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Melt & Pour Soapmaking | 
 enlarge | Author: Marie Browning
Publisher: Sterling
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $1.93
You Save: $13.02 (87%)
New (10) Used (21) from $1.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  22 reviews
Sales Rank: 402871
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 128
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.9 x 8.4 x 0.4
ISBN: 0806972157
Dewey Decimal Number: 745
UPC: 049725072152
EAN: 9780806972152
ASIN: 0806972157
Publication Date: March 28, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Standard used condition.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Extremely thorough and beautifully designed, Melt & Pour Soapmaking features dozens of luscious soap projects, with directions explicit enough for the novice and ideas sophisticated enough for the practiced soap maker. Accomplished craft designer Marie Browning (author of Beautiful Handmade Natural Soaps) explores a wide variety of technique variations, from chunk style and layered to additives, embeds, embossing, and hand milling. Slice a marbled soap at angles for the look of rock crystal; make delicate petal slivers using a silk rose petal as a mold; blend fragrance oils to yield the scent of sea mist or the power of Zen spice. Besides all the tempting bars, balls, and molded shapes, there are recipes for bath salts, massage oils, sachets, potpourris, and dusting powder. Pamper yourself with these indulgent creations, or if you can bear to give some away, follow the lovely packaging ideas or assemble gift-giving collections of related items. --Amy Handy
Product Description
“If you love handmade soaps, but hate the boutique price, then turn to this comprehensive volume which offers recipes for dozens of exotic soaps made from both easy-to-melt bases and hand-milled bases.”—Crafts. “Projects use commercially available soap bases that can be melted in a microwave or double boiler and scented and molded to suit the maker’s taste....Recommended for public libraries.”—Library Journal.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 17 more reviews...
 Nice Overview July 3, 2007
I really enjoyed this book. It's great for a beginner and is not overwhelming. There are instructional pictures in the front of the book and lovely pictures of finished products throughout. The back of the book also has a nice section on complimentary fragrances and groups the various recipes into families, which makes it easy to see which soap compliments which bath bomb, etc. There are also some nice ideas on packaging. I would definitely recommend this to someone just starting out.
Overall great book, but inconsistency on natural ingredients and fragrance oils May 16, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Good overview with nice colour pics January 18, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a good intro & overview book with the basics on M&P technology and some recipies inside. Illustrations on the glossy paper are fine.
What it lacks is the details about raw materials to be and not to be used, it absolutely misses even the briefest chemistry info.
I would recommend it to soapmaking enthusiasts for home experiments, but not even for the small business. What is really strange as the writer runs exactly that kind of business which needs her expertise...
So I give 4 stars out of 5.
 Melt and Pour gives great idea's November 1, 2006
This is a great book with easy instructions for all ages. I purchased this for my grandaughter but would use it myself.
Good, basic book for easy hand-crafted soap February 25, 2006
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found this book very helpful for basic techniques. One complaint, however: a list of resources would have been great. There are so many suppliers of melt and pour soap base that it's hard to figure out which soap base to buy. Recommendations would be a real boon. Some other resources for fragrances, essential oils and especially colorants would also be a desirable addition.
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