Learn the slow art of cold process botanical soap in a calm, hands on morning at Westbury Arts Centre. Take home soap you made yourself.

Make your first ever batch of botanical soap, from real ingredients, with your own hands, in one unhurried morning.

I'm Dilek, founder of The Soap Academy, and I teach the craft the way I wish I had been taught: calmly, clearly and one step at a time. No chemistry background needed, just curiosity.

What we'll do together

In two hours you will learn the real fundamentals of cold process soap making. How to handle lye safely. How oils and butters behave. How to recognise trace, the moment soap begins to become soap. How botanicals and pure essential oils bring a bar to life. I demonstrate the full process first, then you make your own batch with my support at every stage, and there is plenty of time for questions.

What you take home

Your own batch of botanical soap, ready to cure at home, plus my guidance notes so you know exactly what to do next. Six weeks later you will be washing with soap you made yourself, and I promise the wait is part of the pleasure.

Who this is for

Complete beginners. If you have never touched a soap mould in your life, you are exactly who this workshop is for. Many of my students arrive nervous about the chemistry and leave planning their second batch. Some leave with a new hobby. A few have gone on to build handmade businesses.

What's included

Everything. All oils, butters, lye solution, botanicals, pure essential oils, moulds, tools and protective equipment are provided. Just bring yourself.

The practical bits

We meet at Westbury Arts Centre, a beautiful historic manor house in Milton Keynes with free parking on site. Group sizes are deliberately small, because I make soap in small batches and I teach the same way. When a date is full, it is full.

I grow many of the botanicals I use on my own allotment, and everything I teach comes from years of making, failing, learning and making again. This is soap making as it should be: slow, botanical and genuinely enjoyable.

Can't make these dates? My online beginners course brings my classroom to your kitchen, wherever you are. You will find it at thesoapacademy.com

Description supplied by the event organiser.