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Soap Making Instructions | How to Make Soap |Fun Soap Making Projects from Teach Soap! Soap Making Instructions | reusing your packaging - Teach Soap Teach Soap ---------------------------------------------------------- Return to Home Page . Article by Michael A. McAuley Soap Basics One of the most lamented aspects of purchasing almost any product Using Emulsifying Wax is the, often valuable, packaging left over once the contents have Using Essential Oil Safely been used up or removed. However, the "King of Reuse" is here to New! save you from having to recycle your bottles before they've Keeping Organized reached the end of their useful lives. Soap Making Methods Pricing Melt and Pour Send us your questions or comments on this and other articles: Soaps click here. Pricing Cold Process Soaps Finding a Craft Show Reusing your packaging Men's Fragrances Many soap-makers have found the usefulness of packaging that can History of Fragrance Oils be used as molds in creating distinct shapes. My most unique was a Reusing your Packaging 2 ounce bar shaped like a small pipe cutter created by filling the Business Insurance cavity of the tool's packaging. I know many soapers using cat food Soap Coloring Options dishes, soda bottles, potato chip cans and other "waste" Building a Soap Cutter packaging. The role of reused items for soaping is probably only Easy Soaps limited by your imagination. Basic Melt and Pour Fun Soap Recipes Getting the fragrance out of fragrance bottles Delectable Lip Butters While many people have found ways to use or reuse found material Bath Poof Soaps in their soaping, it is often the products designed for making that wonderfully fragrant or oddly shaped creation that leaves us lotion formulary baffled when trying to reuse their packaging; in particular, the Lotion Basics bottles that we all get our fragrance or essential oils in. For Night Foot and Hand Creme most of us, the bottles are too valuable to throw into the Elbow and Knee Lotion recycling bin and we'd really like to use the space, but the Body Bronzing Lotion previous occupant just lingers on, a ghost of its former self. Advanced Soaps The solution is, to pardon the pun, salt solution. I have rescued The Soap Gallery many a brown bottle with nothing more than Morton Salt from the 3-D Rock Soap pantry. I usually try to throw in some rock salt for scouring and Swirled Scallop Soap that's it. So what's the salty secret? Old fashioned elbow grease Color Blend - nothing more. Often, in order to clean glass, you must scrub it Embedding Molds like last week's lasagna casserole, but don't worry, I won't tell Layered Soap your mom it sat so long! Also, you must create an environment Pressed Flower Soap inside your bottles amenable to removing the oil clinging tightly Double Color Pour to the glass. Water, as we all know, even with lots of warm suds Basic Rebatch Recipe just won't remove all the smell from your brown, Boston rounds. Amethyst Gem Soap The salts, besides providing the rough scouring action you'll Basic Hot Process need, act as a place for the oil to attach once it is removed from Oven Hot Process Soap the glass. Rio de Janeiro Hot Process So what you will do is add a nice amount of Mortons's and any rock cold process soaps salt you can fine - usually a quarter inch in the bottom is Easy Cold Process Recipes enough. Then add enough warm (not hot) water to fill the bottle New! about one third fill. Too much water doesn't allow the crashing Looped Swirl Soap action (think ocean waves during a current) and too little doesn't Small Batch CP Recipes lubricate the process. Do not add any sudsing agents or you'll Gentle Acne Soap fill the bottle with bubbles that will only need to be removed for Break the Rules Soap this to work. Next, put the cap on tightly and shake like a mad Memememe Luxury Bar demon. Also, this process relies upon your ability to imagine you Shaving Soap are one of those salt grains slamming about the bottle, crashing Silk Soap into every nook and cranny, and dragging those stubborn oil Vanilla Caramel Soap particles away from the glass. If you skip the imagination step, Ribbons Soap your bottle with not come clean, trust me. Using LYE Safely Next, empty the bottles' contents into your drain, or your next Soaps for Kids load of laundry (not the salt though), rinse the bottle and Bath Bombs "poof," all clean. This will clean your bottle as well as you'll Moisturizing Bath Fizzy need to. You will probably smell a small amount of residual Tub Tints fragrance in the bottle, but it will be so tiny that any new Fizzy Milk Bombs fragrance added to it will easily overwhelm it with no risk of Water Softening Fizzy contamination. Moisture Rich Fizzy Cookie Cutter Soaps The thing to remember when reusing your bottles or any other item is that sometimes you are limited in what you can do. For example, Soap Making FAQ leftover organic scraps from the table can be fed to your worm Ask Anne-Marie! bin, your compost, or just tossed into the neighbor's yard and Write to Teach Soap your old newspapers can be turned into paper mache Halloween masks, but your fragrance oil bottles should probably not be used to store water for your fallout shelter. Their best use will remain as storage for your soaping supplies so don't even think of switching them out with your child's broken Incredible Hulk thermos. Next issue, how to make a dog sweater from your dryer lint... Send us your questions or comments on this and other articles: click here.