Notes III - Swirled Soaps

Notes on the Soaps in the Gallery - III Swirled Soaps
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.

There are two swirled soaps in the Gallery. As the technique is a tricky on there is a brief description of the two soaps and a lengthier explanation of how they were both made.
	I wanted to make a dusky carnation pink and white soap but I didn't get the colour quite right. I used a touch of titanium dioxide, some crimson mica and the tiniest touch (in this case rather too much) brown oxide to mute the pink. There is no essential oil of carnation but you can use a fragrance oil that mimics the scent of the flowers.
	The mould that I used for this soap was a plastic drawer organiser that a friend was kind enough to send me from Canada. The mixtures were white and brown (using brown oxide) which I poured the soap in a layer about 25cm x 7 cm x 1.5cm in the bottom of the mould. The scent was a Dark Chocolate fragrance oil.

*Basic Technique:* Make up two lots of base and add colour and fragrance in the usual way. You need them to be the same temperature and have them at the lower end of the range, say 120F (50C), so you may need to play around with taking them off the heat source and putting them back on until they are ready at the same time. The bases should be pourable but on the way to thickening slightly. Take one pot in your right hand and one in your left and start to pour each, equally and slowly, from opposite sides of the mould. You should be able to pour them so that they each fill up half the mould. The swirling needs to be done immediately. I used the handle end of a knife which is squared off and approximately 1 cm across. Holding it vertical push it down until it reaches the bottom of your mould at one end. Drag it across the bottom to the opposite side then back again and a straight or circular motion and lift it straight out.

Tip: The key is reaching down to the bottom of the mould and using a positive action. I have had failures using cocktail sticks, fork tines and rounded blades of knives. It is very easy to end up with something that is entirely one colour on the base (when unmoulded) or which just looks an indistinct mess, especially if the soap is too hot.

Tip: Don't tell people what you were trying to achieve. As you can see from the Chocolate soaps I didn't get an even swirling along the length, which I set out to do, but when I had cut it into three I liked the result much better than if I had.

Making the Soaps in the Gallery -Simple Shapes |Circles, Slices and Layers | Swirls Embedding | Variations on a Hexagon |