Hi this is Teri from Tree Marie Soapworks. Today I'm going to be showing you
how to make dividers for your soap mold. I first started making dividers with a
little help from my friend Helene. She has a channel called Chez Helene. If you
want to see her channel just click the link below. She said it was alright
for me to share it with you. Let's get started. First, I'm going to share with
you a list of supplies that you need... First, you need to have a surface to cut
on. I have a self-healing mat, but you can use a piece of cardboard or something
like that. You just want to protect the surface that you're cutting on. Next,
you'll need a sheet of plastic. This plastic is 12 by 24 inches, and I will
give you more information in the description. I use a few different kinds
of rulers, but really, you just need a good straight edge to cut up against, and
then you need another one that's going to have smaller divisions like
centimeters, or I have an architect scale and I'll show you why we need that later.
I just use two strips of paper to measure my mold one of them needs to be
just slightly longer than your mold the other one is just going to be to measure
the width and the height of your mold, and you need something to glue on so you
could use newspaper or, I just use a piece of paper to protect the surface
underneath. Okay, next you will need some disposable gloves for gluing because the
glue tends to be a bit messy and the glue which is an acrylic cement and your
scissors and a pipette. That pipette is a three milliliter pipette. When you're
using your glue you're going to need something to stand up your glue in so,
you need some kind of a mug or something heavy enough to stand it up in,
and you need some packaging tape. This is going to be for making your little tabs
to pull your dividers out when you're finished with them and of course you
need your mold. And you can use any size of mold because I'm not giving you
dimensions. I'm showing you how to fit it to your own mold. And lastly, you would
need a utility knife with a sharp blade and, two things I forgot to show are some
paper towels to wipe your glue and a sharpie marker with an ultrafine tip.
Okay, let's get started on making your dividers. First you just use one of your
little pieces of paper to measure the width of your mold, and you use the
bottom measurement because that's the smallest between the bottom and the top
because these molds are tapered a little bit. So you just use that and
then you mark it off on your piece of plastic. I use a ruler set up against the
edge. So you can just get it right to the edge. The more accurate the better
and the more squared up your pieces are the better. When you're making your cuts,
when you start, you just barely want to score it. There's a layer of film on each
side so you want to first score the film and then you make a few passes to just
score the surface of the plastic, and then you can start pushing down a little
harder, and you'll get through in a few more passes. it's just easier if you make
a nice groove for yourself. From this piece we will cut our two end pieces but
before that we're going to mark off the divisions. And for this one, I'm making
three divisions, so I need a number divisible by three and it has to be a
little bit bigger than that piece down there. So 15 is what I'm going to use and
I'm going to divide that by three, so I mark every five. So I put one end on
the zero and the other end on the 15. I mark on the five in the ten. By doing
this you get equal divisions without doing any math!
Now I'm going to show you on this ruler you can do it as well. And nine
centimeters is just slightly bigger than this so I can divide it. Put the nine on
one end and the zero on the other, and just mark off at the 3 and the 6 and I
will get the same thing. And if you want more divisions you'd like say I want
seven divisions. I would just use the 14 on that architects scale and I would
just divide by 7, and I would get 2, so I would mark off every two. I'm just
going to peel off the film on the opposite side that I marked on, so it's
all ready to go. Next, I'm just getting a measurement of the depth of
the mold, and I'm adding a little bit more, probably about 1/4 of an inch,
because I wanted it to be a little higher. But you can use the same
measurement or you can add more, whichever you would like.
Now all we have to do is mark off one, and cut it, and then do it again and
you'll have your two pieces. Next, I put these two pieces into the mold and then
I measure the rest of the mold.
Now I'm just marking the long way because all of my cuts will need to be
the same size. And you can see you can get more than one set of dividers out of
this size of a piece of plastic. And now I just check and make sure the size that
I just cut is going to work, and then I use the end pieces for templates to cut
the rest. And now I'm just peeling back the film on the ends of my dividers so
that I can stick them on to the end pieces.
Next to get prepared to start the gluing process. This glue is an SCIGRIP 16
acrylic cement and I'll give more details in the description below.
I cut off the end of my pipette and I screw it on to my glue. And then I just
make sure I have the shiny side up, the one that I already peeled the film off,
and I glue on the lines that I could see through from the other side.
And I store it in my cup until I'm ready for it for the next time. And I line up my
lines. Make sure your dividers touch the bottom so that when you're pouring
your soap, nothing seeps underneath. Next, you just repeat on the other end.
And I just make sure there's no glue on the bottom and I'll just set that in my
mold to set up.
And when it's done, I'll take it out and I add a little bit more glue, but a word
of warning, I just want to let you know that the more glue you add, the more your
end pieces will warp. in which will make your dividers kind of warp as well, so
just use your glue sparingly. It doesn't really show up as bad when you only have
two dividers in here, but the one I did with seven dividers the end pieces bowed
inward, so then the dividers also bowed toward the center. And once you get your
soap in it, it wouldn't probably matter. I just wanted to let you know don't use
too much glue or it will do that.
And again I just let it set up in the mold for around 15 minutes or so.
And once it's done I'll just peel all the film off of the dividers. For this size
of dividers, I use five inches of tape and then I stick it on there and then
for the top part I just double it up, so I can have a little tab to pull it out.
And just a quick reminder, I'm going to be guest teaching the Soap Challenge
this month and we're doing a technique called Pointy Layers and I hope you will
join us. And then I just do the other side and you're done! And thank you so
much for watching and I hope you find this video helpful. And I hope your
dividers turn out well and I can't wait to hear how many divisions you made and
how your soap turned out, so if you make some, just tag me in it and I can take a
look. Thank you! Have a great day! :)