Use the knowledge and experience gained from The Ultimate Guide to Hot Process Soap to begin your journey into the world of DIY melt and pour soap bases and beautiful glycerin soaps. By using the knowledge learned about saponification, crystallization, solvents, thermodynamics and fatty acids from the soap science chapters in UG2HP, you can easily create your own bubbly, gentle and amazingly fun MP soap base.
The recipe and video below is an introductory recipe that is meant to be simple and easy and creates a bubbly and all-natural glycerin MP base. I use this recipe to teach my students the fundamentals of solvents in soap making and its the perfect first step to learning the process of DIY melt and pour soap bases and transparent soap making.
After you have the creation process down, it becomes up to you, the soap scientist and artist, to create and formulate your own fun MP and glycerin soaps! You can get creative with creamy butters, conditioning fats, nourishing oils, different colorants, fragrances and more. Create beautiful, all-natural opaque and transparent soap bases with different recipes that YOU create.
Tips for the recipe below:
-Feel free to switch it up and use propylene glycol to lower the melting point even more for a faster melt!
-If using HTHP, make sure you are prepared for an expanding recipe and use a bowl with at least 3X the total recipe volume
Happy Soaping!
I will definitely try this recipe. I've found that I like mixing mica into 1½ ounces of hot M&P (add 1 tsp of hot sugar water) and I keep the colors along with all of my post-cook additives, covered, in a 190° oven. After all the post-cook additives are mixed in, I stir the colors straight down into the soap with a frother attachment, all the way to the bottom (at least two "puddles" of each color) then turn the whole batch of soap over a few times with a whisk for an in-the-pot swirl. Then I pour into the loaf molds to hanger or fork swirl. Not nearly as complicated as all the separating of soap into cups for…