Handmade Soap

Melt and Pour Soap Making - What to Know Before You Begin

Making your own handcrafted soap can be exciting and fun, and if you choose to create melt and pour soaps you won’t have to worry about using complicated recipes or dangerous chemicals. Melt and pour soaps also provide almost instant gratification. Instead of waiting days or weeks for your soap to cure, you’ll only need to wait a few hours for it to harden and set.

Before you get started, there are a few pointers that will help you make the most of this creative hobby.

Soap Base

All soap bases are not created equal. The general rule of thumb is that you get what you pay for. If you just want to make some pretty decorative soap, then the base that you find at craft stores is perfectly suitable. However, if you want to create soap that will be kind to your skin and easier to work with, search out a supplier that carries a wider variety of higher quality bases. Look online to find a local supplier, or buy your base from an online vendor such as Wholesale Supplies Plus.

Further to soap base quality, beware of those with additives. Starting off with a pure base and adding your own ingredients is much safer, and will allow you to have complete quality control over the finished product. I once used a melt and pour base from a commercial supplier with added ingredients, and as soon as it began to melt it gave off the most awful smell. After calling the manufacturer to complain, I was told that I must have burned it, because they’ve never had any other complaints.

Preparing Your Base for Melting

The best way to melt your soap base is with a double boiler. Microwaving soap can cause it to burn rather quickly, and can also cause heat pockets that will burn off your scent.

Before adding your base to the top of the double boiler chop it up very fine, or even better, grate it. Grated base will melt more evenly, and you won’t have to stir it as much. Since stirring causes air bubbles to form in the soap, the less you have to stir the better the finished product.

Melt your base over simmering water, stirring occasionally, until it is almost completely melted. Remove top pan from heat and stir a few times to melt any remaining chunks. Now you’re ready for color and scent.

A Word About Color

Colors for soap come in a wide range of formats. You can use solid colors, powders, or liquids. Use a small amount at first and add more as you stir it in to get the color you desire. It’s much easier to add a touch more color than it is to melt more soap base and mix it in with what you’ve got.

You can use food coloring in soap, but it tends to bleed easily if you’re using more than one shade in a single bar. It also fades over time. Experiment with different types to find what you like to work with best.

Clear soap base will pick up color much more easily than white base.  With a white base you’ll need to add about twice as much of your tint to get a strong, bold result. It can be nearly impossible to make an opaque red soap, as it will almost always turn out to be a strong shade of pink.

Add your color when your base is completely melted. Stir it gently to avoid getting too many air bubbles in the soap.

Choosing and Adding Scent

You can scent your soaps with essential oils, perfumes, natural ingredients like extracts or crushed herbs, or you can purchase scents especially made for soap. Commercially prepared scents can be wonderful and work well in your soap, but again, you get what you pay for. Try different ways to scent your bars, and also test different brands. Some have more staying power than others.

Always add your scent when your soap base has cooled somewhat. If the base is too hot, it will burn off your scent and you’ll have to add more. Some types of scents will add a slight color variation to your soap, especially vanilla. This should be noted on the bottle however.

Molds - Anything Goes

You can purchase soap molds at any craft store, but don’t let your imagination be limited by these! Almost any baking pan, muffin tin, or plastic container can be used as a soap mold with varied and unique results. Pringles® cans or Stax® tubes make great molds. Just leave about an inch of space at the top after pouring your soap in, and after it’s set you can cut the top of the container to peel it away without denting your finished product.

Make sure that your mold can withstand the heat of the melted soap, and it’s best not to use anything that you will need for culinary uses later. If your intended mold is made of cardboard or has a surface that may chip or melt with the direct heat of the soap, consider lining it with foil. The advantage here is that you can just pull the foil lining out of your container when the soap has set, and peel it away.

Tips and Tricks for Making Unusual Bars

Layering soap is a simple process. Melt enough base for your first layer, and add your desired color and scent. Pour a layer into your mold and let it begin to set as you melt the base for the next layer. Once there is a skin on the first layer, you can pour the second. To help the layers stick together, spray a fine mist of rubbing alcohol (available at any drug store or pharmacy) on the partially cooled layer before pouring the next one. Continue this process until you have all your layers poured, and then allow them to cool for several hours or overnight.

You can embed objects or even chunks of different-colored soap into your bars as well. Things like erasers, small plastic toys, fabric or pressed flowers, or dried herbs look lovely embedded in a bar of soap. To do this, melt enough soap base for all of your finished bars. Pour enough soap in your mold to fill it about a quarter of the way up. Allow it to cool a bit, and then place your embeds upside down on this layer. Spray with rubbing alcohol and fill the rest of your molds with melted base.
Allow to cool completely.

You can cut up chunks of multi-colored soap (save your scraps to use for this purpose) to use as embeds. Try cutting up plain white soap base into uneven chunks, and dump them into a Pringles® container (cleaned and dried). Spray the chunks with rubbing alcohol. Melt clear soap base and add your favorite color and scent, then pour the base into the Pringles® container, leaving about an inch of space on the top. Cool, and then peel away the container. Slice your soap log into bars and smooth away the edges with the back of a hot spoon or with a vegetable peeler.   You’ll have lovely round soaps with white soap chunks that look like they’re floating inside!

Another neat trick is to peel away strips of white soap base with a vegetable peeler. The strips will curl, and they make lovely embeds in bars of clear soap.

Melt and pour soapmaking is a lot of fun and a great way to express your creativity. The very best way to learn is through experimenting, and you’ll find that you come up with loads of ideas to try on your own!

~Carrie Grosvenor