How Much Is Your Time Worth? Custom Molds By Mighty Molds Save Your Day!
I am a firm believer that soap and candle makers are some of the most industrious, creative, and hardworking people that you could ever meet. They go to great lengths, and pains, in order to set their products above the competition, and create something that is truly unique and special. Unfortunately, the molds and tools available to be able to do so have historically been extremely limited.
This left soapers like Vicki Harris Pillar of Moku Pua and Mari Jo Danzer of Bubblecakes Boutique in a tough spot. Like many successful soap and candle companies, they built their success around special products that took care, expertise, and perhaps most importantly, time, to produce. Most candle and soap professionals simply cannot account for the time they spend crafting their soap, otherwise they would never be profitable in the beginning. But when customers start piling up and the looming inevitability of employees creeps closer and closer, time management becomes more and more, a vastly critical issue. That’s where Mighty Molds comes in!
After consulting with us about their respective designs, both Vicki and Mari Jo opted to have custom molds created of their designs. We worked with each of them to design the mold that would best fit their needs. For Mari Jo, that meant a two-piece, triple-cavity mold in their flagship design – mason jars! Mari Jo needed to be able to pour more jars at a time, and she needed them branded! That was especially exciting for us, because we hadn’t done branded bars before! After consulting with the team at Bubblecakes, it was determined that we would double-stack the jars on top of each other, so that we could fit an extra row of jars vertically inside the mold. This meant for each cavity, Mari Jo could actually pour two different jars! We also worked out a system for allowing her to pour half-jars with the mold open, without her soap running out the pour spout! With a solid design in hand – we took the information to our designer and got to work on the first ever Bubblecakes mason jar mold. Soon, ideas began to take material form!
For Vicki’s mold, we got to stretch the limits of our design capabilities, and successfully created the largest silicone mold we’ve ever made! Vicki sells a wonderful sliced watermelon soap, and she wanted to start streamlining her processes. For each loaf of watermelon soap she was creating, Vicki had to hand-carve seed embeds, and she was going to extreme lengths in order to make sure they came out just right. After pouring her soap into a mold, she would then cut that bar in half and shape it by hand into a seed shape, which would then be embedded into the watermelon loaf, creating perfect seeds after the loaf was cut. My hands hurt just thinking about it.
After consulting with Vicki and determining her ideal mold, we designed a modular triple cavity mold that would allow for two seeds to be poured in each spout. That meant six seeds per layer, and she needed three multipliers, for a whopping total of 24 seeds! Once again, we took this information to the designer and got to work on creating Vicki’s dream watermelon seed mold. Before long, dreams were becoming reality!
After quick confirmations with both clients that the designs were acceptable, it was time to turn create the physical templates for their molds. This is a time consuming process, and we were extremely grateful for their patience during this process. A few short weeks later, and we were done with the templates for both projects, and working towards getting silicone poured!
With the bulk of the work behind us, we moved on to pouring silicone and getting the molds actually formed. This is probably the fastest part of the whole process, even though each layer can take up to 16 hours to cure! Within another couple weeks, both molds were packed up and shipped out to their respective new owners! Here are a couple pictures of the very first custom molds powered by Mighty Molds!
What a great article Haley! I really enjoyed reading about the molds Mighty Molds have created and the journey it took for the client and Mighty Molds. So happy in the year 2017 there are 3D molds being created that represent this time in technology. Fantastic job Mighty Molds!