I have a few hobbies but the main one is making hand-made soaps. I have friends and family members with skin conditions who benefit from gentle cleansers and I get joy from being able to be a little creative while producing something that benefits them.
Another 'hobby' is a carry-over from what was my day job. I spent a lot of my working life using Excel and couldn't help developing a few skills there. It also became an interest and is now a little like doing sudoku or a crossword puzzle. I enjoy using Excel to produce useful tools. Consequently, I decided to combine these 2 interests. I made a spreadsheet that helps me see what the likely soapy characteristics of a recipe will produce. So, what does increasing the percentage of Coconut oil do to the resulting soap etc.? After I made that sheet I decided I'd like to be able to resize a recipe depending on the mould I was using. This led to wanting to see what a recipe/batch would cost. As you see, it kind of grew as a project beyond what might be considered reasonable. :-)
Anyway, it was fun, and now I'm retired I have some time to spend on things like this. I do feel that all this effort is a bit much for just myself so I'd like to share the results of this project. This page has a link to download the spreadsheet I use. I do not doubt it will continue to develop as I find annoyances I think I can fix. I'll upload updates here as I change things. I do expect that the rate of change will be slow as I have a solution that works for me now.
I am a member of a great soaping community at https://www.soapmakingforum.com. I have also shared this spreadsheet there and have had help improving it from member's suggestions. I am very grateful to everyone who contributed their comments and suggestions.
I'd recommend anyone looking to take soap-making up as a hobby, or even as a business, to join the community for help and advice. Everyone is friendly and helpful.
For those among you for whom my free Excel spreadsheet approach isn't sufficient, an online product is available through the forum called "Soapmaking Friend". This is a much more sophisticated product and is available at an incredible price under USD$40 for a full year. There's a free trial available too.
Features include:
Design Sheet - use this sheet to see the expected characteristics of a soap, based on the oils and butters used.
Recipe Sheet - Choose different mould sizes and have recipes automagically resize to suit.
Set-up Sheets - Use these sheets to input your mould dimensions; fragrance types/suppliers/prices; Oil types/suppliers/prices; Colourants types/suppliers/prices, Standard Recipe Sheet for recording your go-to recipe.
Print Sheet - A sheet formatted for printing your recipe with all necessary data, pricing, dates etc.
Batch Sheet - There's a button that will move the information from the Recipe Sheet to a Batch Sheet to record some basic batch-cost information.
Lots of other stuff too.
Something that I should mention about the spreadsheet is that it requires macros to be enabled in order to be useful. Typically downloading and opening a file containing macros will set off lots of warnings. These are alerting you to the very real dangers that can accompany files with macros. On the other hand, I built this for myself and am offering it for free. I fully understand the caution around using such files from an unknown source. I don't do it myself!
However, as a new friend on soapmakersforum.com commented, if I was aiming to get rich by inserting nefarious code in these macros I would be targeting the wrong group with soap-makers. :-) Anyway, It is up to you. I hope you use it and enjoy playing with it. Soap making is a great hobby that actually produces something useful.
Another 'hobby' is a carry-over from what was my day job. I spent a lot of my working life using Excel and couldn't help developing a few skills there. It also became an interest and is now a little like doing sudoku or a crossword puzzle. I enjoy using Excel to produce useful tools. Consequently, I decided to combine these 2 interests. I made a spreadsheet that helps me see what the likely soapy characteristics of a recipe will produce. So, what does increasing the percentage of Coconut oil do to the resulting soap etc.? After I made that sheet I decided I'd like to be able to resize a recipe depending on the mould I was using. This led to wanting to see what a recipe/batch would cost. As you see, it kind of grew as a project beyond what might be considered reasonable. :-)
Anyway, it was fun, and now I'm retired I have some time to spend on things like this. I do feel that all this effort is a bit much for just myself so I'd like to share the results of this project. This page has a link to download the spreadsheet I use. I do not doubt it will continue to develop as I find annoyances I think I can fix. I'll upload updates here as I change things. I do expect that the rate of change will be slow as I have a solution that works for me now.
I am a member of a great soaping community at https://www.soapmakingforum.com. I have also shared this spreadsheet there and have had help improving it from member's suggestions. I am very grateful to everyone who contributed their comments and suggestions.
I'd recommend anyone looking to take soap-making up as a hobby, or even as a business, to join the community for help and advice. Everyone is friendly and helpful.
For those among you for whom my free Excel spreadsheet approach isn't sufficient, an online product is available through the forum called "Soapmaking Friend". This is a much more sophisticated product and is available at an incredible price under USD$40 for a full year. There's a free trial available too.
Features include:
Design Sheet - use this sheet to see the expected characteristics of a soap, based on the oils and butters used.
Recipe Sheet - Choose different mould sizes and have recipes automagically resize to suit.
Set-up Sheets - Use these sheets to input your mould dimensions; fragrance types/suppliers/prices; Oil types/suppliers/prices; Colourants types/suppliers/prices, Standard Recipe Sheet for recording your go-to recipe.
Print Sheet - A sheet formatted for printing your recipe with all necessary data, pricing, dates etc.
Batch Sheet - There's a button that will move the information from the Recipe Sheet to a Batch Sheet to record some basic batch-cost information.
Lots of other stuff too.
Something that I should mention about the spreadsheet is that it requires macros to be enabled in order to be useful. Typically downloading and opening a file containing macros will set off lots of warnings. These are alerting you to the very real dangers that can accompany files with macros. On the other hand, I built this for myself and am offering it for free. I fully understand the caution around using such files from an unknown source. I don't do it myself!
However, as a new friend on soapmakersforum.com commented, if I was aiming to get rich by inserting nefarious code in these macros I would be targeting the wrong group with soap-makers. :-) Anyway, It is up to you. I hope you use it and enjoy playing with it. Soap making is a great hobby that actually produces something useful.
Spreadsheet for designing soap recipes and batch sizes
