Making Soaps and Scents Soaps Shampoos Perfumes and Splashes You Can Make At Home
Making Soaps and Scents Soaps Shampoos Perfumes and Splashes You Can Make At Home
With this book, it’s easy to create soothing suds and a wide variety of perfumes, colognes and splashes that moisturize, revitalize and aromatize skin and hair.
Following the simple step-by-step directions, readers can make all the body products of their dreams, from Buttermilk Oatmeal Soap and Tangerine Cocoa Bar to Lemon Lavender Shampoo. Each recipe also points out how readers can improvise and create their own special soaps and scents.
A special section details the techniques of the world’s most famous fragrance producers and traces perfume history. The book includes a resource directory, safety hints and ways to make your soaps more earth-friendly.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great Learning Material
I loved this book! Beautifully written and filled with expert wisdom. All I can say is it’s a great book for your learning experience. Follow and you’ll get it right!
3 Stars Soap making
This book is mostly about making soap from scratch. There are good lists of supplies and formulas included within the book. A good starter book for soap making and precautions in handling your product in process. The scents section is not the main focus of the book but has some good ideas for creating fragrant soaps that should prove helpful.
2 Stars Flawed, but interesting
NOT for the novice soaper but interesting for inspiration, this book has some major errors that may cause a novice headaches and make an accomplished soaper wince.
Oh – I am not addressing the fragrance portion of this book
For starters, please do NOT mix your lye solution in a glass container – even Pyrex can shatter and you could end up with horrid burns. And a dust mask doesn’t protect you from fumes so keep that in mind!
Please also, don’t use crayons to color your soap… I mean REALL!?!
And while I’m at it, don’t line your mold with waxed paper. Or go ahead and try it and then come back and write your own review! It won’t peel off easily… I recommend freezer paper myself.
And the last thing I will mention is that her discourse on how much better vegetable oil soaps are than animal fat soaps is just plain wrong. She gives a nicely balanced “basic” recipe for veg soaps, but doesn’t do the courtesy of providing one for animal (just tallow alone is not great, but then neither would be just coconut oil). You can use almost any blend of oils & fats to produce a soap to meet almost any needs… don’t limit yourself to what she thinks is gospel.
Go online, read a ton of free stuff on a few sites, join a soaping forum online or find a friend who soaps… That will be much more helpful than this book.
Some of the references and suppliers are outdated, but it was published in 1999 so that is to be expected, and some are still around.
Good luck.
5 Stars “Soaps, Shampoos, Perfumes & Splashes You Can Make At Home”
This beautiful, slim book is split into two parts:
1) ‘Making Soaps,’ which begins with a little history on where and how soap was invented (supposedly in Rome from animal fat and ash residue some few thousand years ago), followed by a list of tools and ingredients you’ll need, like a scale, paring knife, measuring cups/spoons, large stainless steel/ceramic pot, rubber/latex gloves–oh, the list goes on and on. Then it goes into the techniques and three methods of soapmaking: cold-process, hand-milling, and melting (aka Jell-O method; the easiest of the three). There are even recipes for you to try, like Cinnamon Ginger, Honey Vanilla, Coconut Rosewood, etc, which just made me hungry after reading them. I guess the nice thing about soapmaking is that if you mess up, you can always eat your mistake (j/k). I haven’t tried any of the recipes myself, so I can’t say they’ll work, especially after reading a few other reviews below. As for the shampoo section (which is also lumped here), that’s reduced to just 8 pages–half of which are just photos–and doesn’t go into great detail.
2) ‘Making Scents,’ which also begins with a history on fragrances, this time starting around 3500 BC. I wasn’t too interested in this portion of the book, but it is a great place for beginners to start since organic perfumes are relatively easy to make, and the tools required are a lot fewer and less dangerous than for soapmaking. However, as the author mentions, don’t expect to make a reproduction of Chanel No 5 or the like. There are some good perfume recipes, though, like Rose Water, Vanilla Bean Water, and Pear Nectar Perfume (none of which I’ve tried, but would try if I ever got around to it).
I received “Making Soaps and Scents” awhile back as a gift. What I liked most about it was the vegetable-based soapmaking recipes since I’m a vegan and didn’t want to get involved with any animal products. However, I’m not very good at arts and crafts at all, and forget about getting me in the kitchen: I usually end up burning something when I do. For that reason, I’ve been a little wary of attempting any of these soapmaking ideas. For now, I’m happy just buying vegan soap/shampoos at the store, like Crystal (a soap), which doesn’t include or experiment on animals. But for those who are into arts and crafts, then “Making Soaps and Scents” is certainly worth checking out. It’s quite informative, with several tips and troubleshooting pages throughout the book; not to mention it’s very colorful and beautifully photographed, even if the photos are mainly just of soap.
3 Stars Beyond the basics for beginner’s +
The soap making process is not well illustrated so this is not a good book for your first batch of soap. But there are interesting ideas beyond the basics. You can follow the recipes if you don’t have much experience but you are encouraged to improvise if you are comfortable doing so.
Ideas I have used are her non-traditional soap mold list, the color chart, I like the Rosemary Lavender Hair Soap recipe (also a moisturizing body soap) and recommend the Buttermilk Oatmeal Soap. She gives one basic vegetable soap recipe and one basic tallow recipe, then each custom recipe includes additives like ground spices, herbs, coffee or grated veggies, and scent blends. Again not many photos of finished soap, but the directions are clear.
The section on fragrance families and profiles and making scents is followed by blends to use for a few bath products like splashes and scented waters.
If you need glasses for reading be warned, the type font is smaller than the norm.
