New to the Soap Making Forum, and to soap making!

hi there everyone,

As the title suggests I'm new to soap making! my name is Clare from the UK and I've been making paper crafting projects for about 7 years now, and I'm lucky enough to say this has become a job for me. Now I need another hobby and I'm hoping that soap making will become just that!

To start with I thought I would try the melt and pour method, and maybe one day I'll move into cold process soap making. I think my problem however is that I always want to run before I can walk, and there seems to be much information out there I get confused, and don't know where to start! I have bought some base, colours and fragrances, and moulds and now need to get started.

I would be very grateful if any of you have any tips or advice for a new starter, particularly any book recommendations that would be available in the UK.

I look forward to making new friendships soon!

Love, Clare x
www.clarecurd.blogspot.com

Hello, I just replied on the other thread but thought I'd add a hello here too!I'm as excited as you but cannot really give you any advice as I haven't actually started yet.With melt and pour I believe as long as you get your amounts of colour and fragrance right you will get good useable soap.Then you get creative with it, think about additives etc.Read right back through the mp section for some great advice, pointers and other peoples experiences with it.See you around the forum -Rachel x

Welcome! I don't know anything about M&P, I started with CP and am mixing in a little HP, but you'll find lots of help here

welcome to the forum, M&P is a great place to Start.
I would start out just simple with a bit of color and fragrance in the melted soap and once you are comfortable with that move to adding other things 1 at a time, until you find what you like.

Hi Clare,

Welcome to the forum!

I don't know of any books in the UK; however, there's a lot of information about MP soapmaking from Anne-Marie Faiola on her blog and youtube. I think you'll find these very helpful.

http://www.soap-queen.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/soapqueentv

There's also the SMF's tutorial site.

http://www.smftutorials.com/

I hope this helps.

Hi Clare, Welcome to SMF

Welcome Clare!

Hazel said:

Hi Clare,

Welcome to the forum!

I don't know of any books in the UK; however, there's a lot of information about MP soapmaking from Anne-Marie Faiola on her blog and youtube. I think you'll find these very helpful.

http://www.soap-queen.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/soapqueentv

There's also the SMF's tutorial site.

http://www.smftutorials.com/
I hope this helps.

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Hi there!

Thanks for the welcome and your links - funnily enough I found the soap queen when searching on you tube and I'm really looking forward to watching more of her videos. The thing I get confused with is all the bases available and then the additives - butters, waxes, etc. do I need these and how do they make the soap different. What are all the differences with the bases??? I'm so worried I'll get it wrong!

Thanks for the links again!

Clare x

I can't answer any questions about BB's MP bases because I've never used them. I've used WSP's natural bases and I really like them. I used the goat milk base, shea butter base and the natural clear (which I don't see on the site anymore). Of course, this doesn't help you because WSP doesn't ship internationally.

The differences are just one has goat milk in it, one has shea butter in it, etc. I think you might just want to pick one to start with based on what properties you want in your soap. For example, goat milk is mild and is good for sensitive skin, shea is moisturizing, etc. Any colorants you would add to these bases are probably going to be pastel since these are white bases. A clear base will allow more of a range of colorants plus cosmetic glitter/sparklies will show up in it. I've used glow in the dark powder in clear and it worked very well.

This is just a suggestion but I think you should work with just bases, colors and fragrance to get used to the process. Later on you can work more with additives to the bases if you want. They're not something you need to get started. Have you read through the "Melt & Pour Forum" section. You'll find lots of help and inspiration on it.

Please don't worry about getting anything wrong. If you mess up, remelt the soap and start over. You might end up with some muddy colors but the soap will still lather up and clean.

You don't need a lot to get started. Since you're in the UK, I don't know where you would get the supplies. There are other UK soapers on this forum. You could post a message asking for help finding a supplier. The only link I have is from Anne Watson's site and I don't know anything about the suppliers.

http://www.annelwatson.com/soapmaking/s ... tedKingdom

Don't stress about this because MP is very forgiving and easy to work with. Just play with it and have fun.

Welcome to the SMF!