Jane Church clearly has a great deal of knowledge of this subject and this is a book packed with great recipes and tips.

The book starts with some excellent safety tips for making products, storing oils and your working environment. This guide will keep you organised and ensure a quality product.

She includes a very comprehensive chart of essential oils, their uses and also contra-indications. This is so necessary, as I have seen other people give out charts about essential oils and not list the dangers and contra-indications. As a qualified aromatherapist, I am well aware of the dangers of amateurs using these oils with no awareness of the dangers. Jane also includes precautions and contra-indications with her recipes, so that you can label your products appropriately if you want to use essential oils in your products.

Her knowledge of the business side of bath products is invaluable. She has some great ideas for creating your brand image – branding is one of your biggest opportunities to create a unique identity for your products — you get vital tips on what to do… plus common “Branding Blunders” you must avoid at all costs!

She offers some extremely valuable advice on marketing, packaging and color, including guidance on finding a niche market and marketing your products. There is a good section on calculating your costs for maximum profitability – if you’re creating products for sale, the wrong pricing can sink you before you know it. She will show you how to calculate your costs and set prices that allow you to turn a profit and grow your income. She also includes 22 low cost and no cost promotional ideas for promoting your products on a shoestring budget while you get established.

Packaging and presentation of products is crucial so the section about how to source spa product packaging that looks professional and doesn’t cost the earth is invaluable. Choosing your colors is very important as every color has a very specific effect on the emotions. The section on color makes it simple for you to choose the right color scheme to reflect your brand image.

There is plenty of practical advice about how to label your products economically, but also to conform to US legal requirements and she includes a useful contact page for this. She also gives you her “Rolodex” of industry suppliers, including exactly where to source raw materials, packaging, labelling and other essential materials.

Her knowledge of spa quality products and ingredients is vast and she offers a wealth of recipes that you could use at home for relaxation or that you could turn into a retailable product. She offers numerous recipes covering a wide range of spa products.

Here is a selection of items that she teaches:

• Bath Teas, Additives & Soaks – with original ‘secret’ recipes.
• Spa Treatments – professional-quality treatments that you create yourself for pennies on the dollar.
• Bubble Baths & Bath Bombs – if bubbles are your thing, you’ll adore these new variations.
• Butters, Balms, Lotions & Creams – to add deep moisture to your skin and luxury to your life!
• Scrubs, Polishes, Salts & Masques – still more variations to add variety and build your line (and make your skin glow!)
• Home Fragrance Products – beautiful fragrance ideas you can adapt to suit your tastes and mood.
• Potpourri and Sachets – including a comprehensive ingredient list that you can simply “mix and match” to create a virtually unlimited number of flavors.
• Aromatherapy Blends – soothing… relaxing… invigorating… revitalizing… you decide – with your own range of professional aromatherapy blends.

Jane offers lots of alternative ingredients with her recipes, so that you have even more recipes and choices. This really gives you lots of scope and ideas for creating your own products.

She also includes some melt and pour soap recipes which contain a variety of additives to enhance the soaps. She doesn’t show any specific techniques though, like embedding, which create great visual effects in the soap, so while she gives you a insight into the basic principles of melt and pour, if you want to use these techniques you would need to learn more. However, there is enough information here to make some soaps to complement your spa products.

The book is packed full of great ideas and recipes. It’s a pity there aren’t more photos of the products, but the recipes are very straight forward and easy to follow, often with packaging ideas included. Whether you simply want to pamper yourself at home, add to an existing soap business, or make a range of spa products you will find a wealth of ideas in this book. By the time you have read it all you will easily be able to adjust your recipes, colors and blends to create your own range of luxury products, good enough to sell professionally, at minimal cost.

There are 3 bonuses you will get when you buy this…

1. How to make your own lip gloss

This is a 25 page ebook with 30 recipes. It has great ideas for various lip glosses and lip balms which include all sorts of fun ingredients, including kool aid and candies! There are no pictures, but the recipes are very simple with straight forward easy to follow instructions.

2. Making Pot Pourri

This is a 4 page ebook, giving you a brief introduction to pot pourri, as well as a basic method for making pot pourri and instructions for making a bag to put your finished product in.

3. Lovely Pot Pourri Recipes

This is an 8 page ebook with lots of ideas for ingredients for making your own pot pourri, with a few recipes at the end. It is an ideal book to get you started on this type of  project

What Didn’t I Like?

I was disappointed that there weren’t more pictures to show the finished product alongside each recipe, but that’s just my personal preference, and most people probably won’t be bothered by that. It’s just me being picky! I also felt that it was lacking in the more advanced techniques for melt and pour soap making. The reason why a lot of people choose melt and pour is because it enables you to create fancy soaps using that just aren’t possible using the other soap making methods. But I guess that there is only so much information you can cram in to one product!

Conclusion

The Handcrafters Companion, along with the bonuses, is full of great ideas, all of which are simple to make. For the low price Jane Church is asking it is excellent value, and a great place to start if you want to produce a range of bath or spa products at minimum cost.

Click Here For The Handcrafter’s Companion Web Site

The Soap Making Course is actually my own course, and while I am 100% convinced it is the best melt and pour soap making course it really wouldn’t be the right thing to do to be reviewing my own course!  I’d be biased to say the least, and I wouldn’t insult you by sticking up a biased review of my own product!

So here is what I’m going to do…

In the videos below are a couple of people who have done my course. Let them tell you what they thought of it…

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I think my Soap Making Course is great…

They think my Soap Making Course is great…

But what do YOU think?…

Click Here To See My Soap Making Course – And Decide For Yourself

Can’t decide which soap making method is for you?

Well let me help.

Melt and Pour soap is a great way to start. The start up costs are low, the base is already made for you and the method is simple. There are no caustic ingredients used and the process is very straightforward and quick. However, your soap will contain chemicals which are present in the base. It won’t have many nourishing qualities, although you can add essential oils and a small amount of butters, oils or goat’s milk to improve this.

Hot and Cold Process soap will be a soap that is completely hand crafted by you. The types of ingredients used i.e. butters and oils are usually chemical free and good for the skin. The proportion of fats in this type of soap is much higher than in melt and pour, so you will produce a soap of much greater quality. The downside is that the method is more complicated and you have to be very careful because caustic ingredients are used which can burn the skin and damage surfaces.

Melt and Pour soap is ready in a few hours, whereas the other methods need a certain length of time for the soap to cure before it is ready. This means you also need somewhere to store it while it’s curing.

With Hot and Cold Process soap you will be producing a rustic, natural, handmade looking soap, especially if you add essential oils, herbs, petals or oatmeal to enhance the properties further. Your soap will be in chunky bars and opaque.

Melt and Pour can be transparent or opaque. With Melt and Pour you can add lots of decorative features. You can embed contrasting pieces of soap, or toys inside bars of soap. You can use layers and contrasting colours. You can use herbs, petals and other additives to create lots of great visual features. You can use lots of different shapes of moulds to create soaps for any occasion, whereas hot and cold processed is much thicker and can’t be poured into intricate moulds. Colours appear brighter and stronger, so it easy to create fun effects with this type of soap.

Melt and Pour soap is cheap to make as the base is relatively inexpensive, whereas buying butters and oils can be expensive, especially if you are just buying small amounts at the start. However, you could start with melt and pour to see if you like soap making and then branch out into making your own soap from scratch later.

Some people like the rustic feel of hot or cold processed soap, and the choice of what ingredients to put in the base, whereas others like to have a ready made base and have fun turning it into something creative and visual. It really depends what you fancy doing, the costs, and the time involved.