Melt and pour soap (M&P) is a pre made soap base that, in its most straightforward uses, is a very easy to use cosmetic product that will enable you to create lovely soap.
As the name suggests, it literally is, ‘melt and pour’. The solid base is a soap that will melt using heat via a bain marie set up (jug inside a saucepan of water) or a microwave.
Once the base has liquified, you can add all sorts of ingredients such as colour, fragrance / essential oils, glitters, botanicals or small quantities of skin conditioning ingredients such as shea butter or honey. As soon as it has all been mixed together gently, it can be poured into moulds and, when it has solidified into a solid soap; it can be used immediately or packaged up for sale for use at a later date.
Nowadays, M&P bases are available in a huge range with some luxury ingredients pre added or compositions that suit consumer requirements. Examples of these are honey, shea butter, goat milk, SLS (sodium lauryl sulphate) free, organic or aloe vera. In addition, perhaps one of the best advantages of M&P bases are the choices in opaque (white solid coloured soap) or transparent (see through). The bases can be mixed and matched creating endless options in the finished soap. You may also see it referred to as glycerine soap.
What Can I do with M&P?
Versatility can be truly endless with M&P soaps. You can create a simple but pretty, pink soap that smells of roses just by adding colour, a little fragrance and pouring into a rose shaped mould. You can also add colour in stages of pouring so that simple rose soap has a shaded or ombre colour finish. An opaque soap can be poured into a standard rectangle mould or loaf and cut into slices or you can use a transparent soap coloured blue as embeds in a yellow opaque soap or vice versa creating a personal design. Pouring different colours together will create swirls or you can use layers of the same or different soap bases. You can use very complex moulds and pour in small layers to form stunningly decorative soaps.
Who Uses M&P?
- Those who wish to make and sell cosmetic products (subject to a suitable Cosmetic Product Safety Report)
- If you want to include soap products but cannot / will not store Sodium Hydroxide to manufacture soap from scratch with storage for a long cure time; then M&P is a perfectly suitable alternative.
- People who want to use a simple manufacturing process that can be easily accommodated in any size of kitchen.
- Those working with children / young adults to create products for personal use
- Those who have limited storage for base ingredients so will find one or two bases plus additional ingredients easier to keep than larger quantities of multiple oils, butters and lye for a soap plus the additional ingredients.
- Those who wish to produce anything from a very simple and quick bar through to a highly complex product with multiple layers and/or techniques.
Tips and Tricks
M&P soap does exactly what it says on the tin and particularly lends itself to an ‘easy’ manufacturing process while allowing all sorts of creativity for finished products.
Botanicals – many botanical ingredients (petals, buds etc) can deteriorate in melt and pour soap as it has a fairly high water content to enable the melting and pouring process. The exception with floral inclusions is calendula petals. These will retain their lovely orangy / yellow colour in clear or opaque soap bases. Other ingredients such as ground oatmeal or poppy seeds will create wonderful exfoliating properties while looking lovely.
Colours – again, due to the water content in melt and pour soap bases, some colours may ‘migrate’, particularly water based types. This is fine if you are colouring a whole soap but if you add blue embeds to a white soap, the embeds will, over time, develop a slight halo of blue into the white soap which will extend as it travels through the water in the base composition. This can be particularly lovely if you lay a blue layer on a pink layer resulting in blend of purple developing where they meet but if you want clearly demarked colours, it would be best to look at non bleed or mica options.
Packaging – melt and pour bases have humectant properties. That is, they attract water. Sometimes, if M&P soaps are left exposed to the atmosphere, they may develop little beads of water on the surface that is commonly referred to as soap dew. This is water from the environment (air) settling on the soap not water leaking out of the soap. Barrier packaging such as shrink wrap will protect your soaps once they have cooled and be removed from their moulds but this type of packaging will not suit all business models. Thin and easily permeable paper such as tissue may become damp and difficult to remove over time and even transfer any colour from the paper to the soap as it will allow the soap to attract air but that soap dew can result in a soggy wrap. Look at kraft paper, tins, or other packaging options that can be repurposed / recycled to suit your business ethos.
Do not heat soap base directly on a hob and only heat in the microwave in small bursts of 10 or 15 seconds. It can burn if it is over heated or become very stiff and unworkable.
Have lots of fun! The sky really is the limit so far as creativity is concerned and, like other cosmetic products, practice and testing will fine tune your abilities and ideas.
