#coldprocesssoap #DNAHelixswirl #soapchallenge #totalhotman
Monday, February 9, 2015
One DNA/Helix swirl down. Time for another run at it. Just in case you wonder why this particular swirl has its name, we have included an illustration of a DNA Helix swirl. The name alone gives me flashbacks to high school and college biology classes.
Friday we used our Old Faithful recipe and it started getting thick a bit faster than we liked, so we decided to do two things different today: 1. We used a different recipe, and 2. We used a different mold. We wanted to use a different mold just to see how the design looks in a different setting.
We added Tussah silk to this batch of soap. The more we use it, the more we seem to use it. Know what we mean? It just gives a batch of soap an extra layer of luxury.
One of our popular masculine fragrances is Total Hot Man from +Natures Garden . We need more, so we decided this would be a good way to replenish our stock.
We picked colors for this swirl with the words "hot" and "man" in mind. The visual appeal should be masculine and should represent heat, so we went with Sangria Mica and 24K Gold Mica from +Rustic Escentuals, Copper Sparkle Mica, Tangerine Wow, and Fizzy Lemonade from +Bramble Berry and Icicle Mica from +Rustic Escentuals added to the Tangerine and Lemonade colors.
Above you can see the colors after we mixed them with a small amount of oil.
This soap recipe does not contain palm oil, but does have Shea butter. After we combined the oils with the lye/silk/distilled water, we added the fragrance oil and then mixed until we had reached a light trace - that means that when we lift the blender out of the batter, the drips leave a light trail across the surface of the batter.
We learned from Friday's session.
We didn't even try to pour the batter into the bottles without using the funnel.
We tried to keep the amounts in each bottle as even as possible. But we just eye-balled it; we were neither scientific nor specific.
We added the colors to each bottle.
Above you can see the colors after we mixed them and had them ready to go.
We poured all of the base batter into the mold. Friday we used the log mold, but today we decided to use the 18-bar mold.
Then it was time for us to place the colors. We started out putting down a layer of each color using a continuous zig-zag motion from one end of the mold to the other. Once we zig-zagged each color once, we went back and put the colors down in stripes until we had used up all of the colors in the squirt bottles.
Next came the fun part. We used a skewer to make the designs on top of the soap. First we created very tiny "s" swirls up and down the length of the mold. That design would be gorgeous left alone, but we are working on the DNA/Helix swirl, so we added that detail to our swirl.
One other thing that we did differently today was in the depth of the skewer. Friday, we were careful to only go into the colors on the surface of the soap. Today, we took the skewer all the way to the bottom of the soap with each swirl. It will be interesting to see if we get any swirl action in the body of the soap this time rather than the completely solid color.
The following two still photos give you a closer look at the swirl once we had completed the DNA/Helix swirl.
We added the dividers, sprayed the surface with alcohol to lessen the formation of ash, then put the soap up to cure and harden for a couple of days.
This soap recipe is actually rather soft. It still felt "squishy" after two days, and we were afraid that if we pushed the bars out of the mold we would squish the bars or leave thumb prints in it. We let it sit and harden a bit longer than our usual recipe.
Thursday, February 12, 2015
Today, the soap still feels soft, but we handled it gently and finally removed it from the mold. Now it can get air all around and really cure and harden.
The Total Hot Man DNA Helix swirl will be ready to go on March 23.
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