Received a call from Yen Lin on Thursday asking if I'm interested to join her for a DIY Handmade Soap class and I was delighted but the price of the class; RM75 kept me wonder why it's such an expensive class to attend. Anyway, she told me it will be making Marseille soap and I was like, "Huh? What is that?" After confirming my attendance on Friday evening, I was looking forward to the Sunday class at Cheras.
The journey to the location was a lengthy one as I was not able to find the time to google the place so I've decided that we take the public train. As usual... we are never satisfied with the punctuality of our Malaysia train system. Not going to elaborate on it as it's just plain boring and disappointing.
We were a little late for our class, by approximately 10 minutes and we blame it on the public train! Anyway, lucky, we are not the last student to arrive and the teacher gladly waited for us. :D
Since the class was organised by a Mandarin speaking teacher and I was the only one speaking English and only understanding the Mandarin language basics, I definitely had some hard times trying to figure out all the "jargon" names of each ingredients being used. Yen Lin was definitely very patient to translate for me *phew*.
For the beginning of the class, I was so engrossed in learning how to make soap and "mentally" translating Mandarin in order to understand the steps, thus I have forgotten about taking pictures until the mixtures were all in a silver bowl.
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| Opps, our mixture is too dark! Too much honey added. |
For our class, we made Savon de Marseille with Rose Honey. I personally do not fancy "rose" as the choosen scent for a soap but Yen Lin loves it alot. :) I'm more interested to learn how to make handmade soap to shower and improve my rashes-skin.
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Whisking the mixture |
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| Teacher adding honey to our mixture |
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| A picture with our Teacher |
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| The utensils are left to "dry" as the leftover-soap mixture will harden. No washing required! |
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| We used recycled 1L carton box to put our soap mixture |
We have to wait for 24 hours in order to see the result; which is tomorrow. Meantime, we are supposed to wrap up the carton box with a clothe and keep it warm and store it somewhere dry. And if successfully form in a block of soap tomorrow, we can cut or shape it to our prefered shape. Just have to wait for the result tomorrow... The teacher is really interesting and she answered all our questioins with a smile despite she was losing her voice but I definitely learned a good lesson today in how to make soap! I asked her if she organise English-speaking lessons and she said she didn't as she don't speak good English but she travels to Australia often. And she even said I can be her translator if she one day organise English-speaking class. Hehehe... looking forward to that!
While we miggling around and asking more questions, I also bought a bar of soap that the Teacher has made. I picked my all-time favourite; Goat Milk soap. But her version comes with egg. According to her, the egg will help to beneficial our skin. Cost me RM15 which I think it's a good buy. I also love the pressed-pattern of the "love-tree" (my own description as you can see, it's a tree with branches and love-shaped leaves).
Along our way back in the train, Yen Lin told me the background of the soap and that's why its called, "Savon de Marseille". It's originated from France and it has to have 72% of olive oil as it's ingredient.
I shall be home early for my "soap-opening" ceremony. Kekekeke...
