Candy Cane Swirls

The first three pictures of this post are my attempt at a Taiwan swirl without using dividers in the mold. There is a really good video at Soaping 101 where the soap lines are poured by hand and the swirl comes out really pretty and wispy. I wanted lines like that for my Candy Cane soap and as you can see this did not work for me (:  I think my soap was too thick and my mold is too tall.  I will try this again but not this year. 

So I made a second batch, this time using the dividers in my mold and attempted wispy lines by layering white soap with the coloured soap and swirling it before I took the dividers out. So I had one slot with white soap, and the next had red and white layered and swirled, then another slot of just white and a slot of green and white layered and swirled. 

After I removed the dividers I did a back and forth zig zag with a skewer, going all the way down, and then circled around the edge of the mold 6 times.

 

So neither batch of soap was exactly what I was going for but I think they still look pretty and the scent is so good, I used Peppermint Essential Oil with Black Raspberry Vanilla fragrance oil. The fragrance oil is supposed to be non discolouring and so far the colours have not changed!

Thanks for reading!

And This One Is Eggnog

 I started carrying Eggnog fragrance oil last year and just now tried it out in Cold Process soap. I knew it was CP safe and wasn't expecting any seizing or ricing but wondered how the scent would hold, and its holding really well. I like it so much I've made a second batch. I took about a cup of soap and added some bronze mica for an in the pot swirl and for the top, so this was actually a pretty easy soap to make.

I like the in the pot swirl, you don't have to colour much soap to get a nice effect.

Thanks for looking!

Playing with Mica & Stamping Soap

I was doing some organizing of my soap stuff and came across a Milky Way soap stamp. It had been used, but not for years.

I've tried it out recently on a couple of soaps I've made for the holidays. Above is a soap fragranced with Juniper and Fir and coloured with Chromium Green Oxide.

These pictures are not great, I have a hard time photographing mica. Above I hope you can see that I added some gold mica to the top of the soap and below are a couple of the bars I stamped.

(Edit: There is also some ash on the top of this soap that I have since steamed off making the gold pop a little more.)



And the soaps below are fragranced with Victorian Christmas and stamped with some white mica.

 

The snowflakes are rubbed with some of the same mica.

Here's the top of the soaps that I stamped, I added white mica mixed with a little bit of oil and then swirled it. If you do this right after you pour your soap the excess oil will be absorbed.

Any questions let me know and thanks for looking!



Coconut Lime Verbena & A New Swirl

I made this soap a few weeks ago fragranced with Coconut Lime Verbena. I have soaped with this scent before (10% off this month) and knew it would behave.

So I was giving my dividers another go and trying for a feathered looking swirl. I do not see feathers here but it still looks pretty. The two outer slots got white coloured soap and the two inner slots got yellow in one and a green/blue (I mixed 2 colourants together)  in the other. As you can see the blue is most dominant.



For the swirl, I started out doing the circling swirl I did here, then I went the length of the mold with my stick doing the letter S from side to side, I think I did two of the letter S,  either too many or not enough, or maybe that's not they way to get feathered swirls LOL. If anyone knows, clue me in will ya:) Thanks for reading and happy weekend!

Pumpkin Soap 2015 & Recipe

 

It's become a bit of a tradition that I make Pumpkin soap every fall. This year I kept the recipe fairly simple, no coffee, cinnamon oil or other super heaters.  I left most of the soap un-coloured and added some Titanium Dioxide to the lighter portion.

I used a hanger to make the swirl. After filling the mold a little over half full with the un-coloured soap I poured a thin layer of the light coloured soap keeping it off to one side. The light coloured soap was not a complete layer, it went from end to end but not all the way across. Then I poured the rest of the un-coloured soap and topped it off with a full layer of the lighter soap. Once all the soap was poured I inserted my hanger and swirled it. I had no idea how the swirl was going to turn out!

To finish the soap I added some texture to the top with a spoon and then sprinkled on a little cinnamon spice. The pumpkins were really last minute. I made them a few days ago using some melt & pour soap and didn't think they were orange enough. By the time  decided to put them in the soap I was worried the top was starting to firm up so I stuck them in without measuring. You can see in the picture below they aren't even but I did manage to get a pumpkin on every cut bar.

Here's the recipe:

340 grams  Coconut Oil

298 grams Palm Oil

75 grams Coco Butter

370 grams Olive Oil

 

156 grams Lye

340 grams Distilled Water

 

50 grams of Pumpkin Puree

15 grams Cream

 

Mix the Pumpkin & Cream together and set aside. Once you have the lye solution and your oils ready, at around 90 degrees, warm the Pumpkin/Cream in the microwave gently - around 15 seconds should do. Add the lye solution to the oils and then the pumpkin mixture. Bring to a light trace and then fragrance as desired. Do not insulate this soap.

 

I fragranced my soap with Clove Essential Oil and Pumpkin Crunch Cake Fragrance Oil, 1 tsp Clove & 3 tsp of the fragrance & then separated out some of the soap to add the Titanium Dioxide,  I didn`t measure, it was just a guess:) Another thing I did was put the soap in my fridge for 30 minutes. After it had been in the mold for an hour it really started to heat up. If you pour it in to bar sized molds this won`t happen but in a loaf it`s possible. I didn`t want my soap top to be ruined so  cooled the soap for half an hour. The soap still gelled but thankfully did not volcano.

 

I think that`s it,if you have any questions let me know.

PS I couldn`t resist photographing the end pieces, that`s how happy I am with this soap!