Homemade Melt & Pour

I found a great tutorial for making melt & pour soap here.  I used this tutorial to make a recipe for melt & pour and as directions to make it.  

Recipe gelled and dissolving in 91% isopropyl alcohol 

I started by making a batch of soap like normal.  I took the soap to a thick trace before putting it in the crockpot to get it to gel.  After it all gelled, I added the 35% alcohol as well as the glycerin and sugar solution.  After getting everything together I set the temperature to low, put the lid on upside down, put a block of ice in the lid, and draped a towel over the whole sh-bang.

In the mold

I let the soap mixture cook, checking it occasionally to stir and empty the melt water out of the lid.  I did spritz it several times with alcohol to minimize the foaming.  I used
a glass mug in the freezer to test whether it would thicken up.  After the soap was clear when I dropped it on the base of the cup and thickened up I put it in molds.  I promptly put these molds on the top shelf in my refrigerator freezer.  According to what I have read cooling the soap as quickly as possible helps to keep the soap clear.

In the freezer

After I got everything solidified I started remelting everything in the crockpot to remover extra water.  After making sure that everything was melted down and it cooked for about an hour to an hour and a half I decided it was time to start molding again.

This time I decided to use plastic wrapped around the same tray.  I put it in the freezer until it solidified.  After that I wrapped the top with plastic wrap and put it back in the freezer.  Then I wrapped the tray with plastic wrap and refilled it.

Remelting to remove some of the liquid

DON'T leave the crock pot on!  Please!

I had tried to add titanium dioxide to the first round and it had a texture like a marshmallow.  It looked like a marshmallow too.  I added this white melt & pour to the remaining clear melt & pour hoping to get a better texture from the white.  I thought that I might have just added too much titanium dioxide.  Unfortunately trying to do too much at once will almost always backfire on you.  It certainly did in this case.  Please, please don't forget to turn off your crockpot when you are planning to.  This was the result of forgetting and
leaving the crockpot on overnight.  Let me tell you it was a massive mess.  Not only did I have soap all over my counter, but the soap that didn't boil out of the crockpot ended up caramelized on the bottom of the pot.  It was a MESS.  
On a positive note,  the soap I put in the freezer solidified nicely.  And I can still use the soap that boiled out for cleaning.  Now I can start thinking about other things to make from my melt & pour.  Right now my bars of melt & pour is in bars on my curing rack so that a little more of the moisture can evaporate.


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