We were quite taken with these luscious natural soaps from designer Lisa Gillespie. Lisa, an experienced and award-winning artist, crafts soaps with simple ingredients that support the skin. They’re also an eco-savvy alternative to commercial soaps, which can wreak havoc with both the environment and your system.
This hands-on workshop covers the basics of making hand-poured, cold-process soap, a traditional process that produces higher quality soap than other methods. With the cold process, selected base oils, scents, natural and/or cosmetic color, and lye are combined and mixed until they emulsify. (Lisa is all about safety. You aren’t required to handle the lye directly, and she reviews safety tips with the class before beginning.) Everyone participates in the mixing to directly experience how thick to make the slurry and how to tell when it’s ready to pour.
Customizing the soap with color and embellishments is the part that gets everyone excited. Lisa shares simple techniques that elevate the design by adding an artistic flair to the natural soap. She also shares easy techniques for packaging, which you’ll practice on bars of cured soap withs terry cloth wraps from Maker General.
The class is set up so that it’s simple enough for beginners to understand, but there are options for diving in more deeply for those who’d like to. You'll leave class inspired with simple soap recipes, a resource list, a bar of handcrafted soap, and – quite possibly – a happy obsession with a new pursuit that’s both creative and practical!
NOTE:
