there are a few I know I won’t be changing.
Basic instructions looked good, accurate and concise, but might be a bit sparse for brand-new soapers if they have trouble following written instructions without any photos. Not a lot of charts and tables on the oils themselves, this is more of a recipe book than a reference book. Not a lot of pages are wasted on pictures of gloves and thermometers and little jars of oil - in fact there are no pictures of equpipment at all which I count as a plus…does anybody NOT know what a pair of gloves or a jar of olive oil looks like?
In addition to soap recipes, there are also a few stray recipes scattered in there for things such as hair rinse, laundry soap, bath tea, shower gel, how to infuse oils, dish soap, etc. All very simple, without a lot of bizarre or hard to find ingredients.
I was also happy to see that almost every recipe is vegetarian, and uses all natural ingredients. No synthetic fragrance oils or colorings are included in any of these recipes.
Melt and Mold Soap Crafting
March 28, 2009 by Garden Crafts · Leave a Comment
Soapmaking has never been this easy! The revolutionary melt-and-mold method is taking the craft world by storm. Beginning with a meltable glycerin base, crafters can create stunning specialty soaps in minutes, with no lye and no waiting. It’s as easy as melt, pour, mold, and decorate.
Melt-and-mold master C. Kaila Westerman shares her recipes for fabulous fun creations, such as Stained Glass Soap, Cat’s Eyes, Flower Images, Sunrise Soap, Layer Cake Soap, Quilters Soap, Gemstones, and many more. The variations are limited only by the crafter’s imagination. Color, fragrance, and other desired additives offer great creative possibilities for manipulating light, form, and color; this book includes stunning color photos and simple step-by-step instructions for 30 different techniques. Readers will learn how they too can melt, mix, and pour their way to unique transparent bars in all colors, shapes, and sizes. It’s fun, fast, and easy.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars Inspiring
The photographs and instructions in this book are very inspiring, and overall mostly everything you need to know about melt and pour soap crafting is covered. This book will inspire you to create some beautiful soaps. My only (minor) complaint would be that I would have liked to see a few more recipes that were more practical, rather than simply decorative.
5 Stars Nice recipes
Contains some nice recipes & ideas to craft soaps out of store-brought M&P soap bases.
4 Stars Great Starting Place for Melt and Pour
Although this has a slick commercial look about it (I tend to doubt the usefulness of commercial stuff!), this is a great beginner’s book for learning and doing Melt and Pour soapmaking.
This was the first book I bought, so perhaps there is some sentimental value for me. But it has clear written and graphic instructions on melt and pour soaping, along with useful information such as a guide to additives, basic information about setting up your work area, selecting and preparing your molds, determining the right temperature (thermometers are not so necessary in melt and pour, so you’re going by ‘behavior’ and look of the glycerin). A troubleshooting page is included — even with melt and pour, there will be problems! She has small sections (sometimes just a page) on mastering fragances, color theories, and other useful bits throughout the book.
Please note that in my reviews, recipes are very secondary to me. In looking at and using soapmaking books, I’m looking for information on how to (create swirls, mix colors or scents in better, use additives, package, wrap, sell). Recipes give me ideas for recipes to make on my own.
I like the variety she offers — very brief bits on all kinds of soap making - loaf, french milled soaps, commemorative soaps, tube (cane) soaps, leftover soaps (she calls this shelter soap, which makes me wince a bit), soaps with small toys in them, bath salts, soap tassels (invented by Sandy Maine, see my review of one of her books), gemstoneskitchen soap and more).
Her recipes are written as instructions, telling you what you will learn. About 30 recipes, ranging in level of difficulty from one (moldless soap, saving face soap, tropical indulgence soap are examples) to five (Kaila’s happy to be bar). She has a recipes for a Victorian bridesmade cake soap (difficulty level four) that looks good enough to eat. Most are in the one to three difficulty level.
Four stars, though, not five. This book is missing some information, and its sources in the back are incomplete. You will need a lot more detailed information for learning how to develop your own recipes. And I wasn’t impressed by the picture, on the rainbow loaf soap page, of food coloring bottles — food coloring is inexpensive, handy and can be used, but it will not last. No note is made of that in this section, though it really should be noted for beginners.
A basic book for beginners — and fun recipes to try and to add to your own collection.
3 Stars Great Recipes and information
I really like this book and when I bought this book, I bought another M&P book. All I can say is I like the other one better. I like that there is a picture for each recipe but what seems to be lacking here is what fragrance to use at least on some of the recipes. I understand that some things should be left to the imagination but when it comes to recipes that I am trying to copy, I want to be exact and to kind of feel what she feels when the soap is used for the 1st time. There is no way I could make cake without knowing the full list of ingredients and I feel the same applies here. Overall this is a great book and a good read.
5 Stars This is the best M&P book on the market
I think I have every M&P book out there. I wish I’d bought this one first, because it’s the only one you need. Great book!
