About Soap Molds

I know this topic won't interest everyone, but I've put some thought into soap molds. Years ago, Adam made me wooden molds. Later he made me molds of PVC that I can take apart and wash.

I like them a lot. They make a good square bar. Sometimes they leak liquid soap out of their seams, so I line them with freezer paper. That works well. Here's what a block of soap looks like from that mold:

lavender soap made this morning

For a long time I've used old orange juice cans as molds.

These are great! They never leak; they're a perfect size for making just a few bars of a scent; they are pre-lined; they peel off; I collect lots of them and it's a great recycle.
But now that I've changed my soap packaging, wrapping a round bar is much harder (and take a lot more paper) than wrapping a square bar.

That's a scarf I just finished this morning, underneath.

As I was rummaging around in my soap box, I found two silicone molds I'd bought at thrift stores and never used. I was about to re-thrift them ... when I thought to myself: why not try them this once, and see if I like them?

I know soap pops out of silicone so easily, so cleanly. But neither of these molds suited me when I was fitting my bars into 4"x6" baggies from Michael's. However, now that I'm cutting the paper for my packaging myself, I can cut the packaging to size and make it work. And I rather like the soap it produced today:

The lemongrass poppyseed on the left will cut nicely into bars. The tea tree soap on the right is not very deep, but I think I can make it work as well. We'll see!