New soap from old soap

I've got to warn you before we go to the actual post that this could cause some disgust. At least it did that to me.

I have always liked soap bars more than liquid soap. I think it's because of the packaging. I don't like to buy plastic bottle every time I buy soap. I once even had bar shampoo, but that was a bit tricky to use so now I do buy regular liquid shampoo. But on washing hands bar soap works fine. 

Apparently I'm very cheap. Because who in their right mind would save small bar soap slivers. And I'm talking about very small pieces, some of the size of my thumb nail, just few millimeter thick slivers. I have hard time understanding why I saved them, because they disgust me. There is something about used soap slivers, they feel dirty, even though I don't think they are actually any more dirty than a soap bar that has been used once. But for some reason I wanted to save them to make a new bar of soap from them.

Now I had accumulated a small amount of them and I also had two bars of soap formed like an angel. Angels are not my cup of tea. I had had them quite a while, I got them as a present from a friend, but they never ended up next to the sink. I had once a candle that looked like a Santa Claus, I had big problems burning it because it meant that the Santa Claus head would be in fire and then melt. That was just too cruel. I think there is the same problem with the angel soap, I don't want to disfigure the angels by using the soap. I had no problem grating them though.

Here is a great video on how to reuse the old soap. I used that as a guideline when I redid my soap. But I grated my soap, so when I added water to cover the soaps I did not have to use as much of it and I did not have to wait more than 15 minutes for the soap to soften. Okey this is when it gets gross. After the 15 minutes the soap water combination looked like snot and behaved like snot. Yack. Really really disgusting.

I prepared some containers where I could then pour the soap. I had some metal baking forms and also two conserve packages. I just washed the later ones, but I did oil the baking forms to prevent the soap from stucking on them.

Then I heated up the soap water solution and it turned more runny and it was then easy to pour into the containers. I let the soap harden for a day and then tryed to take them out from the containers. The soap was easy to remove from the conserve packages but I couldn't get them out from the baking forms. So I popped the soap with the metal forms to the freezer for about half an hour, when the soap had hardened it was easy to remove the soap.

After 24 hours the soap felt quite soft still and I left the soap to dry on the kitchen counter for a few days. When the water evaporates the soap will get a more harder surface and then they are more easier to handle. Also the soap will loose it's volume quite a lot when the water evaporates, so make sure you make make a big enough soap bar in the first place so you don't end up with a bar of the size of the slivers. I actually think I could have used less water, I think the heat itself will melt the soap and mix it well. I assume the whole process would have been much quicker with much less water. But then I really do suggest grating the soap like I did instead of using big chuncks as in the video.

I don't claim that the soap I remade is pretty. It's actually pretty darn ugly. So I doubt I will inspire anyone to save up their soap slivers, but incase someone was already thinking of doing this he or she could get some hints. I think I could have used some food colouring like the video suggested. But it's just soap, not even the prettiest soap bar will look that pretty once it's been used couple of times.

The dark top on the soaps came from the glitter that the angel soaps had. I first freaked out that I had burned the soap water solution on the stove but then realized those were just the glitter that had sunk to the bottom.

But nice wrapping will always save the day.