Circling Taiwan Swirl and Other Soapmaking

The batter................

Swirl/slide soap.  This is called Hardy Har Har soap.  Ed Hardy blend of fragrance and essential oils.  LOL

Circular Taiwan Swirl in the mold.

 Circular Taiwan swirl.  What I an going for is on the left.  The one in the center is the center cut.  The one on the right is fine, but looks more like a tulip than a lotus flower.  Only one lotus flower is in a log mold and it is an end cut.

The extra batter goes into circular bars.  The swirl turned out nicely.

Most of the soap I made yesterday.

Even though it is too late to enter the January contest for the circling Taiwan swirl soap, I had to try my hand at making the design again.  I used the colors of bright yellow, bright purple, and coral.  I also made some swirled/slide soap with a lovely design.  I used the same colors, but I added white and bright green in larger quantities.  I love the way the colors mingle and create a secret design in the soap until it is unmolded and cut.  In my recipe, I used tallow, coconut oil, sunflower oil, shea butter, and coco butter and used full water with 5% superfat.  This recipe makes a nice hard bar of soap with a lot of great skin nourishing butters.

How I make soap:  I measure out the fats and butters.  Then I heat the fats and mix the butters in with the warm fats.  This melts the butters since they are very hard.  I then blend all of these fats with a stick blender, adding a little titanium dioxide to keep the soap white.  In another container, I combine ice water and lye.  I usually wait approx. 30-45 minutes after I mix the lye water.  This gives it time to cool down, but I can allow much more time If necessary.   Once the time is up, I add the lye water solution into the fat and butter solution.  (The oils are usually room temperature.)  I use a stick blender to blend it all together for a minute or so to emulsification but not trace.  I add the fragrance and blend it for an additional 30 seconds.  ( I used a blend of Ed Hardy fragrance oil, lemongrass essential oil, vanilla rosewood fragrance oil.  Ed Hardy fragrance oil is too strong for me so I have to blend it with other scents.

Now I separate any batter I want to color by placing the batter into container(s), adding color to each container, and stick blending the batter and color for a few seconds.  Now the fun begins.  I prefer to have a lot of one neutral color with a small amount of bright color.  If you remember from my previous posts, the rule of thumb is to keep the soap fairly light in color so the bubbles are not colored which in turn would possibly darken washcloths.  If that happens, I have added too much coloring.  Any number of colors can be added to the design at this time, but the soap starts to set up once it is blended, so too much time devoted to mixing the colors will take away from what time I have left to work the design. This is where I have to rush.   It is best to have containers ready and colors premixed or ready to go before I blend the lye and water solution into the fat solution.  Lately I have been using mica for my coloring, when I don't use herbs and spices.  For my colors, I place approximately 2 teaspoons of mica in a container, add about 1.5 cups of soap solution.  If the color does not evenly spread through the deign it is fine with me.  Dark and light of the same color will add some contrast and interest in the design.  If the fragrance causes the soap solution to set up fast, it will dictate how much time I have to deign my soap.  Floral fragrances tend to make soap set up fast.  Once my design is planned and my colors mixed, I place the mixture into molds.  I usually use silicone so I don't have to line the molds.  If I use a wooden mold, I have to line the mold ahead of time.

I know soap making sounds like a lot of work, but it became fairly simple once I learned how to judge my time and what emulsification and trace should look like.  I usually type my formula into a SAP calculator from Soaper's Choice so I know how much lye and water to use.  I also have a computer program that tells me what cleansing and hardness qualities my formula will have.  At first I preferred to follow recipes or use just one fat such as tallow or lard.  After that, I branched out.

The Circling Taiwan Swirl Soap Method:  Basically the soap loaf mold is divided into 4 sections lengthwise.  In the 4 sections you pour at lease 3 colors of soap batter is poured with one color in each section.  Then the dividers are removed.  A back and forth action from short end of the mold across to the other short end of the mold and all along the mold inching along using a tool such as a skewer or a spoon handle to mix the colors and give them a swirl into each other.  You stick the tool all of the way to the bottom of the mold.  After that step is completed all of the way down the soap mold, you circle the interior mold edges a couple of times with that same tool.  This action makes the swirls start to tilt.  The work is done, so let the soap set up for a day or so before unmolding.  Once unmolded, the soap is cut into chunks approximately 2 1/4 inches thick and then cut across through the center of the chunk, making 2 bars.  A lotus pattern should show up on one end of the soap log.

