Monday, August 15, 2011

In The Mold Swirling

Typically you do a ITP swirl meaning In The Pot swirl when the raw soap mixture is at the right trace.  But what do you do when you have the mixture over traced but you still want that similar look?

As I'm still in the stage of adjusting myself to get used to using a stick blender to soap, all my batches are over traced these days.  Plus, I poured too hard on the flaxseed oil jug, and ended up having to readjust my double batch recipe into triple batch!  Oh my~  Original plan was only to make a loaf of naked cow milk soap and some Hot Flash Drama Queen shell version.  Well, now I have to quickly think of 3rd loaf idea.  I was not worried because I have so many fragrance oil I have not yet used.  Anyway, milk soap over traced... sigh.  Poured the naked loaf, that was easy, piece of cake.  Moved on to do 4 color shells using those cheap plastic shell sheet molds.  I globed colors into each cavity and swirled each shell with a stick.  And it only took me... forever!  I'll take photos and show you next blog post.
By the time I'm done with those shells (10 total) the remaining raw soap mixture had gone really thick, like gooey taffy or cold cream cheese.  I quickly poured some cold milk into the pot and stirred it down to thinner paste then mixed in the fragrance oil (Blackberry Amber) and colors.  The mixture is thinner but still too thick to do any sort of swirling.  But I wasn't going to give in.  If it's too late to do an ITP swirl, why not modify it to an ITM swirl?!  After random globs of colors at various spots in the mold, I stumped the mold pretty hard against the counter a few times to compact the paste together then used a chopstick to draw random patterns vertically across the mold a few times.  Stumped the mold against the counter again to even out the top, and finally sprayed a shinny layer of rubbing alcohol, done!
  

13 comments:

  1. I've got to be honest ... I think your soap looks amazing!

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  2. Never give up! You definitely showed that soap who's boss!! Looks wonderful.:)

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  3. Yeah, soap, you are not the boss of me!

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  4. OOooo Ima have to try that sometime.

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  5. What a save!! It's gorgeous! I'd forgotten about spraying the tops with alcohol - it's a good tip!

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  6. Gloppity glop! This is a gorgeous soap! Can't wait to hear the name of it!!

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  7. Anyone wants to help me with naming again?!

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  8. Why do you spritz the top with alcohol? What does that do? I've never done that before with cold process.

    An idea for a name is Red Diva but I have not idea what scent it is.

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  9. Oops, I guess I forgot to mention what fragrance I used... It is Blackberry Amber. I like the word Diva!

    Spray a thin layer of high content rubbing alcohol is to help keep ash away and to get shinny top surface. I have great result using this method. But remember, spray mist to totally cover the top or whatever exposed to the air when the soap is just about solid and matte looking.

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  10. Thank you for the advice. A long time ago I'd heard about the alcohol but it was suggested right after it was made and knowing that sometimes I put my soaps in the oven I was afraid my soap would blow up. I'm making a fridge one today so I'll spritz when it's poured and then when the soap gets hard.

    You could call the soap Diva instead of the Red before it or Amber Berry.

    Michelle

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