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Notes
on the Soaps in the Gallery - I
Simple Shapes, Simple Soaps |
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| General: You may wish to refer to the pages on the Basic Method, Colours, Fragrances and Moulds for more details and information on suppliers. Clicking on the picture will take you to the larger picture of the soap in the Gallery. | |
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This is one of the simplest of all soaps but one of my favourites. I used a circular mould (it comes in sheets of six) from Pourette. To the basic melted soap base I added a tiny amount of titanium dioxide, some ultramarine medium blue and a touch of ultramarine pink. I scented it with essential oil of lavender. |
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This was made in a similar way to the round lavender soap above. I left out the titanium dioxide this time which gives the soap a slightly more translucent look to it. The mould is 'Chrysanthemum', a design by Catherine Failor available from Milky Way Moulds. I scented this with a fragrance oil, Hyacinth, which like all the fragrance oils on this page came from Amphora Aromatics. |
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I wanted to create some soap that would be suitable for
an industrial look in a bathroom with a lot of chrome or stainless
steel. I coloured small batches of melted base with varying amounts
of titanium dioxide and black oxide to give a range from pure white
to black. Each was poured in a thin layer in the bottom of a rectangular
plastic mould. The fragrance oil I used was Thai Coconut.
To answer the obvious question, no, the soaps don't dye you or the water black at all, but it isn't a particularly good idea to rub them on a white face cloth.
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Red can be a surprisingly difficult colour to reproduce in soap and it tends to be less stable than most other colours. The colour in this heart-shaped soap comes from crimson mica which I find the easiest of all to use and it produces a soap that sparkles when wet. For a pink version, add a little titanium dioxide. The heart-shaped mould is by Pourette. and the fragrance is English Rose. |
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Just to show that you do not need specialist soap moulds, I made the base for this soap in a cream carton and the little motif in a chocolate mould from a cake decorating suppliers though you could use any shape you wanted or cut out your own from a piece of coloured soap base. I had to cut the carton away to unmould it as the foot of the carton slopes inwards slightly. The shape was an advantage however as when I inverted it it had a useful recess into which I could pour a tiny amount of the chocolate base to act as a glue for the decoration. What else could the fragrance be but Dark Chocolate? |