I have been playing around with melt and pour soap (also known as
glycerin soap). It's easy because I cut up chunks of already made soap
base, melt it in the microwave, add fragrance and color, then pour into
molds. Once the soap is cooled and hard I can just pop them out of the
mold and they are ready to use. No need to wait weeks for curing/drying
like in cold process or hot process soap making.
I recently got some shot glass molds. They are intended to make ice
shot glasses, but I saw somewhere where they were used to make soap. I
thought I'd try. I got 2 different kinds. At Bed Bath and Beyond I got
a 2 piece hard plastic molds, 12 molds in the pack. These are really
hard to unmold. Because the plastic is hard it has no flexibility. I
had to bang and twist, put it in the freezer, bang and twist, bang and
twist several times before I was able to pop them out of the mold. The
second mold I got is silicone. After a couple of attempts to get it
online, both times they were sold out after I made the purchase, I
finally found it in a cooking supply store Santa Cruz. This is so much
easier to unmold. It's a one piece mold with 4 cavities. The glasses
are a bigger than the hard plastic mold.
Anyway I made shot glasses and the “shots” to go in them. I left the
soap clear for the “glasses” then colored the “liquid”. I put
fragrance in both clear and colored so the entire soap would have
scent. For the “liquid” in the first shot in the hard plastic mold I
used an opaque colorant so it's looks weird. I don't know what kind of
drink would be opaque burgundy color. I fragranced it with Black
Cherry, smells sort of like cough syrup. The silicone shots I used
Strawberry Jam fragrance and Bramble Berry's Non-Bleeding Red for the
liquid. Looked really cool. But when I looked at the shot today, the
red coloring had bled to the clear glass, so the entire soap has a red
haze to it. That's so disappointing. If you look at the photos, the
red shot used to look like the green and orange one. Well, I went ahead
and made a couple more today anyway. I used Lime Mint fragrance with
Emerald colorant and Grapefruit with Marigold colorant (it's actually
meant for cold process, but I tried anyway). The Marigold came out more
orange, I probably should have used an orange fragrance instead of
grapefruit. Oh well.
I'm sure these shots will bleed through as well. I'm glad I got
photos of them before that happens. Colorants like oxides and micas
won't bleed in melt and pour soaps, but they make the clear soap opaque,
so it doesn't look like a translucent drink anymore.
Oh, I tried the smaller shot and it lasted about 9 showers.
