Course Description

Whether you want to learn to make soap to create one-of-a-kind gifts for your family and friends, as an alternative to commercial soap with preservatives and chemicals, or are going to make it to sale as a business, creating your own soap from scratch is an exciting new skill to add to your knowledge base. There are a variety of methods, melt and pour, cold process, hot process, and rebatching. This course is geared toward the holistic minded individual who wants to make soap free of synthetic chemicals using vegetable based ingredients of the cold process method.

Soap making is part craft and part science. If you’re just beginning your soap making journey, start with this comprehensive course led by Terri Meyer, an Artist and soap maker.

This course will demonstrate how to make a basic cold process soap recipe, that is a favorite in the Meyer household. Terri outlines the process step-by-step. Your first lesson outlines the equipment recommended and setting up your soap making station. Next is assembling your ingredients. The foundation of soap making starts with understanding the chemistry of it—as well as the nuances of using sodium hydroxide, aka lye, an integral ingredient.

Lye is a caustic chemical, so Terri advises how to use safety precautions, as well as the measurements of each ingredient so that you can be in control of the chemical reaction. Then, Terri gives pointers about ingredients to customize soap to your personal taste—types of molds, as well as packaging your soap bars. This course features entirely natural materials without artificial scents or additives. Included in the course is a downloadable PDF outlining the cold process method and recipes to try at home.

My Soap Journey

It was for medical reasons

My entire life I have had delicate sensitive skin. Living with skin rashes, dry skin, and other skin issues were a normal part of my life. Noticing that certain soaps and lotions made these conditions worse, I started thinking that my issues were related to the chemicals in the skin products that I used. With that thought, I decided to journey into the soap making world. Also my husband was suffering from sores on his legs and I suspected his issue also was related to chemicals in the soaps. I went online and purchased a couple of books on soap making and read them cover to cover. Wow, there was a lot to learn! What type of oils or fats to use, handling lye safely, temperatures, measurements, and doubt that I could do it successfully. Luckily I was introduced to a lady who made goat milk soap and she offered to teach me to make a batch of soap. After working with her for 2 hours on blending my first batch of goat milk soap, I had the confidence to make my own soap and experiment with new recipes. Once I realized, how simple it was, if I approached it like baking a cake, it took all the fear out of the process. To this day, my husband thanks me for learning. As he will not use commercial soap. Both of our skin issues resolved and we have been advocates of natural soap since 2007.

Course curriculum

Meet the Soap Maker

Terri Meyer

Hi! I'm Terri and I am an artist who lives on a ranch in the country. I love creating, cooking, sharing life with my husband, family and friends and drinking good wine! Need I say more? I think we were meant to be friends.....

My goal is to help you build confidence and skill in your creativity, inspire you to push your boundaries and share your creativity with the world if you choose to do so. Let your creative light shine, so you too can share your passion with friends, family and yes patrons! 

 I’ve been creative since I was born, it oozes from my blood. It's difficult to turn the creative inspiration off as ideas pester me until I act upon them. It runs in my family, my father was a machinist, carpenter, mechanic, autobody repairman, and could fix about anything. My mother, sews, knits, crochets, cans, out bakes Betty Crocker and makes candy. She's like Willy Wonka on steroids at Christmas. There was creative energy all around me growing up, My mother had 7 sewing machines and an entire room dedicated to fabric, notions, and sewing supplies. Our tiny house was always in disarray from the various projects in progress. I started sewing Barbie doll clothes when I was six and progressed to my own clothes at the age of 10 until today. I picked up drawing portraits of my teachers and friends in junior high and high school, as I had wonderful nurturing art teachers. Later in life as I switched gears from the corporate life to one of a full time artist, I started taking workshops from well established national artists who were the best in the country. This is where I gained most of my skills in painting and sculpting. It’s been a beautiful journey, one that I am eager to share with you. 

Creating is what keeps me smiling, striving harder, learning and growing. I feel as though I have merely touched the surface of what there is to learn and will always be looking for new techniques to make my creativity better. I love taking workshops, however, I discovered you could create a pretty nice painting or sculpture during the class, but when you came home to your own space, much of the information was lost. Yes, I had notes, but I did not have the teachers to interact with or a video of the process to reproduce the same results. It was frustrating, spending $1000 to $2000 on a workshop and feel lost in the studio with no one to ask questions. That’s why I love videos! You can watch them again and again to fill in the gaps of those memory lapses. Did the teacher do this first or that first? Oh let me review my brain, it’s not recorded anywhere, ugh. This is why I share my knowledge, to assist you in your artistic journey. 

 

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