Customer Reviews

Melt & Pour Soapmaking

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was specifically looking for a book with ideas for Melt & Pour, since I'm not interested in messing around with Lye. This book was everything I was looking for and more! The projects will give you a lot of ideas for melt and pour, plus there are some fairly simple recipes for hand-milled soaps. And as a bonus, there are projects for bath salts, lotions, etc.

This books is everything you need to make your own spa product line!

I just got mine today and I love it! I can't wait to start making some of her beautiful soaps. There are not very many great MP books out there but Marie Browning has 2! This along with my copy of Kaila Westerman's Melt and Mold book, are my two favorites so far! I absolutely recomend this book for soapers of all levels, even if yu just look at the pictures! This book also includes many recipes for other toiletry items- salts, oils, bombs, milk baths and more. She also has many gift baskey and packaging ideas. It is just a beautiful book, worth every penny!!!

I really love this book & simply can't say enough about it!

It's a very simple, easy, & fun read. It's an extremly user-friently book. It's written well and it's thorough enough that you won't have any worries or unanswered question. Also, there are beautiful & helpful pictures on nearly every page! With each recipe you'll know what the end goal is and what it should look like!

It also contains detailed information on natural additives, fragrance oils & aromatherapy, soap bases, soapmaking tools, plus directions for other bath products (bath salts, fizzies, bubble baths, powders, tea baths, bath & massage oils and potpourri). Many packaging and gift ideas are given too.

I've gone through dozens of soap making books trying to find the right one, and I don't have to look any further! Neither do you. This book is well worth the price. I hope you choose this book because I'm quite sure you won't be diappointed. =)

Great book for beginners and advanced soap makers alike. Simple instructions, great pictures and lots of neat packaging ideas. I have been making cold process soaps for several years and this is my first attempt with M&P. Lots of fun, ingredients are readily available and soap is ready to use the same day!

I enjoyed reading this book and learning about soapmaking. This is just the type of soap I want to make - I get exhausted by the "lye people," the "cold process" people who often write negative reviews for books like these. Hasn't it ever occured to them that some of us live in apartments without a yard to work with lye, a hazardous ingredient? I purchase my soap base and melt it, and I can be just as creative as other soapmakers with the finished product. This book taught me about basics and about color, scent, special ingredients, and the final presentation. It was fun and informative, written by a creative author who obviously enjoys her own melt & pour soapmaking. Hurray!

Wonderful book with all new ideas on Melt & Pour Crafting, designs, superfatting and even some MP Accessories. Also nice section on packaging your soaps - the hows and whys. Wonderful addition for every MP Crafters library.

This is one of the first books I purchased on this subject and I thought it was the best. Besides having some good receipes the book goes over equipment, moods of color and other topics. I have purchased her natural soapmaking book and her designer soapmaking book. I see that she has an updated soapmaking book which I am planning to purchase in the near future. I wish I found about this books earlier. Anyone teaching melt and pour soap making should recommend these books to your students. Now that I am teaching, I will be recommending these books to my students! All of her books are great for beginners in this subject. I recommend this books to anyone who is on the fence.

This is a wonderful must have book for beginners. I think all beginners to soapmaking should start out with the melt and pour recipes. This book has wonderfull recipes, very well explained and not complicated at all. This book provides information from how to make soap to bath salt to how to package your products.This is a definate must have for all soapmakers and crafters!

Having never made soap before, and even though I would like to try it from scratch (with lye) someday, reading up and experimenting on melt and pour was a helpful experience that helped me understand enough to read about using lye without being overwhelmed with too much information at once. Plus, I live in an apartment and sometimes melt and pour is simply more practical.

One of the best qualities of this book is the beautiful pictures, not only for the finished product, but pictures of the different processes as well. The package ideas are also beautiful and well presented. As a visual learner, I found that invaluable. For that, and the bath salt/bath bomb recipes, I would buy this book in a heartbeat should i need to replace it. The recipes are also pretty easy to follow.

My biggest complaint with the book is not the lack of a resource list (that can be overcome with a search engine, and maybe list specific books), but the persistent prevalent use of fragrance oils vs. essential oils in every recipe.

There are good explanations (with pictures), explaining the history and characteristics of soap ingredients. She even explains that the cost of some essential oils (due to protected plants, or simply the huge amount of plant material needed to make them) has made their use prohibitive, and so fragrance oil is often now used instead. However, the author then never bothers to explain that while fragrance oils have the same smell, they do not have the same herbal or therapeutic properties as an essential oil. This seems funny when there is a paragraph touting the benefits of making your own soap because of all the artificial ingredients in purchased soap. Even if you now have petroleum free soap, aren't fragrance oils synthetic?

Yes, some essential oils are simply too expensive in terms of cost, but there are some that are still quite affordable, and if the author is just thinking in terms of cost, it seems odd that there isn't some effort made to use a low cost combination of fragrance and oil. (e.g. a rose fragrance oil and lavender essential oil.) At least mentions of possible substitutions in the recipes would be nice.

The section on bath salts and bath bombs is excellent. The bath bombs do require citric acid, but everything else most people will already have in their kitchen.

I've always been interested in herbs and got more interested in essential oils in the home (and soap) after reading A Well-Kept Home : Household Traditions and Simple Secrets from a French Grandmother and The Scented Home by Laura Fronty and Yves Duronsoy, and The Herb Bible (though more for cooking) by Jenny Harding. With the information from those books, i think it might be easy to modify some of the recipes in melt and pour to be more natural.

Only other complaint is the sentence something like, "Do NOT EVER use flavored extracts in your soap," because. . . nope, there's no because, no explanation. . . does she mean because of the alcohol content? Is it because flavored extracts are different than distilled extracts? Does she mean because they're artificial flavors? (what if they're natural?) Is it because they're not oil based? Then what about water based toiletries? That sentence was not very helpful with no "why" explanation.

Those are my only complaints. Otherwise, i still enjoy reading this book (it's one you can flip through over and over for ideas) and would highly recommend it for learning melt and pour soap making techniques.

This book is Great! The instructions are easy to follow, as well as clear and concise. Recipes are simple and will inspire you to follow along, or create your own custom blends.
The author includes packaging solutions along with numerous ideas to compliment a gift basket presentation. I read this book everyday, and find it to be a wealth of knowledge for anyone interested in the art of soapmaking.
I was disappointed, when I was unable to find a Supplier's Resource Guide at the end of the book. I spent endless minutes on the internet searching for "the liquid soap" mentioned in the book, as well as the "bee mold".
The Resource Guide is in the beginning of the book. However, Suppliers are listed in the title category of "Acknowledgements."