Soap Making Molds – Complete Learning Resource.

Soap making molds come in a somewhat overwhelming amount of styles, shapes and sizes. Your mixture has finally reached saponification and you’re ready for the final step of creating the actual bars. So, What do you use to create the soap’s shape and complete your work of art?

There are seemingly endless possibilities of how you can make your finished product look. That’s all part of the fun! On this page, my goal is to let you know each of your options for shaping soaps into personal masterpieces and let you in on some tips for this stage in the soap making process. Click on each blue link for a more detailed explanation on that particular soap molding method.

The first method, and definitely the least creative, is purchasing pre-made individual soap making molds. This is a great place to start for beginners because it avoids any type of cutting or shaping. All you do is pour the soap into the mold, let it sit, and pop out a perfectly formed bar of soap.

This method is not without its downfalls though. You should not use this type of mold when making large batches using the cold process soap making method.

Once your soap is poured into the mold, it needs to be tightly wrapped with towels for insulation during the curing stage. using individual soap making molds makes this task rather difficult as you will have to wrap each one separately.

Alternately, you can somehow find a way to group all the smaller molds together (without spilling any of them) so that they can be wrapped at the same time. As you will see, this is much harder then it sounds.

When I first started making soap, I tried to avoid the arduous task of wrapping each mold one by one. I combined all the molds into a wooden box (the same box I usually use to make the large soap bars that I cut manually into smaller ones) and then wrapped the box with about 6 towels as usual.

Let’s just say “it was a mess”. No matter how careful I was, I couldn’t keep the liquid soap from spilling out of the smaller molds inside the box. Furthermore with this technique, too much air is allowed to circulate around the curing soap which causes the final product to be unsatisfactory.

I strongly recommend that you stick to individual molds for smaller cold process batches and for melt and pour soap making only.

The second method, one that I personally use most often, is to use a large wooden soap mold to create somewhat of an “oversized bar of soap”, and then cut it into smaller, more typical bars with a soap cutter.

You can either buy wooden soap making molds that are made specifically for making soap, or improvise with materials around the house to create your own.

Before you cut the soap into small bars, make sure that it had enough time to cure in the wooden tray. The soap should be hard enough to cut but not quite ready for use.

The rest of the curing needs to be done after the soap is removed from the mold and placed on a rack for air to circulate around it.

The third and final method is to tap into your creativity and make your own unique soap molds. The sky is the limit with what you can do. It’s a lot of fun; so try and think outside the box!

My only word of advice is to make sure that what you are using as a mold will withstand the caustic properties of lye and uncured soap. The last thing you want to happen is for your curing soap to eat through the mold, and then through your table or counter top as well!

Learn about other soap making supplies.

Click here to learn how to make soap