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Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us - Books One & Two
Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us - Books One & Two
Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us - Books One & Two
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Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us - Books One & Two

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In Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us, author Darren Jorgensen gives his considerable soapmaking knowledge to us. A soapmaker for many years, Jorgensen knows the ins and outs of making soap - including using all kinds of alternative liquids and additives that change a good soap into a great soap.

In Book One, Jorgensen concentrates on the art and craft of soapmaking. Here he details all kinds of information that will help not only the novice soapmaker but the considerably more advanced soapmaker will find lots to chew on, too.

In Book Two of Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us, Jorgensen takes us through "Exercises" that teach us how to not only make a perfect layered soap, but also how to work with all kinds of alternate liquids and additives.

From foodstuffs to coffee grounds, from liquid goat milk to powdered goat milk, Jorgensen teaches us how to work some of the harder elements of advanced soapmaking.

But it's not just his recipes - or exercises as he calls them - but his prose on the soapmaking world and how to navigate its many pitfalls. Whereas in Book One he teaches so much about soapmaking as a craft and an art, in Book Two he teaches so much about soapmaking as a business.

From farmers markets to craft fairs, from trade shows to medium-scale clients, Jorgensen adds his observations, his critique and his helpful advice.

BOOK ONE REVIEW: "Great book. It is a must read for soap makers. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it extremely helpful." - Nancy Perkins

LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 20, 2015
ISBN9781311300225
Beyond Beginners: Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us - Books One & Two
Author

Darren Jorgensen

Always testing, limits, recipes and life. Soapmaking has been a tremendous journey into the wells of solitude and creativity and incredible cash crises. I write these books because I had to, because there is so much misinformation and poorly written soaping books out there. I wanted mine to stand up with the best - which is why I wrote them to be the best I can offer and the best you can find. My dogs, Molly and Dobby (both named for Harry Potter characters), have kept vigil with me on the long nights soapmaking and testing new theories and trying new ideas. They've seen their share of disasters. So have I. But the journey? Worth it - all the way!

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    Beyond Beginners - Darren Jorgensen

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    Beyond Beginners:  Advanced Soapmaking for the Rest of Us! - Book One

    BY

    DARREN JORGENSEN

    Preface to Book One

    I write this preface after developing my outline for the complete book, but after writing only the first half of it.

    Why do I stop here?

    I don’t stop. I pause. I wonder at the number of words and conclude that this is enough information to keep a reader engrossed for several days - and possibly overwhelm them. There is a lot to learn here, depending entirely on how far advanced each of you, my readers, are in cold process soapcrafting.

    My goal is to teach. My aims are lofty, I realize. Who am I to teach? Just some bloke who had to learn a lot of it on his own - because the books just weren’t out there to teach me.

    I’ve done the research. I mean the research of looking for other intermediate soapcrafting books. And you know what? The pickings are slim. And of those few that are available I always found some basic explanations lacking.

    Again, why do I stop here, after only the first half of the book that I’ve mapped out? Because I wanted to get this information out as soon as possible. I guess I’m excited to publish my second book (my first is a work of fiction that I published long ago). And I will be just as excited to publish the second half of this book soon.

    Then where is the second part of the book?

    By the time this is published, one half of it will have transferred through my fingers into the keyboard of my computer, soon to be finished. I expect a 3 - 6 month difference in publishing dates between the two halves of the book.

    So what is in the books? You will see what’s in this book from the Table of Contents. But there is more than the table of contents will show. There is an enormous amount of other research here, not about books, but about soapcrafting. The elements of soapcrafting they just don’t teach you in beginner soapcrafting books. Plus there’s the in-house research - the kind of research that is done by doing. Doing this. Doing that. Trying this technique. Trying that technique.

    And there have been flops along the way! I wouldn’t say catastrophic flops; none of them exploded my basement or anything. But catastrophic in how each of these flops dashed to the curb ideas or theories or just plain creative visions.

    But there have been some minor triumphs, too. Like when I figured out the best way to superfat and how to ensure that my superfatting and my scent would always get into my recipe without forgetting them. You know how you sometimes forget them in the heat of soaping? This was a simple little gem of an idea that has stood me in good stead for a long time now, without ever once allowing me to forget my superfatting nor my scent from my batch.

