Botanical Soap Making Class
Like November’s soap making session, I ran this class though York Learning and it’s one I’ve been looking forward to running since we booked it in.
My learners arrived at Huntington School for 10.30 and I started the session with demonstrations and by talking everyone through what materials and ingredients we’d be using. I handed everyone their recipe book, a wee handout with instructions and guidelines for the five botanical soaps that they’d be creating throughout the day.
I had so much fun cooking up the recipes for this class, the hardest part was narrowing it down to just five. The five that I picked were:
Moisturising Calendula, Jasmine and Oat Soothing Lavender Lime and Coconut Scrub Citrus Segment Soap Design your own floral soap
Every learner collected up their first lot of ingredients and in no time the class room was filled with the lovely citrus and floral smells of ‘soaps in progress.’ There’s a lovely ‘craft alchemy’ feeling to soap making; as you measure out the ingredients and combine various fragrances, exfoliators, petals and colours to create each lovely soap.
Once everyone had made their soaps, we set to creating labels and pretty packaging for them, while we waited for them all to set. By 3.30pm each learner had five or more wee soaps, all in ribboned and labelled cellophane bags. The all looked (and smelled) wonderful.
I love teaching soap making, especially to adult learners and the ten attendees today were a great group; really enthusiastic, positive and inquisitive and their creations all looked magnificent.
And following on from this session, I’ll be running more soap making with York Learning in May with more dates in Autumn coming out soon. Keep an eye on www.yortime.org.uk/ to book your place.
