soap

[helwen]

Poking around looking at soap molds and bases. The melt and pour soap base options are more varied than I remember them being when I was making soap some years ago, but it's nice to have more options. I did read a bit on lye soaps for making your own base, but that's a learning curve I really don't have time for -- certainly not this year.

The spelling/word choice (e.g., "our" vs. "are") are rather abysmal on this site, but they do give a nice little description of the differences between the major suppliers:

http://www.bulkapothecary.com/categories/soap-making/melt-and-pour-soap-bases.html

There are some great soap molds out there I'd definitely like to play with -- I still have my old soap molds but some of them are warped and need to be retired. They definitely earned their retirement though :D

I already have the cellophane for wrapping them for sale as well as for home use -- my MIL changed to a different method for wrapping the boxed candy so I ended up with several rolls of cellophane and duroroll (looks the same but doesn't shrink wrap). Oh, and still have a lot of skinny ribbon for tying them shut, too.

Comments

[loosecanon.livejournal.com]

Hrm. Lye soaps are not terribly hard, there are good calculator programs out there which do the math. Let me know when you wish to know some about it.

I am not a huge fan of melt and pour, but it does have a place.

Check out Candyland Crafts for candy type molds, if you choose any from there I can get them for you.

You might be able to negotiate a line of custom soaps with an experienced maker, if this is for the market?

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I'll keep you in mind for learning about lye soaps in the future. Really don't want to learn it this year though. Some of these would be for personal use and some possibly for pagan fairs -- there are enough soap makers around here that I don't want to infringe on the mainstream market.

I do enjoy making soaps that are dye-free and adding essential oils and/or herbs from my garden to them. If/when I get to learning to make lye soaps, I'll want to do the cold process, so that I can keep using the decorative molds.

I'll check out Candyland Crafts,to see what they have. Thanks for the offer!

[math5.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure about the melt and pour, but with the cold process I've made I've used some silicone molds that were designed for pastry. They work great I expect they would work as well for you.
(I went to lye soap because my skin react to some soap additives, and that's the best way I've found to know exactly what's in the soap :)

[helwen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the thoughts! Plastic soap molds for melt and pour need to be able to deal with a fair amount of heat, but not up to 500 degrees, which is why I thought cold process would be the way to go. I looked at the silicone molds, but I really want to be able to do the pretty designs -- it's a good selling point for some audiences. Although I suppose with the hard soaps I could throw a paper wrapper/label on them and people would like that too. If the pretty molds could work with the cold process, in the long run that would be my best bet -- need to stand out from the crowd!

The site I listed above does give all the ingredients for each of the bases.