By Lisa Maliga, copyright 2015
I was once asked how have
crafts inspired your writing? Well, I can’t sew a straight line. I can’t knit
without dropping stitches. And I’m sure my signature dish of French Toast would
be laughed at by Gordon Ramsay.
But I get creative in the
kitchen in a different way – by making soap! Even before Lush opened their
first store in Southern California, I was a huge fan of their products. I’d
ordered several of their soaps from Canada and eagerly awaited the package’s
delivery. I was impressed with the appealing chunks of goodness as they cut the
soft soap from a large cheese-like wheel. All were nasal bliss, and did the job
of cleaning and softening quite well. I’d never used glycerin soap before and
back in 1997 there wasn’t that much information about it online. A few
companies sold it in bulk and after making my first batch of soap with some
marigold [calendula] petals on top, I was hooked.
I immersed myself in learning
how to make soap and found it easy to concentrate on what I was doing. I guess
I could compare it with writing. The soap base is the story. The shape of the
mold is compared to the characters and their motivation, the color equals
dialogue, and the fragrance corresponds with the tone of the story. Wrapping
and labeling is like the sense of location[s] found in a novel. Writing
involves sitting in front of the computer and staring at the monitor. In the
kitchen is where I decide what type of soap to make and I concentrate on that.
The creativity involved can be spontaneous…for my La Brea Tar Pits soap I used
a plastic cookie liner for a mold and the name came from the nearby tar pits.
Tea tree essential oil removes tar from the skin as does lavender, and it
enhances the aroma. Whole oats help clean and soften the skin, and cornmeal is
an exfoliant, removing excess dirt. Each element has its place.
Taking the same creativity I use
when designing soap and other bath & body products, writing about
soapmaking is easy. I see it as sharing the joy of a fun and crafty hobby [tho’
it was a business for me for almost five years]. I hope to make everything easier for the
reader so they don’t make the same mistakes I did. The recipes I’d created over
the years were all handwritten. When I wrote The Joy of Melt and Pour Soap Crafting, I actually typed them out
for the first time. To this day, every product I make always involves writing
down all the ingredients so I know what fragrances I’ve blended, what oils and
butters I’ve used, the amounts, etc. I also remembered what it was like when I
made my first batch of soap using one page of instructions. I wanted more
information as I had many questions. And just like my writing, I’ve learned it
all by doing. By making hundreds of batches of soap, and by writing hundreds of
thousands of words.
In the above photo, I was able
to put my creative skills to use by packaging some of my products in a little
gift box I found at a thrift store. Learn more about wrapping soap in
About the Author:
Lisa Maliga is an American novelist and nonfiction author of several soap crafting books. She's recently released "Organic and Sulfate Free Melt and Pour Glycerin Soap Crafting Recipes" and "Nilotica [East African] Shea Body Butter Recipes [The Whipped Shea Butter Series], Book 1." Lisa's coming of age novel set in the 1970s and 80s is a book that took more than a decade to write. A reader wrote, "Out of the Blue: A Novel is a story about a young woman's journey to emotional maturity but there is an underlying thread. That thread is the connection between intuitives which will be familiar to anyone of an introspective bent." She is also working on the fourth book of the Yolanda's Yummery Series. When not writing, Lisa reads an assortment of books, watches movies, makes soap/bath and body products, and bakes late at night. Sometimes she manages to escape to a quiet park and photograph animals, especially squirrels.
You'll find more about her work at:
http://www.lisamaliga.com
http://lisamaliga.wordpress.com
http://pinterest.com/lisamaliga
http://eepurl.com/UZbE9 [The Discerning Readers' Newsletter]
http://www.lisamaliga.com
http://lisamaliga.wordpress.com
http://pinterest.com/lisamaliga
http://eepurl.com/UZbE9 [The Discerning Readers' Newsletter]