    Or my own little triumph when I figured out - on my own - how to use a lye calculator to build new recipes to try.

    The first half of the book contains mostly this type of information. Little bits and bites and gems that will help prepare you to not only make your own recipe to your own specifications by using scientific knowledge - don’t worry, I’ll give you that knowledge in easy to understand english - but also to use that knowledge to craft exactly the soap recipe you desire. Then once you have this knowledge and have crafted your own, unique recipe for yourself, we will use that recipe to adapt to the other recipes in Part Two of the book.

    Part One of the book will also go into many other kinds of knowledge that you can adapt to your recipe and use in part two. For example, the component on colorants contains not only the common colourants, but also using clays and foodstuffs for colour. You may wish to use some of these items to produce the colours for the projects in Part Two of the book.

    See how they fit together? Very well.

    In part two I will also go into the professional aspects of selling your soaps - everything from pricing to developing a concept for your Farmers Market table and much in between and beyond.

    With that all said, the only thing left to say in the Preface is to send a big shout out to Ginette - my muse, my special one, my only one. In no way could this book have been written without her gentle guidance throughout all these years. She has been there through thick and thin. I hope she will be there always.

    This book, in essence, is hers.

    Darren Jorgensen

    13 April 2015

    Other Books by Darren Jorgensen

    The Searing

    TEXT COPYRIGHT BY

    ©2015 DARREN JORGENSEN

    ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

    PUBLISHED BY SMASHWORDS

    This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. While all attempts have been made to provide effective, verifiable information in this book, neither the author nor publisher assumes responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions. Any slights of people or organizations are unintentional. Copyright prohibits any part of this book from being copied or distributed in any form without written consent of the publisher or author - including online distribution of any work contained herein.

    Many Thanks.

    To Betty.

    The love of my life.

    My partner in so many things, not just this journey of life.

    In talking. In discussing. In debating.

    In adventuring.

    In trying new things. In nights out and nights in. Through sickness. Through the good. Through the difficult. Through the trying times and the amazing moments that always seem to catch us by surprise, take our breath away.

    Through the feelings that sometimes threaten to rip me apart…she’s there. Always and constant. My greatest love. My one love. My life partner in this thing we call life. Always and forever, Betty.

    I’ve waited - some might say too long - and the waiting is finally over.

    The bestest thing ever to happen to me: Betty.

    The love of my life.

    Your love, Reynaldo.

    DARREN JORGENSEN

    CEO/HEAD SOAPCRAFTER

    SOAPS AND LATHER

    http://www.facebook.com/soapsandlather

    http://www.soapsandlather.com

    "Look ahead into the past, and back into the future,

    Until the silence."

    MARGARET LAWRENCE

    THE DIVINERS

    My SoapCrafting Journey

    My own soapcrafting journey began like so many other’s: with serendipity at its core.

    It begins like this.

    While perusing the shelves at Michael’s one evening, I mentioned to Betty that I’d always wanted to learn how to make soap. Which was not entirely true.

    When I was 19 and living in Montreal I was out exploring an unknown to me part of the shopping district when I happened upon a shop with loaf after loaf of beautifully coloured and designed melt and pour soaps. At the time I had no idea the difference between melt and pour and cold process soapcrafting. Who was there to explain it? I had no friends who made soap. I had no one to explain the difference between the two methods.

    So I continued on my way that day, wishing I had some means of learning how to do this on my own and how to make such beautiful pieces of art. But, alas, the day ended and I mostly forgot about the keen desire that had awakened in me.

    Fast forward years and years later, to an evening walking the aisles in Michael’s - the overpriced craft store for dilettantes and dabblers.

    So I mentioned to Betty that I had harboured a secret desire to learn soapcrafting for many years, but had never had the chance. And then I moved on to another aisle.

    Did I mention what time of year it was? I think not, but Christmas was only weeks away and I should’ve remembered that! And so, under the tree that fateful morning, hidden within beautifully coloured wrapping paper was a melt and pour kit that contained some clear melt and pour, three liquid colours and once scent container with a flowery kind of scent inside.

