When it comes to soap making molds, you can find them anywhere. Certainly, you can buy them online or at many retail craft stores. But, why not just look around your house? You’ll be surprised at how many objects you already have will make for some very neat looking soap bars.
You’ll find an almost infinite number of options. You could use old Christmas decorations, dishes, flowerpots, and so on. While the basic rectangle is a serviceable shape for soap, the chances are good that once you have gone to all the trouble of making your own soap you will want to display it as attractively as possible.
Here are a few suggestions of what make the best molds, as well as a few common household items you can use for molds.
o Microwave safe dishes, especially those with individual compartments
o Ice cream cups with fluted sides – these plastic gems often come with sundaes from the freezer section or from fast food restaurants
o Basic muffin pan
o Candle mold used in home candle making
o Tin cans for hand milled soap such as tuna or sardines. You can then wrap your soaps with a nautical theme.
o Your craft store will probably have molds for making fancy soaps, and these come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Why not have animal shaped soaps or soaps that look like angels in flight?
o Plastic margarine containers make great larger soaps, which will reduce the number of times you have to step out of the shower, dripping wet to grab a new bar of soap.
o Almost any mold can be used to make a soap-on-a-rope – just make sure you put the rope in far enough that it can not be pulled out, and the hardening soap should hold it fast.
o Small wooden molds make for terrific soaps, and the wood grain adds a tremendous natural pattern. Wooden molds can also be designed with removable sides, which makes removing the hardened bar of soap much easier. Wooden molds can also be used to make three-dimensional bars for the same reason.
o While pre-made molds are numerous and are available from many sources, your imagination could probably dream up molds that others have not yet thought up. Therefore, let your imagination run wild and see what options you can create.
Here’s a few more soap mold tips:
o When you are looking for molds, remember that plastic and stainless steel are the best material to use. While you can use ceramics or glass, it may be harder to extract the soap from a glass container in one piece. The high and sustained heat (followed often by freezing) also often crack or break these types of molds.
o When choosing plastic molds, make sure they can withstand high heat. A good rule of thumb is that if it is dishwasher safe, it can probably be used as a soap mold.
o Thicker is not necessarily better! In your search for a strong mold, you may pick something thick and rigid. However, it can be hard to remove soap from these types of mold. You are better off selecting a material that can be bent or warped out of shape to break the connection between soap and mold.
o Unless you want to cut the mold open to get the soap out, make sure that the open end of your mold is larger than the rest of the mold so that the soap can be removed. If you want to create a three-dimensional soap, consider using a two-sided mold, as described below.
o Be sensible – while small molds may be pretty, the resulting bar of soap may be too small to be of practical use. Worse yet, it may slide down the drain. If you though wasting soap were irritating before, wait until that soap is the sum of your hard work and effort!
o Silicone is a new material for making soap molds. Soft and yet heat resistant, silicone is long lasting and resist caustic lye well.
So, create some very unique and interesting soap bars by simply looking around your home for objects you can use as inexpensive soap molds.
