Making Melt and Pour Soap

How to make Melt and Pour Soap with Deborah Dolen Film

There are two kinds of real soap and “melt and pour” would be strictly the second kind-our newer age soap we did not have back in the early 1900’s.  Vegetable glycerin is made with a vegetable base such as coconut.  Vegetable glycerin “melt and pour” soap is by far the easiest and most versatile to use when creating projects with kids.  In making melt and pour soap, kids or adults can learn measurement, weights, color, percentages, artistry and even learn about scent while having fun.   The bonus is an actual real handmade finished product.  

Vegetable Glycerin soap is great for moisturizing the skin and I find nothing else comes close.  So, I will use vegetable glycerin soap when my skin is dry (after a sugar scrub to remove dry flaky skin cells.)  Vegetable glycerin soap can be considered a good “winter” month soap.  Melt and pour  vegetable glycerin soap is also a great base for medicinal ingredients such as calamine – for run ins with poison ivy or utilitarian, such as added pumice to make a gardener’s hand soap.  Melt and Pour can also produce other specialty soaps such as kitchen deodorizer bar-which interestingly enough has fresh coffee grounds in half of the recipe. 

If you like a more “rustic soap” you can add ingredients to make your melt and pour more durable.  Beeswax is one example, and oxides such as titanium or zinc another example.  Just make sure the oxides are water soluble and not oil soluble. 

If you really want a hard bar that is for cleansing than go over to the lye based family.  Even so, you can make beautiful lye based soaps without lye.  Rebatching is the way to go.  For more on making lye based soaps and rebatching click here.

Storing Your Melt and Pour Soap

If you live in a very humid area, melt and pour soap can be hard to maintain in finished form.  It is such a humectants, it draws water in the air from everywhere.  The only solution I have ever heard of is to dip the finished product (why dry) in a natural “puzzle” glue to maintain outward appearance.  That is for people selling them.  For use in the bathroom, I found I just have to keep them dry and in a case or at minimum on a little wrack so they do not stand in water.

More About Soap

I love all kinds of soap-except “fake soap.”  Fake soap is what we call “bars” and see in the grocery stores.  You will not see “soap” on the label because most of our “bars” are compacted blocks of chemicals and, in my opinion and experience.  This goes back to my belief everything we put on our skin enters our blood stream. 

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