    And another gift for me was a hardcover cold process soapcrafting book inside, with stunning colour photos of clearly illustrated cold process soapcrafting techniques and the final state of these incredibly performed soaps.

    I was thrilled! Wow! I was finally going to learn how to make soap!

    And it didn’t take me long to understand that my wonderful melt and pour kit was going to be outgrown as soon as I opened the cold process book.

    From there I read. And read and read and read. Everything I could find online, from soapcrafting blogs like the Soap Queen’s to soapcrafting articles to whole books that I downloaded and consumed like they were cheesecake.

    I like cheesecake, by the way.

    And then came the supplies and the equipment. I saved up my money - it was tight back then - and slowly bought piece by piece as I could. The Dollar Store was my friend. And a real, good friend back then. It still is, as a matter of fact. You might be surprised as to how much of your soaping supplies like bowls and spatulas and spoons and sieves and so on can be found there.

    And then there I was one day, with a mold that was lined with terrible wrinkles, some oils that I had picked up to match a recipe I had decided on from one of my books - and my lye! I was ready to go.

    I stood there that day, at the table we had moved into the basement laundry room which we had decided on would double as my soaping room, with my supplies set out before me all lined up in the order I would need them, some good bar cloths I had picked up as soaping rags, my small selection of colours, and everything else I thought I might need.

    So I stood there, as the sweat began to bead on my forehead and under my arms, paralyzed with fear!

    Have you been there yourself? All hyped up to try something new but terrified to take that first step?

    Well, the soap that day got made - and it turned out pretty good, too. No disasters. No lye burns. No drama, no catastrophes, no deaths. Just soap. And pretty good soap, if I do say so myself!

    And that was it. I was like a racehorse who had been tethered way too long. All I needed, it seemed, was some good direction, some supplies and some encouragement (and some lye!) and my life had changed. Immensely and for the better.

    I say it has changed for the better because in many ways soapcrafting has filled a gap inside me which had been a gaping hole before my beginning soaping.

    Looking back, I was always looking for something to fill the hole. I had written a novel. I had studied photography professionally. I had climbed on stage in theatre school. I had my undergraduate degree in art and art theory. In fact, I even had studied for my Masters of Fine Arts for three years in an attempt to find a way to express myself through art production and theory.

    In other words, the hole had been there a long, long time and I had never quite successfully filled that hole. Just covered it up, if you will.

    But soaping has changed all that.

    The hole seems filled, if not obliterated. No longer do I stay up at night attempting to discern some way of quelling the raging need to communicate without the language to do it in.

    Obviously, I believe that soaping is an art form. And you may disagree, thinking it is just a form of crafting a utilitarian object. But I doubt that. If you really thought that soaping was just a form of making soap then I doubt you’d be here, in front of this page, trying to improve your skills, your understanding of the process, and deepen your knowledge of this amazing art form.

    The combination of recipe, colour, scent, methodology, additives and embeds stack up to quite a number of variables in any soaping journey. Learning and mastering how to manage and manipulate these variables is the stuff that art is made of.

    You can kid yourself and convince yourself that you’re only performing a craft.

    But you’d be lying to yourself.

    So with that said, let’s move forward in our journey together!

    What this Book Is and Isn’t

    This book is about soapcrafting - obviously.

    It is not a book of recipes.

    It is a book about processes, not particular soaps.

    I take a different angle with which to look at soaping.

    By now you’ve probably got your favourite recipe or two that you rely on, varying it with additives and nuanced shifts in process and procedures. And if you’re not doing that - taking your favourite recipes and adjusting to apply to your goals then you’ve come to the right place. That is basically what we’ll be doing here. We’ll be working with a few basic recipes and adjusting them for the goals at hand. By doing this here, in the book, it is my hope that you will learn to do it on your own.

    Because we all should have our favourite recipes by now. We all should have our special thoughts and ideas of what we’d like to try next within our soapcrafting journey.

    The primary goal of this book is to give you the tools with which

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