When one decides to begin dabbling in soapmaking, one of the biggest decisions to be made is what kind of shape and size is my bar of soap going to be.
Online soapmaking supply warehouses offer the soaper molds that range from square to cylindrical, wooden to silicone, oval to embellished. So many molds, so little time!
When I first started out, I used large wooden boxes that were passed on to me by a fellow artisan. The prior purpose of these wooden boxes is anybody’s guess. They varied in dimension, which is a soaper’s nightmare, but I loved them none the less. I must have lined those wooden boxes with thousands of feet of waxed freezer paper before I seized my opportunity to graduate to silicon lined molds.
Once I got a taste for the scored silicone “slab” molds, I never really looked back, at least in terms of a standard production mold.
No more measuring my cutting lines with quilting rulers! Uniform, rectangular bars of Sweet Pea Soap were born.
Well, for me, repetition of even a good thing, gets very boring, very quickly. So, I decided it was time once again to graduate on to a new mold challenge. This time it was the wooden “log” mold. Now I was back to my beloved waxed freezer paper, but what a small price to pay for the opportunity to create extraordinary layered bars of (rectangular) soap. New ideas and inspiration came quicker than the soap could set. Colorants, clays, and more colorants provided inexhaustible options.
It didn’t take long for me to realize that I was on a role with new ideas and practices.
I’d always adored round soaps and thought it was high time to give them a try. I first off turned to PVC tubing to get a feel for it. Once again, lining the cylinder with waxed paper and praying for the best, I have to say, I liked the results, but it wasn’t an easy go.
As of late, I have been enjoying small-batch soap making with a silicone loaf mold, standard production with my silicone slab mold and occasionally, stirring up some round shaving soap pucks in a professional grade cylinder mold.