Saturday, March 22, 2014

Great Cakes Soapworks Drop-Swirl Challenge

It's been a while since I have been able to participate in Amy's soap challenges, so I decided to jump in this month and try the drop-swirl challenge. I have done the drop swirl once before, on this Blackberries & Cream soap:


For this challenge, I decided to use these little jelly bean candies for inspiration:


I didn't take pictures of the process, because multi-colored soaps like this require my full attention...and I was so worried I would forget my fragrance (which tends to happen if I am really focused on the techniques!) The drop swirl is created by dropping colored soap from varying heights up and down the length of your poured soap base (I hope that makes sense!) Here is what the drop swirl looks like after the colors are all dropped in from the top:


As you can imagine with this technique, you would need to use a recipe that is slow moving, and choose a fragrance that doesn't accelerate. I chose to use a recipe that was 85% OO and 15% CO, and I used Black Raspberry Vanilla as the fragrance. Here is the top finished and swirled with the bunny candies:


And cut:



As you can see, the soap was a bit crumbly when I cut it...I'm not sure why? And I have lots of air bubbles (or stearic spots?), but I am still pleased with the drop swirl. I thought maybe my soap was too thin, but it seemed to have held the droplets well enough. I used a liquid color for the purple, but micas for all the rest. I used homemade MP for the bottom layers, I wanted to see how it would do as a layer in CP soap.

I have also pulled out some of my old bath fizzie recipes and am trying out some new ones. These are bubbling bath bars. If you haven't seen these before, you break of a piece and crumble it under running water to get bubbles. They are fun to make because you can shape them in so many different ways:


And these are some bubbling bath fizzies I made:


Some of you have asked for a tutorial for these and I will put one together, but I would still like to experiment with a few more recipes before I make any recommendations - so I hope you don't mind waiting for a tutorial! =)

Edited: I forgot to mention that I added CommentLuv to the blog - I like that it links back to your blogs too, but I would love to know your thoughts... please let me know if you find it too awkward to use, I will (try!) to remove it!

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