More Adventures in Swirling Cold Process Soap

Hello Dear Friends,

 

This post shows the latest cold process swirl soap I finished. It's called Ginger Mint, and is made from an original palm oil free recipe scented with peppermint essential oil and ginger essential oil. The combination actually smells divine, there's just a hint of the ginger to give a funky spicy kick to the mint. I think the swirling came out far better than the last batch (Strawberry Champagne CP.) What made a huge difference was tweaking the recipe so it traced more slowly. That gave me more time to pour in the layers and achieve the swirl effect. I'm going to share my recipe in a later post, cuz it's really nice and bubbly. I developed my own recipe because I couldn't find a palm free recipe that had the attributes I like and also traced slowly enough for me to practice my swirling technique. I'm thinking about working on a lavender blend for the next one.

 

 

 

 

Ginger Mint soap in a 1 pound micro batch

 

Ginger Mint Soap after 7 week cure and cut and ready for use

I'll be sure to post pics of the next batch. And if I can figure out how to set up my camera and tripod while I'm actually soaping, I'll post a tutorial to go along with the recipe.

Best Wishes!
Rose

Adventures In Swirling Cold Process Soap

 

Swirling in CP Soap

Photos (not a tutorial)

 

Hi Friends,

Here's a couple of pics of my latest soaping adventure. It's a cold process batch made with a new recipe I haven't used before. This recipe was supposed to trace slower than my usual recipe, and things were going well until I added the fragrance blend. I wanted to practice my swirling techniques, but this turned hard really fast. So it's pretty much just a random swirl now. The scent is Strawberry Champagne, a fragrance I blended myself. It smells really nice and fresh and tangy, like strawberry soda and champagne.

 

Batch of two tone CP soap after about 36 hours

 

 

The surface is highly textured because the batch traced so quickly

 

 

Cutting the soap into bars

 

 

Instead of the swirl I planned, it has a marbled look

 

 

Painting the soap with cosmetic mica

 

 

The mica gives a lovely shimmer. I like shimmer :)

 

 

 

I'm going to try this recipe again using an essential oil, which should give me a good idea of whether the quick trace was due to the recipe or the fragrance. (But I'm suspecting the fragrance right now.) Hopefully the recipe is fine, because I'm in the mood for a lot of swirling and design lately. And tweaking CP recipes is really tedious work sometimes. It took me nearly a year to perfect my go-to recipe. The effort was worth it, though. that recipe is so fantastic, creamy, moisturizing, and almost invulnerable to DOS. Love that one!

 

I'll keep you posted on this recipe, I'm calling it Swirl.

 

'Til Next Time,

Rose