Customer Reviews

Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soaps

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

A very artistic book with 15 vegetable oil-based recipes. No synthetic ingredients are used in these unusual and luxurious cold process soaps. A beautiful, hand-milled seaweed soap is included. Excellent color photographs throughout, with step-by-step instructions for basic soapmaking. Troubleshooting advice is provided, yet this book is not for beginners. None of the projects are inexpensive and all of them are labor-intensive as shown. Familiarity with essential oils is required due to occasional use of potential irritants such as clove, cinnamon and benzoin. However, these recipes are a welcome relief from the humdrum stuff that's normally seen. Any unacceptable additives can easily be changed by experienced soapers. The only other recipe book that doesn't bore me is British as well: "the handmade soap book" by Melinda Coss. Also sold by Amazon.

This is the most unique and interesting book on handmade soap I have read. The recipes are all innovative and original and the pictures are the best. The book also successful in providing helpful step by step how to pictures that none of the other books I have seen provide. Hill's book is a welcome change from the various others that are copies of one another or seem to take one recipe and duplicate it from one page to the next with a few slight changes on sent or colour. The recipes are also 100% natural which I found refreshing. I would also like to refute another review from a soap maker from San Francisco that is more of an attack on the style of soap that Hill produces than a valid criticism. Hill's soap is a specific original style placing emphasis on natural ingredients as well as high emphasis the decorative presentation of the soap. As a soap maker I have produced soap successfully with even more botanical matter than Hill suggests with great skin conditioning results. If soap is dried and cured properly bacteria will not result any more than it would in a basic soap. The comment about clogging up drains from botanical matter is preposterous! Only small amounts of additives (oatmeal for example) come off of a bar of soap with each use and can wash easily down the waste pipes (far greater amounts of solid waste go down our kitchen and toilet waste pipes every day.) Perhaps the Californian just is not used to this innovative style of English soap making? As Hill is in a position as a professional soap maker with her obviously successful soap company Savonnerie that most of us would love to be in, she must be doing something right! BRAVO

Handmade Soap by Tatyana Hill
There are three basic soap recipes given in this book and 14 variations. Measurements are in both metric and American Standard.
-Note: while I have not tried any of these variations, some of them do sound interesting.

Ms. Hill has a listing of nine natural colorants, but she does not explain what these colorants will do in a finished soap.

Safety issues are dealt with fairly well, but I personally wouldn't recommend using vinegar to clean lye flakes off of your skin. Rinse well with running water, but using vinegar in a lye flake that is sitting on naked skin will hurt more that the lye bead by itself. Use the vinegar to clean up lye on your counters, not your skin.

In the back of the book there is a short list of suppliers in the UK, USA, and Australia. It is not a big list, but it is a place to start.

Overall, an ok book, but it is a bit lacking in information.

I am continually drawn to this book. For those of us that need to create more than just a basic soap, this is a wonderful resource. Three basic cold process recipe bases are provided... the concept behind each recipe is: pure/natural. Yes, much of the soap is ideal for gift-giving with whole cloves pressed into the surface of one, gold leaf rubbed onto another, but some of us like to be cleaned luxuriously...that is the appeal for me. Soapmaking experience is required, I feel. If you have an artistic soul this book will encourage you to create. I only wish it were a longer book.

A very gorgeous book with inspiring pictures but the recipes given and techniques used should be for experienced soapmakers only. All the recipes are extremely lye heavy when run through a lye calculator. In addition, the botanicals used in the quantities stated require careful preservation and drying-I would not recommend curing in a humid enviroment. The fancy decorative aspect is neat but extremely useless and some downright painful-who would scrub their bodies with whole cloves-ouch! I have tried two of the recipes but modified to create a gentle product. We will see how it goes.

I was a little disappointed in this book. I was looking for tips and ideas, and the majority of the book is recipes. But if that's what you are looking for, then the book is beautifully done, and the photographs are great.

everything about this book is delicious. Great recipes, easy to make, great pictures/... the best soap book yet. Why is it that the british are the only ones who know how to make great handmade soap? Any book i have purchased in the US just doesnt make the grade. This one is a keeper! If you can have only one soap book - this is the one.

This was my first book on soap making, and although the pictures are beautiful I didn't learn enough to feel comfortable trying the recipes. I think this is a good book for getting your creative juices flowing, but unless you are experienced in soap making, you won't get much from this book. There is no in-depth explanation of oils, scents, colors, or anything. Actual instruction in soap making was two pages. No saponification tables, no rebatching instruction, and no discussion of different types of soap making (only cold process). Very vague about many things. I would not recommend this book for a beginner. For ideas and pretty pictures get this book.

I already knew how to make soap before buying this book. So I've found it simple with great receipes. I usually do utility soaps but if you want to go further in fancy soapmaking, this book is excellent.

This is a good book. I prefer to make handmilled soaps with natural ingredients like oatmeal, honey, lavender buds, coffee, milk, coconut, calendula, etc. Lots of soap books feature soaps with pretty colored soap chunks, glitter, and other pretty colors, but not everyone can tolerate these pretty but sometimes irritating additions to their soaps. Making soaps with more natural ingredients gives your soaps a different texture and appearance. This books gives you a realistic idea of what you can expect to see when you unmold and slice your soap. I have extremely sensitive skin. I always had an interest in making soap, but because I can not be around serious chemicals like lye (traditional soap making is out of the question). I turned to soap making after using soaps (for sensitive skin), but after I used them I would develop hives, rashes, etc. I have not had that problem since I started making my own soaps. The soaps in this book give you lots of unique ideas and recipes. The pictures are great. I just wish it was a little longer.