Making Melt and Pour Soap
Melt and Pour Soap, also known as glycerine soap, is a fun and simple way to make soap at home, as basically what you do is make soap from soap! Supervised children really enjoy designing their own soap as it is easy to add colours, botanicals and fragrances to make each batch unique! It can be inexpensive also, as you don't need as much specific equipment as cold process soap, and I always favoured re-using things like Pringles cartons or yoghurt pots to use as moulds!You need to purchase solid Glycerine blocks. Pure glycerine, animal or vegetable derived, is always liquid and can only be solidified by the addition of plastiser chemicals. To produce a foam, detergents are added. Melt and pour soaps may have natural ingredients added to them but they are synthetically based.
Try this Soapsations Soap Block 1 Pound-Glycerine from Amazon.com If you think your child might like to have a go but you'd rather buy everything together and avoid shopping around, this fabulous kit from Amazon has had rave reviews:
Recipe for Melt and Pour Soap
You will need:
large microwavable jug - glass or pyrex
a cutting board
an accurate scale
about 12 oz of melt and pour soap base (available from craft shops)
a sharp knife
fragrance / essential oil
colourant - Mica or food colouring
a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol to get rid of any bubbles that may come on your soap
a mould
Melt the Soap Base
Cut your soap base into small chunks and place in the microwavable jug. Put into the microwave for about 2 minutes, checking every so often, until liquid - do not over cook!
Measure the Soap Fragrance
While your soap is melting, you can measure out your fragrance oil. I usually like to fragrance my melt and pour soaps in about 3 percent (give or take a percent depending on how strong your fragrance oil or essential oil is), so for about 12 oz of soap that means a little less then 4 tenths of an ounce of fragrance oil.
Add the Fragrance and Colour to the Soap
Our soap is all melted so now we are ready to put in our fragrance and colour. Stir both of them gently with a whisk. If you want just a plain colour clear soap you could just pour it into moulds as it is, but for more interest try adding some colour to it. Just add a couple of drops to get the colour you like, and stir it with your whisk . Once the colour and the fragrance oil are in, pour into moulds.
Let the Soap Cool
This is where you would use your spray bottle of alcohol to get some of the bubbles away. That is it. Pretty easy, huh? Wait until it hardens and cools. That will take about 30-40 minutes. You could even pop it into the refrigerator to cool more quickly. When the soap is cooled completely and hardened, simply flip the mould over and press gently on the back of the cavity and they will slowly pop out.
The great thing about melt and pour soap is once you pop it out of the mould it is ready to use.
So, that's your first batch of melt and pour soap made, I'm sure you're ready now to try more!!
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