Making soaps is a wonderful ’introduction’ to the world of arts and crafts. Not only is it going to be rather simple to do, but you need minimal tools, and it is incredibly cheap too.
On this page, we are going to walk you through just one method for making soap. This is because we want you to start things nice and simply. This method is known as ‘melt and pour’. This means that you will purchase a base soap, and then melt it down. You will then pour it into a soap mould for it to cool down.
This method is simple, because you are not going to need to make your own soap base, which can be a little bit difficult to do if you have never made soap before. You need some specialist equipment. You will also need to get your hands on a lot of different ingredients.
What You Will Need
You do not need much here. Just:
- Premade soap base. You can purchase this from any good arts and crafts store
- Food coloring
- Various fragrances
- Soap molds
- A microwave
How to Make the Soap
To start with, you will need to melt down your soap.
The simplest way to do this is to cut your soap base down into small chunks. You can then throw them all into a microwavable bowl and microwave on high until the soap has fully melted. While you can melt the soap down without breaking it up into chunks, it just takes way too long.
Every 30-seconds that the soap is melting in the microwave, you will want to pause the microwave. You will then want to give the soap base a good stir before switching the microwave back on. If you do not do this, then it will not melt evenly, and this can cause issues.
Once the soap has been fully melted down, you can add a few drops of food coloring and whatever scents you want into the soap base. You will want to mix this gently in with some spoons or some whisks. You may need to do this rather quickly, otherwise the soap base will start to solidify. If the soap base starts to get a little bit too hard, then just put it back in the microwave for about 30-seconds, then you should be ‘good to go’.
Pour the Soap into your Soap Moulds
You will need to let the soap cool down a little bit before you do this, otherwise the coloring and scent will end up being a little bit uneven. Just make sure that the soap has not liquified too much.
Pour the soap into your molds. You can then let it cool down for about 24-hours. While some people will leave the soap in their refrigerator, we do not find this necessary. In fact, it isn’t really going to be a good idea. Your refrigerator will just end up smelling like soap.
