I used to buy my hand bar soaps from Crabtree & Evelyn.  But that business appears to me to be making mistake after mistake to survive as a business.  They no longer offer men’s soaps.  What they do offer is women’s only items. Their web site really is quite awful.  They no longer take phone calls.  My client log in failed to work which really tells me how stupid they seem to be. 

Crabtree & Evelyn said it had suffered “significant losses” due to the rise of e-commerce, the decline of traditional retail traffic and changing consumer demand (we are ALL to blame).

“But all is not lost – according to the Straits Times, the company is moving its entire business online, and it has already launched e-commerce sites in Australia, Singapore and, yes, Malaysia.”

I started buying these soaps after receiving them for Christmas gifts.  They were not cheap.  I truly hope they survive and bring back the soaps I really love.

Toward the end of each bar’s use I found it rather annoying to keep trying to use the small soap bar fragments.  I started collecting the very small bars in the hope to put them together some day.  That day arrived.  I purchased a silicone mold from Michaels.  The mold I decided upon was Celebrate It.  My daughter helped me pick the mold out as I did not have a clue that I needed silicone mold.  She also helped me pick a good mold size for hand soap.  I was looking for a square shaped mold but the store did not have any that would work for me.   The mold label shows it is microwave safe which is necessary for the heating, melting, process to work.

I put enough bar fragments into each cup and then load the mold into a microwave. 

 

I discovered that I had to carefully watch these soap fragments get treated by microwave energy because they would puff up rather quickly as they were heated.  Because I had quite a few soap bar fragments from different soap bars, I found that some soaps would really puff up in size while other fragments would not. 

 

The trick was to turn off the microwave when the soap fragments really expanded.  Then open the microwave door and use the curved side of a spoon to press down upon the really puffy soap so the whole blend would be the same size.

I could also do some really crude soap bar construction to better make a good shape bar with the spoon while the soap was hot.  I found that I had to repeat this process at least five times to get the bars into the shape that was useful.  Repeat this process until you get a well formed and tight bar of soap.  Let the mold cool down before taking the soap out of the mold.   Because the mold is silicone, easily bent, it is real easy to get the soap bars out.

I am quite happy with the results. The bars look a bit ugly but they do stay together and they do  last as long as any soap bar of it’s size.  Please be aware that each bar piece had it’s own separate fragrance.  I found that putting a mixed batch of soap fragments together did not in any way diminish the resulting fragrance.  But, I defy anyone to identify the soap fragrance I wear with using these bars.

 

Posted December 4, 2019
Updated December 5, 2019