Soap Basics for Melt and Pour Soap

Although melt and pour soap is pretty easy to make, it’s not without its tips and tricks. Find in this post soap basics for melt and pour soap, with a list of free melt and pour soap recipes, as well as soap base recipes!

Table of Contents

Cut the base into small cubes. Melt it in a double boiler. Add colorants and scent. This pretty much summarizes how to make melt and pour soap, also known as glycerin soap.

Melt and Pour can even be a fun DIY project for kids, with some adult supervision, as the soap base needs to melt and one needs to deal with heat sources. Transparent bases allow you to make a soap with inner flowers, or a soap that looks like a beach. It also allows you to make a layered soap.

In this post, I am going to walk you through some basic concepts and then use a recipe to learn how to make soap bars with Melt and Pour.

low sweat white soap

Soap Bases

This is soap already made for you so that you only need to melt and decorate as you wish. No need to fear the usage of lye as you don’t need to deal with it. But don’t be mistaken: soap bases are made with lye, and your handmade soap won’t be soap if not made with lye.

In fact, there is no such thing as “soap without lye”. In this case, the lye was used previously by a manufacturing company, along with oils and other ingredients, to produce a pre-made soap base. Pretty much like a pre-made pie base you now only need to do the filling and decorate.

There are several options to choose from when selecting a base, including bases with additives like shea butter, goat milk, or aloe vera. But clear or white melt and pour are the best options to start.

If you wish to purchase melt and pour soap bases (a.k.a. glycerin soap bases), find some choices below:

You wish to learn how to do them yourself?

Needless to say that you also can learn in this blog how to make your own soap bases!! Check out How To Make Soap Bases: With Simple Instructions, a generic tutorial to learn on how to make natural, crystal clear or white glycerin soap bases, very good to use in “Melt and Pour”. If you’re looking for recipes, go here. My most famous recipe is this clear soap base recipe.

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Colorants and Fragrances

Soap colorants and fragrances for cold process may also be used in Melt and Pour. As I prefer natural ingredients for soap, I am going to encourage to use essential oils as fragrance and natural colorants like clays or spices, or even the mineral cosmetic colorants (oxides and ultramarines). Nevertheless, you can use whatever fragrance or colorant you prefer, as long as it’s cosmetic grade and adequate for soap.

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Oils and Extracts

You can add oils or plant extracts to Melt and Pour. Adding noble oils like jojoba, or argan oil, or butters like shea butter or cocoa butter, will enrich your soap and turn it from good to awesome, giving it extra conditioning properties (or even some extra ones such as anti-inflammatory).

Just be careful, as most soap bases won’t tolerate a big quantity of superfat. Follow the manufacturer’s recommendations. If you use one of my recipes, you won’t need to add extra oils, as the recipe already includes superfat. Add just as little as 5ml per kg of soap (0.17 fl. oz. per lb of soap), if you really have to, but beware of oil separation: that was my experience.

Plant extracts, bought or handmade, also add plants’ medicinal properties, like anti-oxidants, anti-bacterial/anti-microbial, anti-inflammatory, etc. to your soap. As the saponification has occurred at this point, there is no danger of chemically altering plants properties – unless they are sensitive to high pH. Still, melt and pour is a great way to make phytotherapic soap.

Silvana Liviero, a brazilian cosmetologist, has a wonderful toturial on how to make plant extracts at home and she was kind enough to allow me to publish her video on my blog. She also owns a YouTube channel and has an offer of online courses for glycerin soap (for some reason, in Brasil, glycerin soap is more common than cold process).

Soap Equipment

If you already have equipment for soap making, you’re ready for this. Otherwise, you will be good to go with a heat resistant bowl, soap molds, a digital scale, a spoon and a spatula. A small electric stove, a double boiler or a slow cooker would be preffered to make melt and pour soap but they are not mandatory. You can heat/melt the soap base in the microwave.

Soap Making Safety

You don’t really need safety equipment, and the soap base should never be scalding hot to cause serious burns, but it’s best if you use gloves to prevent getting burned. As you do in the kitchen with your hot pans. Better safe than sorry!

Melt And Pour Soap Recipes

Tutorial Soap Recipe

Homemade Exfoliating Melt And Pour Soap Recipe
An exfoliating melt and pour soap made with conditioning argan melt and pour base and a wonderful aroma of lemongrass and rosemary. Exfoliation is given by natural chia seeds.
Check out this recipe
Yellow melt and pour soap with chia seeds

Easy Melt and Pour Soap Recipes

Children’s Soap With Toys Inside
Want to surprise your kids or their friends with these so-very-cute soaps? They are very easy to make! They're visually stunning, really fun to use and totally costumizeable. Learn how to make them with this recipe!
Weight: 1000g
Difficulty: Easy
Check out this recipe
soap-with-toys-inside
Tea Tree Soap Recipe
A lovely olive oil glycerin soap with tea tree essential oil.
Tea tree is known as a powerful natural antisseptic and anti-inflammatory, and is great for oily, acne-prone skin. Besides, it gives your soap a delightful scent, something resembling a mix of rosemary with peppermint.
This soap uses a homemade olive oil glycerin soap base (also known as melt and pour). Turmeric and green chromium oxide were used as colorant.
Check out this recipe
tea tree soap recipe

6 thoughts on “Soap Basics for Melt and Pour Soap”

  1. Its always a huge delight coming across your articles because I like being creative and making things myself so I always get happy anytime I come across your page. It was amazing learning how to make soap from melt and pour today. is there anyway I can subscribe to your site so I can keep seeing more posts like this?

    • Hello Collinsss, you made me a happy blogger now 🙂

      Of course you can subscribe! You can use this link, or go to my website and use the sign up form (if you use a mobile, just scroll down in my website).

      You will receive in your email a notification everytime I post a new article, so that you keep track of everything I post. 

      Thanks a lot for your comment and for making this blog something meaningful.

      Cheers,

      Sofia

  2. from the soap recipe i can tell its really easy to make, i am glad you made it so easy, i found the article very useful , and i hope to try this one of these days when i have friends around , these kind of tasks needs a helping hand, i have a question, this soup color on your picture , hhow do i get that particular color ? it looks really calm and lovely

    • Hello Babakes, thanks for your comment and your interest in my recipe!

      That particular tone is achieved with an yellow iron oxide mineral pigment (CI 77492), considered a natural colorant. You can use the Amazon link above in my recipe (section SHOP) to find out such pigment at Amazon. Just look for “yellow iron oxide – CI 77492”.

      Cheers,

      Sofia

    • Hello and thanks for your comment and rating.

      Yes, I am still working on the bases, but I plan to post more recipes.

      Cheers,
      Sofia

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