The Soapmaker's Companion: A Comprehensive Guide with Recipes, Techniques & Know-How (Natural Body Series - The Natural Way to Enhance Your Life)

Learn every step of the soapmaking process from master soapmaker Susan Miller Cavitch. Once you have mastered her basic skills, go on to create personal soaps that suit your own tastes as well as those of your family and friends. In this comprehensive guide, Susan Miller Cavitch covers everything you need to know to make your own soaps. Learn the basic techniques for crafting oil-, cream-, and vegetable-based soaps, and then start experimenting with your own personalized scents and effects. Cavitch provides tips for making more than 40 different specialty soaps, showing you how to design colorful marbled bars and expertly blend ingredients to create custom fragrances. You’ll soon be making luxurious soaps at a fraction of the cost of boutique products. Important Notice Early printings of this book contain a recipe variation in a sidebar note on page 36. As a result of further testing, author Susan Miller Cavitch and Storey Publishing strongly recommend that you do not try this variation. Adding honey when you are combining the sodium hydroxide and water may result in a stronger reaction with more intense heat. The mixture may bubble up quickly and come out of the pot, posing a potential hazard.
The most comprehensive guide to soapmaking ever!

From the author of the best-selling The Natural Soap Book comes this illustrated guide to making over 40 specialty soaps -- from exquisite stained-glass, marbled, and layered soaps to soothing masseuse bars, hardworking laundry soap, and practical liquid soaps.

Through clear, step-by-step instructions, master soapmaker Susan Miller Cavitch leads you through every step of the soapmaking process and teaches you how to:

*craft exotic and practical soaps in your home

• blend and use essential oils and natural colorants

• design multi-colored, marbled, and imprinted soaps

• understand the chemistry of soapmaking and create your own personal bars

Plus, you'll get tips on how to get started selling soaps!

Features twenty-nine recipes for making all-vegetable, cold-process soap, provides information about ingredients, discussing fats and oils, colorants, and fragrances, offers troubleshooting advice, and includes an introduction to the science underlying soapmaking, and tips for starting a soapmaking business Provides instructions and recipes for making over forty kinds of soap, from stained-glass and layered soaps to laundry and liquid soaps Basic soapmaking instruction and specialty techniques like marbling, layering, and making transparent and liquid soaps.