I'm going vertical!

I love making my own stuff.  If I see something and feel like I can make it, I want to make it!  It's usually cheaper and the satisfaction I get from making something is amazing.  I can look at something and say "I made that!"

I've made a couple of soap molds for myself and really like them.  However, I've been craving a slight change in the shape of my soaps, or I should say orientation of the my soaps.  I decided that I wanted to try to make some vertical soaps so that my edges are straight.  I'm going vertical!

I had some dimensions in mind and set off to the hardware store to see what kind of wood I could buy.  Lucky for me there was some aspen wood that would give me the dimensions I needed.  The wood is not as thick as wood I'd normally use, but this is a test mold so I will try anything.  I don't have any fancy wood shop saws or tools (wish I did), but I can at least cut wood with my good old mitre box and saw. It just takes a little bit of muscle.  LOL!

Here are my wood pieces cut out.  I cut one too long and had to waste some wood to cut another piece.  That bummed me out, but I moved on.  I can always use it as a lid....I meant to do that!

Next I decided just to glue everything together instead of nailing them together.  Why?  Because that's usually where I screw everything up!  The nail goes crooked or the wood moves.  Ideally I would drill some pilot holes, but I think it's going to hold together just fine.  All it needs to do is hold soap, not my body weight or anything!  I also decided to line it with fun foam to get my final soap dimensions how I want them.

 

Inside dimensions are 2 7/16" x 3 1/2" x 5 9/16" and I should get 5 bars of soap out of this.  A friend also recommended drilling some 1/4" holes in the bottom of the mold (under the foam) to release any vacuum while removing the soap.  I plan on doing that today too.

My goal today is to finally use this mold!  I had to wait for some oils to get here, but I really need to see how I like it.  Now the hard part is what recipe to use and what fragrance!