Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge #1

I'm really looking forward to taking part in Amy's Great Cakes Soapworks challenges this year. This year she chose 4 techniques; Tiger Stripe, Elemental Swirl, Mica Swirl Tops and Leopard Spots.

This 1st challenge, the tiger stripe, was very valuable for me. Not only because I learned a new technique but because I really had to stretch myself to figure out how to make this technique work. I quickly found out, with my first 2 attempts, that my basic recipe is a fast mover - which doesn’t normally bother me, as I’m used to working quickly and don’t think too much about it.

Here is my first attempt using my basic recipe, I also incorporated some of the homemade yogurt from my last post into the soap:

You can see that the bottom started out correctly, the bottom 2 layers are striped! But then you can see that it got thicker and I ended up with a more layered look as I had to spoon the colors in. I’m not complaining about this soap, by the way, I still love the way it turned out!

I decided to try a new soap with the same recipe, leaving out the yogurt, thinking maybe it had caused it my batter to accelerate:

 Nope. Still too thick. Good thing I needed to restock some soaps this week!

After 2 frustrating attempts, I almost gave up. However, the stubborn side of me took over and I decided to give it one more try, thinking maybe I should try it with a new recipe. I looked around on the internet and found that recipes that are higher in olive oil are good for longer trace times, so I settled on a recipe that had only 2 oils; olive oil (84%) and coconut oil (16%). It worked so much better this time, I had plenty of time to work with the soap batter. Here it is in the mold, and you can already see how much more fluid this soap was:

Here it is out of the mold; the outside shows just a hint of the design inside:

And cut:

Success! 

I really loved this technique; it is definitely something I would do again! Looking forward to the trying the Elemental Swirl next week...thanks so much for hosting these challenges again Amy!