300 Handcrafted Soaps
By Marie Browning

     Have some good, clean fun and make your own soaps! No, you don’t need wool fat or lye, and this is NOT a book that tells you how to do the cold process method, but if you fancy learning how to be creative with melt and pour soap compound then this book is for you. It starts off by telling you what you need; the difference between the various soap bases for example, fragrances and how to use them safely, additives and tools. Reassuringly, it manages to avoid mentioning a lot of expensive or unnecessary items and the basics of the process are explained in enough detail to be easy to understand. I like the way all the various hazards of soap making are covered, as in when they crop up, and throughout the book the reader is always told why something is unadvisable (or a very good idea). This makes learning how to do it safely stay in the mind and become part of the process; a very important feature of any “how to” book.

      Less impressive is the truly vast number of molds, and some very obscure fragrances that are used throughout. If you live outside the States many of these are impossible to obtain, although it is true that they can be obtained from US companies via some websites. What would have impressed me more would have been to show how one easily obtainable mold could be used in a variety of different ways. On the plus side you can learn how to add pictures to soaps, paint on them, use rubber stamps and make them look like fossils among other methods. This book conveys the message (which I can back up) that soap making is a whole lot of fun and it makes a nice change to see a book on melt and pour work; most of the other soap books I have seen are about other more involved methods. If you want to make some great gifts for people, or even sell your work then this ought to start you off on the right footing.