Soap Molds from Homemade Items

Three years ago I created an article for Helium on making soap at home from glycerin cubes that you melt and pour into a purchased mold. These simple soaps can customized by adding coloring and scents of your choice. One of the other ways to make melt and pour soaps is to create them in your own homemade molds.

Interestingly enough, my article on homemade molds for soaps was published in May of 2010, a little over a year before the one on the basics of melt and pour soap. Of course I can't remember now if I suggested the title or if Helium posted it, but nonetheless, here it is:

Five Homemade Soap Molds

Making homemade soap can be a lot of fun especially when using melt and pour glycerin.  You simply break apart a few cubes, heat according to instruction and carefully pour the liquid into a waiting mold.  Just about any thing from a sea shell to a baking pan can serve as a homemade mold for your own custom soaps.

Some household items will be easier than others to turn into molds based on their flexibility.  Ice trays with fun party shapes would make great homemade molds for fashioning small sized custom guest soaps and there are a variety of shapes available on the market for doing so.  For more variety in appearance add soap colorant or powders.

Small food storage containers can easily serve as home made soap molds particularly those that are somewhat flexible or have sides that could be squeezed slightly to help in gently removing the soap after it has completely cooled and hardened.  Dried herbs in whole or ground form make a nice addition (and can add color, fragrance or both) to these simple soaps.

Baking pans such as muffin tins and tiny loaf pans are handy as use for homemade molds for individual round or rectangular shaped soaps.  Larger loaf pans could also be used to make a soap log that could then be cut into individual sized bars if making large quantities of soap.

Empty milk and juice cartons can be washed and used as makeshift homemade soap molds as well.  Cut the carton a few inches from the bottom to make a simple square mold when using smaller cartons.  Larger cartons will make much larger bricks of soap that will need to be sliced after cooling.  The waxy paper can be easily peeled away and discarded after use.

In a pinch disposable plastic or waxed paper cups (not Styrofoam) could be used as homemade soap molds.  In reality, pretty much any removable form that could be used to make candles could also be used to mold soaps as long as it is somewhat flexible.  (Do not use plastic cups for making candles however.)

Melt and pour soaps will start to harden on the top first making it somewhat hard to tell if they have completely solidified.  Be sure to let them cool completely and give them a little extra time to cure before attempting to remove them from their molds.