Handmade Soap: A Practical Guide to Making Natural Soap

As a soap maker I really loved this book. I've probably read all the soap books available on the market. This book has by far the best creative projects and is filled with lovely stylish pictures. It is an inspiration and really makes you want to make soap. Hill's book is hard bound and over all very elegant, yet is surprisingly the lowest priced soap making book I've come across. It would be nice to make some of your own soaps and give the book as a present along with them. I did this recently and it was really apreciated, because the person who gets the gift understands the effort going into your soap. The book is also clear informative. I bought my first soap book about 6 years ago and I wish this one had been around then. I baught the most recommended soap making book and I was so confused I nearly gave up, before developing my own recipe through trial and error. If you really want to know about a lot of sceintific jargon, this book is probably not for you. For most normal home purposes Hill gives you the basic information you will need as a beginner, with simple "normal people's" language. The book has a quick bullet point format, rather than getting to technical. Again I wish had this as reference when I started. She also answers all the questions I had as a totally bewildered beginner in a section in the back. with simple "normal peoples" language. She also gives honest direct safety information and suggestions. *If you do need more detailed information about the chemistry side, you can always get one of the larger nore technical words only books.

This is the most unique and interesting book on handmade soap I have read. The recipes are all innovative and original and the pictures are the best. The book also successful in providing helpful step by step how to pictures that none of the other books I have seen provide. Hill's book is a welcome change from the various others that are copies of one another or seem to take one recipe and duplicate it from one page to the next with a few slight changes on sent or colour. The recipes are also 100% natural which I found refreshing. I would also like to refute another review from a soap maker from San Francisco that is more of an attack on the style of soap that Hill produces than a valid criticism. Hill's soap is a specific original style placing emphasis on natural ingredients as well as high emphasis the decorative presentation of the soap. As a soap maker I have produced soap successfully with even more botanical matter than Hill suggests with great skin conditioning results. If soap is dried and cured properly bacteria will not result any more than it would in a basic soap. The comment about clogging up drains from botanical matter is preposterous! Only small amounts of additives (oatmeal for example) come off of a bar of soap with each use and can wash easily down the waste pipes (far greater amounts of solid waste go down our kitchen and toilet waste pipes every day.) Perhaps the Californian just is not used to this innovative style of English soap making? As Hill is in a position as a professional soap maker with her obviously successful soap company Savonnerie that most of us would love to be in, she must be doing something right! BRAVO

everything about this book is delicious. Great recipes, easy to make, great pictures/... the best soap book yet. Why is it that the british are the only ones who know how to make great handmade soap? Any book i have purchased in the US just doesnt make the grade. This one is a keeper! If you can have only one soap book - this is the one.