Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps: Practical Ways to Make Hand-Milled Soap and Bath Essentials

by Marie Browning

Soap -- gentle, all natural and handmade -- makes a wonderful gift -- for yourself or a friend! Create healthier, more beautiful, more fragrant soaps than anything you can find in a store, for a fraction of the cost, using simple equipment you probably already own. Just start with a basic bar of white soap or produce yours from scratch. Add therapeutic and aromatic accents. Once you've tried the 20 recipes for hand-milled soaps, go on to bath salts, bath oils, bubble baths, massage oils, facial scrubs, and bath tea bags. Full-color photos show you how beautiful your soaps can be, and captioned illustrations explain each step. Complete recipes cover a variety of enticing

Genres: Crafts, Nonfiction

128 pages, Hardcover

First published December 12, 1941

Reviews

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author focuses not on making soaps, but on milling soaps. The difference - rather than discuss how to make soaps from scratch, she recommends milling (grating) pre-made soaps and adding your own touches with different oils and scents.

After reading this, I had some good ideas on what different oils and fats bring to the soap (silky texture, hardening, etc) but didn't feel that it was as comprehensive as I was looking for.

Ms. Browning also had some lovely marketing ideas, and the photography in the book was done well.

[K. 🦉 · Rating 3 out of 5]

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book has more of an emphasis on using store bought soap and then adding your own touch. There are some great recipes for bath salts and other soaps, many of which you could use if made your own soap from scratch. For me, this was a book that had some nice pictures and ideas, but that was really it.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was nice to thumb through for ideas. It doesn't tell you how to make soap from scratch, but instead hand-mill it with your own additives. The author has some good recipes and ideas for packaging your soap though.

[Kathleen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book doesn't actually teach you how to make soap. You start with soap, melt it, and add various scents and/or herbs. Since I want to make soap from scratch, this ultimately isn't at all useful for me.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great projects and recipes. Definitely want to buy a copy.