Soap Making Workshop coming up.

On Saturday 21st June our Simple Living Toowoomba group will be holding the second workshop of the year which will be a Soap Making Workshop. We did have one last year and it was hugely popular so I am sure this year's workshop will be too as there is currently a lot of interest in making soap.

Our next workshop will be run by Mandy from The Old Dairy and Helen.  They will be showing us how to make soap and giving lots of tips about using goat's milk and adding extras like oatmeal. 

Date: 21 June

Time: 10-12noon

Cost: $5

Place: Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 23 Glenvale Road.

Bookings required

We had such a successful swap before our last workshop that we will do it again before the Soap Making Workshop.  So the homegrown and handmade swap will start at 9.00am with a cuppa following at 9.30am.  The swap and cuppa are free and don't require bookings!  Just bring along up to five items that you have grown or made for the swap table.  You are welcome to come to both the workshop and cuppa/swap or just one of them.

Mandy made the double choc fudge soap I brought home from our last swap and it smelt so good that the menfolk thought it actually was fudge so I am eager to pick her brains about adding colours and essential oils, etc.to basic soap as well as to goat's milk soap. 

If you are from out of town and will be visiting for the weekend, you would be most welcome to join us and you can book here so that we know how many to expect for the workshop.  

Just an update on my goat's milk experiments for those who might be interested and who are also  moving on from making just the basic soap, you can have a look at my first batch in this post. For my second batch which I made on the weekend, instead of pouring the soap into individual moulds I put it into one silicone cake mould to see if it would heat up as it had kept the same temperature in the individual ones and hadn't heated up at all.

I had seen all these swirly things on top of some soaps on different blogs so I did a couple of different patterns with a knife on top of the soap to see how it turned out. Then I got distracted and left the soap for an hour or so then went back to see if it had heated up and sure enough.....

...it was certainly heating up so I kept an eye on it just in case I needed to put it in the fridge but it was okay. You don't wrap up the goat's milk soap like you do with the basic soap but if you did happen to take a peek at your basic soap a little while after wrapping it in towels, you will see the same process happening. It is so interesting to see the process the soap goes through and you learn a little more with each batch you make.

As you can see in the photo, the first batch of soap which is on the left is much lighter than the latest batch as I gather the darker one looks that way because the mixture got hotter and the milk burned after being poured into the one mould instead of individual ones. Correct me if I am wrong as I know there are some experienced soap makers out there reading this. 

 I can't make use of my 'handmade' stamp when I use the individual moulds so was having fun this time trying to stamp each cake of soap I cut without being too heavy handed. The swirly bits on top don't look too bad either...not that the menfolk would notice I am sure :-)

Don't forget about my 1st blog anniversary giveaway! If you would like to win an Australian wildlife book you just have to leave a comment after this post and you will be in the draw. Please note that if you don't live in Australia there will be a special draw for you so just mention that you are from overseas so that you go in the correct draw. The giveaway closes on June 15th!