Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge- Butterfly Swirl

This month’s soap club challenge was a tough one- the butterfly swirl! And with the family being sick, I knew I was going to have one shot at this!

Amy Warden from Great Cakes Soapworks demonstrated this technique for us. She also gave us Zahida’s (Handmade in Florida and master of the butterfly swirl) YouTube links. First, we were to lay our soap in the mold by doing a drop swirl. Then, use a hanger or gear tie to swirl.

PREP
So, here’s what I used-
Colorants: Activated charcoal, purple ultramarine powder, titanium dioxide, green liquid pigment/chromium oxide, gold mica


Essential oils: Lavender, lemongrass

Base oils:

Special tools: Hanger with thick straw that fits the length of your mold
(It was advised that we use something thicker than a hanger”)

STEPS
1. At medium-thick trace, I drop-swirled the soap into the mold. Actually, at that point, the soap was pretty thick! It was hard to drop-swirl smaller/thinner amounts. I was nervous about that!

2. Next, I swirled the soap using the hanger tool.
From a side view of the mold, here’s the motion I used:

Hmm, maybe the loops were deeper and ran into each other, more like this:

Hope that made sense! And sorry it’s a little scribble-ly! I used my iPhone to draw that hah!
3. Then, I topped it off with a layer of soap including a swirl of gold mica.

RESULTS
I had a hard time deciding which was the best butterfly to enter into the challenge. I liked little things about each. But, my brother begged me to submit this one (so I did):

Here’s the rest of them:





AFTER THOUGHTS
I was really amazed at how different each bar or “butterfly” looked! Also, earlier I mentioned being nervous about the soap batter getting too thick. But, I think I’m realizing now that thick trace is good! Really wish I had more time to give it another go to try new techniques, colors, ideas, and so on. Oh what fun :)!

Thanks for reading! And thanks, Amy, for giving us this forum to learn and share!

❤
Caroline

Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge- Chopstick Swirl

This is my second time participating in Amy Warden’s Soap Challenge Club. I managed to squeeze in some soap-making despite family visiting from overseas!

This month we were required to use the spoon/chopstick swirl technique. I’ve never done this before but was excited to try!

I decided to test out some new natural colorants- cocoa powder and azuki beans powder! With limited time, I didn’t document the process with photos. But here’s how it went:
1. Chose colorants- TD, azuki beans powder, cocoa, yellow pigment, red pigment.
2. At medium-thick trace I layered the soap.
3. Then, swirled a chopstick in mostly a vertical/up-down motion.
4. Topped it with some gold mica.

Here we are!
Azuki Bean Cocoa Soap

Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge- Soap Comb

This is my first time participating in Amy Warden’s Soap Challenge. Woohoo! I’m excited!

The only requirement was to use a soap comb while making soap! After reading and watching Amy Warden’s tutorial, I decided that I was going to, with squeeze bottles, make a freeform design with lines and dots. Then, my plan was to use the soap comb to bring it all together. I wanted each bar to have a unique design.

 

PREP

First, I made a soap recipe that included 60% olive oil to be sure I had plenty of time to swirl/design. The rest included coconut oil, palm oil (sustainable), avocado oil, apricot oil, and a tiny bit of castor oil. This is by far the slowest recipe I’ve ever made! Well, guess it’s not saying much since I’m very new to cold process (although I’ve been making melt and pour for years).

 

Then I gathered some squeeze bottles. Check-out the 3-hole bottles I found!

Next, I made my soap combs- one with the skewers a few millimeters apart and the other about an inch apart.
(However, I ended up using only the small comb.)

Finally, I decided on the following colorants:
Pink (rose clay)
Black (activated charcoal)
White (titanium dioxide)
Blue (liquid pigment)

 

SOAP-MAKING

So here’s how I started off!
1. I used the 3-hole squeeze bottles to make the black and white lines.