I hope I explained this so you are able to understand it.  I made soap using this method a few days ago.  You can check it out at: http://custercottage.blogspot.com/2016/01/scrubbie-yarn-and-circling-taiwan-swirl.html

Please view my web store at:

http://www.custercottage.com

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https://www.etsy.com/shop/CusterCottage

 

Dawnie

 

New grand-baby picture.  She loves spending time with the chickens.  She can imitate the chickens very well.

Cube Soap

I have always enjoyed the cube shape or square soaps.  I see pure olive oil soaps made this way and also French soaps.  Most of the time the soaps are plain colored and have round stamps in the center of each side of the soap.  I ordered ice cube trays made with silicone which were two inch in size.  When they arrived, they were a little flimsy and seemed too small.  I can not cut very straight so I usually don't like to use slab molds.  I decided to use a large slab mold to try cutting the cubes anyway.  Once I made the soap and I looked at the design on the outside, I was very disappointed.  It was plain and kind of ugly.  The mold was larger than I needed, so I planned to cut bars of soap with the extra soap.  Once I cut into the soap, (of course it was not too straight), the beauty of the soap shined through.  It turned out amazing!  My son thought it looked like wood grain.  I recently viewed a magazine photo of cubed soap and the comments stated that the soap was three inch cubes.  When I cut a cube that size, I found it to be too large for a woman's hand and most of the people who purchase my soap are women.  2.5 inches or 2.25 inches are a much better size for a woman's hand.  I also learned that any soap that is not cut into bars where the sides will show, will not display the decorations made in the soap, such as the marbling-- unless it is made on the top of the bar.  My future cubes will probably be in a specially designed mold so I don't waste so much soap.  I will also stick to a fairly plain design and use the creative adventures for bar soaps, where they will be cut with a special cutter and not hand cut.  Not that I won't use stamps on the soap.  LOL


In this soap, I tried Dragons Blood fragrance.  I heard rave reviews for the fragrance, so I thought I would try it.  When my order arrived, I really didn't like it.  I doctored it up with a little baby powder fragrance and a tad bit of peach fragrance.  I like the fragrance now.  Once I quit worrying about mixing the unusual together, I get better fragrance blends.  A friend of mine writes proprietor's blend on her labels.  It means that the soap company owner blends her or his own fragrances, but it sounds pretty fancy.  I may have to do that in the future.  LOL 


I placed 9 ounces of soap shreds into the soap mixture once it was at trace.  The shreds were light blue and yellow. The fragrance turns the soap brown so I used a small amount of titanium dioxide, (to keep the soap white), in the main soap along with a few drops of color and attempted a little in the pot swirl.  I used robins egg blue and sapphire coloring.  I then removed 4  cups of soap and placed it in two containers and mixed more of the coloring and titanium dioxide in these containers--one was sapphire and one was robins egg blue.  I mixed these two colors into the main soap with a little more in the pot swirl.  The colors should consist of:  light robins egg blue, darker robins egg blue, light sapphire, darker sapphire, base, (light brownish) color, darker base color, the light blue shreds and the light yellow shreds.  The colors actually contain a green and a purple too.  I think the brown will get darker as the soap cures, but only time will tell. 

Three Days Later:

It took me a few days to get photos taken and some of the colors faded, but all of the marbling/swirls are there.  It really looks nature inspired.  What do you think?  Yes, I am still trying to learn to take great soap shots.  This is one of the things on my bucket list. 


I hope those that make soap and those that find soap making interesting will enjoy my blog.  I try not to be too technical without explaining a little now and then.  If you find it enjoyable, let me know.  If it is too technical or not technical enough, let me know that also.  Thank you for reading my blog.  
Shine On!   Dawn