Hello and Welcome.
I am posting a day early this week as I am off on a little extended weekend getaway shortly.
If you are a frequent visitor you may already know a little bit about how my brain works. You may even be a little bit like me. The other day I stumble across this tutorial for 10 minute milk and honey soap. I have never made my own soap before but I have enjoyed making my own lip balm and some other beauty DIY's. So I thought I would give it a try. I promptly went out and bought some Goats Milk Soap from Hobby Lobby $10.99 for two pounds plus the 40% off coupon made it about $6.60 plus tax.
I looked at the soap molds and they are reasonably priced, but this is where you either appreciate my..........let's call it creative spirit, or you simply think I am a little crazy.
I like to find uses for useless stuff. So I pondered how I could make my own soap molds. If you have ever wondered if you can make a soap mold from cracker and cereal boxes, (these are actually the type of questions that keep me up at night) The short answer is yes you can. But as with many of my experiments there is a cautionary side to this tale.
It all started innocently enough. I cut up some boxes in different shapes and sizes and made some designs to decorate the soaps.
On one of the "molds" I used Elmer's Glue and on the others I used rubber cement to hold my design layers together. To hold the edges onto the molds I used blue painters tape.
Working with the Goat's Milk Soap was very easy. It is soft to cut and melts quickly.
They say you can melt it in the microwave but I prefer the double boiler method using an old tin can, bent a to make a pour spout.
I added a little bit of food coloring and some essentials oils for fragrance.
The soap is made to suspend the additives so you can get lovely color swirl patterns by partially mixing in the colorants.
The soap needs to harden for about 40 minutes after you pour it into the molds.
So far. So Good.
And now the moment of truth.
The blue painters tape works quite well. It holds well while you need it to and comes off easily when you are ready to remove the soap.
The coating on the printed side of the box makes the sides easy to remove from the soap.
This is the mold that was glued with the Elmer's glue. It held the center design the best but the mold looked like this after the soap came out.
I was hoping to make a reusable mold so all the loose glue film was a bit disappointing.
Another unanticipated outcome.
Depending on your point of view the print transfer from the box to the soap could be viewed as good or bad. :-)
On my other molds glued with rubber cement, the sides and bottoms came off easily but the center design stayed in the soap. It had to be pried out which does mess up the design a little or a lot depending on how patient you are feeling.
In summary........
If I had it to do all over again. I would make the outsides of the molds from the box material as it is easy to cut and to shape. For the center design I would use plastic from a sour cream lid or the like and I would glue it with E-6000 glue. Perhaps there will be further soap mold experiments or I may be on to something completely different next week.
Until then......
Happy Upcycling,
