For the second week of challenges, we are tasked with the Elemental Swirl technique. I personally have never done an elemental swirl before, but it's as simple as a couple of in-the-pot swirls. I have done quite a few in the pot swirls, and honestly I'm not a huge fan. Maybe because my batter is too thin when I do it and it just turns out muddy. This IS a "challenge" however, and I will accept it :)
First I've got my oils all weighed and ready. This is only a 1.5-lb batch. It is suggested to have a larger batch to compensate for the technique, but well... challenge, right? My biggest mold is 2 lbs, so I made do. This is another high olive recipe so I can be assured that it will move slowly and I have time to work with it.
Here is my initial setup. As you can see, I prefer to take my challenges to extremes. I am using 7 colors for this project! I am also using a fragrance that I am unsure of. You can see the fragrance is individually measured in the smaller cups. The measuring cup on the far right is my silver mica for making the pencil lines between layers.
Here are all my colors with the soap batter poured in. since I had to split it 7 ways, I had to do some math. The pink, orange, and green are the main colors, while the yellow, blue, and purple are secondary. The left has white, because it's going to be a "secondary" in all three layers. Oh yeah, did I mention I'm doing three layers instead of only 2? Challenging? You bet.
For my first layer, I had pink, yellow, and white. You can barely see the yellow in there because the trace is still so thin. I also added one little measuring cup of the fragrance to this. Since I wasn't sure how it would react, I added it a little at a time to make sure I could pour a layer and still be able to work with the other layers. Well, the fragrance worked great! I think it even made the batter thinner initially...
For my next layer, I had the orange, blue, and white. I would have made all layers complimentary colors, but for some reason my eyes have a strong aversion to the red-green combination. I wanted every color in there, so I just kinda mixed them up. This is the only one that uses complimentary colors. You can see the pink layer chilling in the mold with mica sprinkled on top.
And for the final layer, green, purple, and white! I sort of did a drop swirl with the layers to see what I would get. I hope it doesn't turn out ugly. I think my orange layer made it to the bottom, so I'm a little worried about that. I was gentler with the green layer so that it wouldn't poke through all of the layers.
And here's the final log! I reserved some of the batter from each color to do the swirl on top, but I reserved more of the blue apparently. There is practically no green or orange in the top swirl, but it looks ok to me. I swirled this one the same way on top as I did with the Tiger Stripe challenge. Except I had 7 colors instead of 3 :)
Anyway, that's that! I will cut these and post pictures on Saturday when it's due! I have a fair on Saturday morning, so I will probably post later in the afternoon. Have a great day!