The Everything Soapmaking Book: Recipes and Techniques for Creating Colorful and Fragrant Soaps Paperback – Abridged, February 7, 2007

It’s a book with some good information.

There are many books available to learn soapmaking but I purchased this one because of the great reviews from Amazon. As always, Amazon reviewers did not let me down. The book is written in easy to read chapters with information in the main body of the text and helpful hints and tricks in the sidebars. Very much like the "Idiots Guide to..." series of books. It contains several simple recipies and step-by-step instruction for beginners as well as tips for more intermediate and advanced soapmakers such as swirling ,layers, imbeding and working with colors. This book does not go into great detail about the more advanced material but encourages the reader to experiment and discover the techniques for themselves. The only drawback I felt this book had was the fact that there are very few pictures but I felt this was small stuff compared to the rest of the book and not enough to take away a star.There are many online soap suppliers out there with a great selection of products to help you be as simple or as involved as you would like with soapmaking. Many of them are listed in the resource section of this book. But there really is no need to spend alot of money here, most of the ingredients needed are available in our kitchen and the grocery store. I did have to order the lye from Amazon because I could not find it at any hardware store in my area. I also used plastic Tupperware containers for my soapmolds! I would also recommend the many Youtube video tutorials out there after you have read the book; I felt that watching these and seeing the soaps made in living color helped me with the learning process but then again, we all learn differently!I felt like The Everything Soapmaking Book presented soapmaking as an art form that has a learning curve but is very rewarding with endless ways to be creative. I hope the author writes more books on soapmaking, I would like to read some more! Enjoy and "Happy Soaping"!

When I was learning to make soap - I read EVERYTHING I could get my hands on. Every book at the library and bookstore, and every website and forum I could find - I read them. I was obsessed.This book has the most complete instructions and ideas for making soap out of all the others out there. So if you're only buying one soapmaking book - this is the one I would suggest. There are other good ones - but this one covers areas like fragrance and color options better than most. She also tells you specific suppliers where you can find some ingredients which is very helpful to beginners. Whether you want all-natural soaps or if you're OK with some synthetic ingredients - you can do both with this book whereas other books limit your options and don't give more info on natural ingredients. Although this book won't teach you everything there is to know about soapmaking - it will give you the best foundation over the other books available and help you decipher confusing information you might see on the internet.I'm an experienced soap maker now and I sell my soaps to a happy group of fans, but I will still refer back to this book sometimes for inspiration and ideas. Her writing style is very comfortable and it's easy to get absorbed and just keep reading.

I have been making soap for about three years now, but this book was where I got my start. I have both the kindle version and a very dog-eared hard copy.The descriptions and instructions are very clear and well written. They are easy to follow for a beginner or an intermediate soap-maker.Now, I have sort of "outgrown" this book and have branched on to making my own recipes, but I will never forget where I learned how to make my first batches.The reason why I gave this book 4 stars rather than 5 is because the book has no pictures or illustrations. Everything must be conveyed through the written word. For some people, pictures could be very helpful with instructions.Another is the 100% olive oil soap recipe in the book seems to be flawed. I made two one pound batches from this recipe on two different occasions. Both batches were failures. After running the recipe through a lye calculator, I tried a different amount of lye. It cured fine after that. A typo perhaps?

This books covers everything in soap making except milk. it covers cold process, hot process, melt and pour, hand milling, scenting, coloring and presenting your soap. in some areas, the books has very extensive information (essential oils and thier properties), and others i think more could have been added (coloring - i still don't know what a mica is). what i liked most is she had a few recipies to try, but in the back she has a saponification table (i don't like relying on a calculator, wanted to calculate lye and water myself) and goes into detail how the soap made from different oils behaves (would like to see more common ones listed, like corn and peanut, as those are pretty common on store shelves). All in all, lots of information, and opens a lot doors to new things to try.

Love this book! Love this edition! I've been teaching soaping for years and this is the book i give all my friends who want to start making their own soap!

I knew absolutely nothing about soap or soapmaking when I bought this book and after I read it I felt that I was prepared enough to make my own soap. I would suggest reading the entire book before buying supplies and absolutely read the whole thing before making soap. It covers a wide variety of topics and while it may not go indepth into every detail it gives you enough to start. It includes some great tables for measuring out ingredients, pre-tested favorites, and a design for a build it yourself soap mold. The author writes the book like a conversation so it is easy to follow and pretty entertaining. I think it is a great place to start and should feature in a list of sources for the new soap maker.

I bought this book through the recommendations of soap queen and I was looking for palm free I think it is our responsibility to stop using palm oil there is no way of tracing it from a so called responsible farmer while these beautiful harmless animals are being wiped out . They are 97% the same make up as us what gives us the right to murder these animals for oil. Just wrong and so very sad .

Really great book for beginners! This book has a lot of good troubleshooting pages and recipes and lots of pictures too.

One of the great essential soapmaking books, highly recommended by Brambleberry.com. I am glad I listened.

An excellent beginner soap making bood.

This book was okay, in my opinion. I have others that I found to be much better.