2. Then, with the regular, one-hole bottle, I added some abstract flowers with some splatter/dots along with pink lines.

3. This is where the soap comb was incorporated (pictures below). Most of the time, I combed in a downward motion. But also, I went sideways and made a few turning strokes. Then, used a single skewer to touch-up and give certain areas more shape…especially the flowers.

I absolutely loved every second of this project! Thanks to Amy for hosting such a wonderful, exciting challenge. This really gives us soapers a chance to connect with others as well as be creative within the boundaries. And boundaries, I feel, make us even more creative. 🙂

Merry Day Soaps: Melt and Pour Dinosaur Soap

Pretty Good Shop aka pregoo.jp

As I was debating whether or not to buy acrylic molds from Cafe de Savon (see previous blog), I found another really interesting Japanese online soap shop- Pretty Good! They have see-through / clear silicone molds!
The sizes are bigger than Cafe de Savon’s acrylic molds.

I was blown away by their other products too- cute soap stamps and molds!

And unique silicone products such as their texture sheets and arch structure.

Be inspired and check it out-
Pretty Good Shop
Photos by Pregoo.jp

Cafe de Savon’s Acrylic Soap Molds

Thought I’d post some links to a Japanese shop that sells acrylic soap molds. The molds are smaller than other US standard molds (soap size in mm in picture)-

-but they seem pretty functional according to reviews.

Also, be sure to checkout the accessories!

There’s some clip on handles made to attach at the opposite ends of the mold to help:


…and rectangle structure to help unmold:

Other accessories include a lye mixer bottle:

Anybody have experience with acrylic molds? Compared to many I’ve seen, these seem awesome.

Update: I bought the “brownie” type mold as well as the tall skinny mold. 🙂

cafe de savon’s rakuten shop
cafe de savon’s global rakuten shop
cafe de savon’s website

Collecting Soap Notes on Glycerin Rivers

After making two back-to-back batches of cp soap that resulted in unwanted glycerin rivers (see pictures below), I decided to do some research.

How to prevent Glycerin Rivers

In short, here’s what I gathered from multiple sites:
(Please note, these are just notes that I’ve gathered to help myself and hopefully others. I like keeping my notes all in one spot! ;))

1. Use less water (AuntieClaras uses 1.4 water:1 lye ratio, as opposed to a “full” water amount)

(Excellent blog
posts: Auntie Clara’s first experiment and Auntie Clara’s follow-up experiment)

2. Soap at low temperatures (SoapQueen suggests working at 10 degrees less, others suggests working at room temperature)

3. Mix colorants, powder, and clays well (use a mini mixer to fully blend into oils. For example, WholeSaleSuppliersPlus explains that some soapers “…put a small amount of their oils into plastic beakers or disposable mixing cups. They then add the pigment (titanium dioxide) to the oil and mix well…They then add the liquid pigment to their soap batch prior to fragrance”.)

4. Don’t use too much colorant (especially titanium dioxide), powders, clays. (Follow retailers recommended amounts)

5. Make sure the environment is not too hot and insulation is not too thick (Perhaps you should remove the insulating towel but leave your mold in a box? Or try not to induce heat all together if you know your recipe will heat it up enough. Also, check your mold! Try silicone instead of wood.)

6. Avoid gel phase (Put mold in freezer)

7. Reconsider your spicy or floral fragrances and sugary liquids such as milks, that can cause heat. Or, just be aware of these wonderful, but possibly-troublesome ingredients, and follow the tips above.

9. Many soapers in forums I’ve read swear there’s a link between Palm oil and glycerin rivers (Some suggested keeping palm content less than %40, some suggested keeping the palm oil warm rather as opposed to room temperature).

10. Removing oils that tend to heat up. (GreatCakesSoapWorks informed readers that rice bran oil made her recipes heat up and crackle.)

I’ll keep adding to the list as I find more info.

Helpful links on glycerin rivers: ModernSoapmaking

SoapQueen

web archive.org

archive.org

Scientific Soapmaking