I totally see the face. I'm going to start looking more closely at my soaps. who knows what I'll find?
Jezzy: I made my own molds. I bought some wood for $3 at a used stuff store, borrowed a circular saw from a neighbor (first time using), put a few screws in, and voilá! If I can do it, anyone can do it. I made it 12" length (see pic) so that I could use Reynold's freezer paper and not have to waste much paper. I've now cut a small piece of wood to "shorten" the length of the mold to a variable length for trying small batches. (not shown)
Somewhere in this forum, I learned a formula to calculate the amount of oils to put and it seems to be spot on (thanks again).
1. figure out the volume of your container: V = W x L x H
2. In my case, I used V= 4 * 12 * 2 (I wanted the bars 2" high)
3. Multiply your result times 0.4
4. I obtained 38.4, but I decided to do an even 40. So I used 40 ounces of oils. I might even do a little more to allow for shrinking.
As for cutting into bars, I used a regular chef knife for the brownie, but then I remembered I had a cheese cutter that I never used... much nicer cut!
The spots issue: I'm pretty sure they're little pockets of air. Like I mentioned earlier, I was blending like the devil because it wasn't coming to trace, even raising the blender above water level.