Rebatching M&P bars with my soap bars?

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pjones

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I received a bunch of melt and pour bars for Christmas but they just don't have any lather, so I wanted to mix them with my recipe so they are more desirable to my preference. Would there be any issues with Melting it and adding it to my soap bar recipe after my recipe reaches trace?
 
I wouldnt melt it - I would chunk it and use for embeds! Just use about 2/3 new CP soap to 1/3 embeds or confetti, and dampen the soap additions a bit before mixing with the soap batter.

FWIW Ive never melted M&P and added it to CP - no idea what would happen, so I might try that with some of the soap batter and M&P just to see :)
 
You can shave or shred your finished cp bars as the directions state so they will melt faster, I think I just cut them in very small cubes. But then I give them a few short bursts in the microwave to melt them back down. Then it's just a matter of blending all the ingredients pretty quickly so they don't cool too much before you have time to mush them into a mold.
 
I've swirled melted M&P into my CP once ..... into a salt bar no less! I made a salt bar for my son and the other kids in my family back in 2007 (when they were so much younger) and I scented it with a bubblegum FO. I melted down some white M&P and colored it with a pink colorant, then I poured haphazardly into my batter from on high, so that it would look like there was sticky strands of pink bubblegum all throughout the soap (which it did!). I was so proud of that soap.


IrishLass :)
 
The bubblegum soap sounds like a fun idea, and a fun first project to making multi color soap bars. To this point I have only ever made practical and plain soaps. Now that I have a recipe that I like, I'm ready to start making my soaps look nice and fun.

I see videos of people mixing soaps in decorative ways and they somehow look like they are pouring oil like consistency soap into a mold. My soap base is like thick pancake batter and once poured in the mold I tamp the mold on the table to try and smooth the top but it always stays lumpy on top. It would make it hard to pour a second couloir into it, it would just pour onto the top. Am I waiting until I have too thick of a trace or are there tricks that can be used to slow the curing speed? Perhaps I need to use a different recipe?

Is it still considered hijacking if it was my thread to begin with? Yeah, I thought so...
 
I don't consider that a hijack, PJ.

I like to pour at medium-thick trace myself (never had good success pouring too thin), and I can swirl just fine. If I want my swirl color to reach deep into my soap and not just float on top, there are 2 different ways I can achieve that:

1) I pour about 1/4 to 1/3 of my main base color into the mold, then I haphazardly drizzle some of my swirling color over top, then I pour more of my base color in, and so on.....alternating like that all the way up to the top. Then I take a chopstick and swirl around, making sure to also make a few upward lifting motions with the chopstick. My mold is such that my soap comes right up to the top edge so that I can level my soap batter off with a single swipe of my handy-dandy cake spatula. If it's not as exactly perfect as flat as I would like, I just leave it be and plane a thin layer off the top of the bars after I unmold/cut.

2) Or I do an ITP ("in the pot") swirl. Just right before my batter is at full med-thick trace, I grab my swirl colors, stand on a stool, and start to pour them in a squiggly stream from a tall height (so that they reach deep into the batter), then I gradually lower my arm so that they also get distributed nearer to the surface. Next, I give the batter one gentle, half-hearted stir with my spatula before pouring into the mold. As I pour, the colors get swirled on their own just by the pouring motion, but I sometimes also finish things off with a chopstick if I feel the soap needs it.


IrishLass :)
 
That sounds like some good, real life pointers. I'll give that a shot next batch I make, but first I need to get more Lye.
 
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