Making soap: 'Clean me up Scotty' edition..

I admit, I have a problem.. Over het last few months I bought a lot of silicone molds. I can't help myself! They are just so versatile, I imagine all the things I can make with them, and buy another one.. You can find a lot of them on Wish, such as the one I'm using here. But Bol.com has several too.

At first I used them for cookies only, which had mixed results. Some molds are quite deep, and thick cookies are not always what you want. It gets even more complicated when other molds are not that deep.. some cookies are brown and others still not done, not cool.

Making washing up fun!
But you can do so much more with them, such as making soap! And that's easier then it seems. Geeklings can help with it (adding color or stirring) and make their own soaps when they are a bit older. And I can guaranty from experience that they will love washing their hands when they made the soap themselves!

White or transparent?
Okay, making soap, part one. The best way to make soap is to buy soap that is especially made to pour. Have a look around the internet, because prices vary.. The soap can be either white, or transparent, and both have advantages. White soap is not translucent, and that gives the soap a nice effect. Downside.. when the base is white, adding pigment can be tricky. White and red makes pink, not red, white and black makes grey. You can do cool things with transparent soap, such as adding things to the soap, another small mold in a bigger one, glitter, or flowers, the possibilities are endless.

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You have chosen your soap. Good job ;-) but what colors do you want? And what about scents? It is a bit of an investment the first time, but you only need a few drops of pigment at a time, so a little bit goes a long way. I would recommend buying a set of basic colors, because you can mix the rest. Scents also last a long time, I bought a few, but it's not that important to me.

Melting soap is easy, but be careful that it doesn't get too hot. You can either melt the soap au bain marie on a stove, or in short bursts (20 seconds or less at a time) in the microwave. My soap came with a plastic measuring cup, which made using the stove impossible.. but the microwave does a great job.

Hurry, hurry
Soap doesn't stay in liquid form for long, so make sure you have everything you need ready. Add some color, stir, add scent and pour in the mold. In this case, my Star Trek mold. I wanted my soaps to look like communicators, in black and gold. That turned out to be quite hard. Making white soap black enough took a few tries, and blending colors to get something that looks like gold was also difficult.

For a few of the soaps I used two layers. If you want to do this, make sure that the first layer is almost hard, spray that layer with alcohol and add the second layer. Alcohol is very useful when making soap. It kills the bubbles in the soap and makes layers stick, you can buy it in webshops that sell the soap too.

So, what do you think of my Star Trek soap?

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