Discover desert pizza recipes on show

Information on decorating a monthly planner, quilting with heavier fabrics and making your own soaps will be the featured topics on “Creative Living” on Tuesday at 9:30 p.m. and on Thursday at noon. (All times are Mountain.)

Marjolaine Walker is the owner and designer of Twelve Stones Scrapbooking. She’s going to show how to decorate a monthly calendar page with stickers and scrapbooking supplies. She’ll also show how to make a dashboard with an inspirational message. To do lists are more fun to follow when they are appealing to look at. Walker is from Ottawa, Canada.

Dorothy Brown, owner of the International Fabric Collection, will show how to quilt using heavier, darker fabrics, much like those the Amish used in their quilting. Her examples feature either heavy cotton or wool that has been used for quilting. Brown lives in Erie, Pennsylvania.

David Fisher is a self-taught soap maker, and he’s going to demonstrate the basics of soap making and explain the different methods you can use. He’ll talk about the tools and equipment needed and show how to customize your soaps. Fisher is writing his own book about the basics of soap making. He is from Dallas, Texas.

Information on becoming a more memorable person, making dessert pizzas and punch needle and machine embroidery will be the featured topics on “Creative Living” on Tuesday at noon and on Saturday at 2 p.m.

Author and speaker Ruthie Dearing has written a book titled “On Being Memorable: Nine Keys for Exceptional Change,” and she’s going to talk about our potential to change and how to create a “picture” of yourself. She is from Albuquerque.

Nancy Siler is with Wilton Brands in Woodridge, Illinois, and she’s going to demonstrate making pizza — brownie pizza that is. She’ll show a Black Forest pizza, a Rocky Road variety and a peanut butter pizza, and each one is a fun and delicious dessert.

Designer and digitizer Laura Waterfield, owner of Laura’s Sewing Studio, will demonstrate punch needle and machine embroidery techniques. She has several beautiful examples of clothing featuring this technique to show. Waterfield lives in Tomball, Texas.

How to make homemade soap

Making your own soap at home is easy, frugal, creative and fulfilling. There’s something really marvelous about taking a bar of your own homemade soap into the bath or shower with you. There are four basic methods for making soap at home. Melt and pour — melt pre-made blocks of soap and add your own fragrance. Cold process is the most common — making soap from scratch with oils and lye. Hot process is a variation of cold process where the soap is actually cooking in a crock pot or oven, and rebatching or grinding up bars of soap, adding milk or water, and re-blending them. Each method has pros and cons.

With melt and pour soap making, you buy pre-made blocks of uncolored, unscented soap “base” from a craft store or soap supplier. Melt the soap base in the microwave or a double boiler and then add your fragrance, color and/or additives. Put it in a mold, and voila, you’re done. This is an easy and inexpensive way to start making soap. There is no need to deal with dangerous lye mixtures and you don’t need a lot of ingredients to start. The soap is ready to use as soon as it hardens. The cons of this method are no control over your ingredients and your soap is only as good as the base you purchase. Melt and pour is not quite as “natural” as other methods. For more information, see David Fisher’s videos on YouTube.

“Creative Living" is produced and hosted by Sheryl Borden. The show is carried by more than 118 PBS stations in the United States, Canada, Guam and Puerto Rico and is distributed by Westlink, Albuquerque.