Our Oakmoss can't be used for camo, it smells too good!

Monday September 8, 2014

We have shows coming up between now and the holidays, so we are stocking our soap supplies with "seasonal" soaps.  Today we split up and I made a batch of cold process soap at the same time Alison produced a hot process batch.  To keep the confusion to a minimum we split the soapmaking into two different blog posts,  this one is all about the Oakmoss batch, you can catch the other one on the blog titled "The Great Pumpkin is alive and well in Kathy's kitchen."

We started off cutting about an ounce of silk into small pieces. We have discovered that the tinier the cut, the faster the silk dissolves in the lye/water, so we cut tiny pieces.

The cut up silk.

We decided on three colors in muted earth tones, this one will be a combination of patina sheen (dark green) and light gold micas from +Bramble Berry 

I know I said three colors, however once the patina sheen and light gold were mixed it wasn't quite green enough so we added a bit of green chrome to green it up a bit.

The second color will be one we recently bought from .www.rusticescentuals.com, we love the Enchanted Forest color.

The last color in our trio is a sample from www.rusticescentuals.com, it is black with a bit of sparkle, when mixed with the batter it was light gray.

The scent we used is from www.fragrancebuddy.com.  They describe it as a rich musk, amber, woods with hints of green and patchouli.  We aren't sure what "woods" and "green" smell like, but nonetheless, this scent is amazing.

So yay, here I took a step and labeled the pictures; I hope the print isn't too small.

I'll apologize ahead of time for the dark pictures. We need to invest in some stronger lighting for the rainy days we are sure to have this fall.

At any rate, above is the first layer going into the mold; it is uncolored.

On top of the white layer I dribbled a little of each of the three colors, starting with Enchanted Forest.

So the layering process was 1. white, 2. mixture of three colors (see above), 3. another layer of white, 4. another mixture of the three colors, 5. finishing up with white.

This is the last layer of white. Now we will get our hanger swirl tool and hopefully make an interesting pattern in the soap.

Even though you can't clearly see the hanger swirl tool, it's in the soap swirling away.

You can see the various patterns as I am swirling.

I added all the leftover batter to the top of the swirled soap, there was more white than anything.

Here all colors have been added. I made sure to tamp the batter down several times during the process, and now I am beginning my favorite part - swirling the top.

Love the swirling! It's so much fun, and you never have two turn out exactly the same.

Above is the finished soap, ready to go into the curing box over night. I can't wait to see what the colors morph into after 24 hours.

Wow, not what I expected.  I think maybe I should have used clear mica rather than light gold sparkle.  I think the gold color is going to have to grow on me a little. I wanted the colors to be earthy tones, but if I look on the brighter side, gold is in the earth....that's a stretch.

Once the bars were cut we felt much better about the color. The inside is exactly what we wanted - a nice blend of earth tones. Ok, so what if it's framed in soft gold?

Here is Oakmoss soap; it will be cured by October 20th.