Scented Essentials

(Page 3 of 3)

October/November 1995
By Sandy Maine 
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All Shapes and Sizes

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Give your imagination free rein in the finishing, decorating, and packaging of your handmade soaps. Experiment with carving, shaping, or molding your soap. Here are some ideas:

• Within a few days of making the soap and pouring it into its shoebox-sized mold, while it is still fresh and soft, roll it in your hands into balls of whatever size you want or carve soft bars into shapes and press designs into the tops.

• Pour the soap mixture into individual soap molds, which you have first greased with shortening. Small volumes of soap can easily separate if allowed to cool too quickly, so set the molds in a well-insulated place as soon as possible.

• Combine soaps of different colors and textures by layering them in the mold, waiting 24 hours before pouring each new layer, or create confetti soap by chopping different-colored soaps into small chunks, then adding these chunks to a newly poured batch.

• Make soap-on-a-rope by forming soap, after it has been taken out of the mold, around a knot at the bottom of a loop of cord.

Sandy Maine, of Parishville, New York, makes soap for both pleasure and profit. She is the founder and owner of SunFeather Herbal Soap Company, which makes many varieties of handcrafted soaps, shampoos, and soapmaking kits. This article is adapted from her Soap Book (Loveland, Colorado: Interweave Press, 1995.)

Sources

The following companies offer soapmaking ­supplies or kits.

Avena Botanicals, 20 Mill St., Rockland, ME 04841. Catalog $2. Herbal products.

Soap Saloon, 7309 Sage Oak Ct., Citrus Heights, CA 95621. Catalog $2. Soapmaking kits, molds, and supplies.

Sugar Plum Sundries, 5152 Fair Forest Dr., Stone Mountain, GA 30088. Catalog free. Soapmaking kits and supplies.

Summers Past Farms, 15602 Old Hwy. 80, Flinn Springs, CA 92021. Brochure free. Soapmaking supplies, kits, and video.

SunFeather Handcrafted Herbal Soap Company, 1551 Hwy. 72, Potsdam, NY 13676. Catalog $2. Soapmaking supplies and kits.

Valley Hills Press, 1864 Ridgeland Ct., Starkeville, MS 39759. Brochure free. Soap recipes and soapmaking kits.

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  • keely 11/12/2008 11:23:58 AM

    I've been looking for all the ways I can be more self- sustainable, and here is another answer! I plan to grow luffa gourds this spring and I've read you can mix shredded bits in to make it more exfoliating, I'll have to give it a try!

  • Betsy 11/12/2008 10:53:26 AM

    Where do you get Coconut Oil? Would you perhaps have a scaled down version for those that don't need 60 bars of soap?
    Thanks much!

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