Ok, so this post is going to be a little different... it's part of a soap challenge hosted by the Great Cakes Soapworks maiden, Amy Warden. The challenge can be found HERE. The first challenge is a technique called "Tiger Stripe". I have actually done this one before, which you can see on the Emerald bar on the gemstone line page, so I was excited to do it again! The following is my semi-tutorial on how I made the latest tiger stripe, scented with Peach Magnolia Raspberry from Nature's Garden.
First of all, this is the mold I used. It is a custom built mold that will hold 25 ounces of oils (a little over 2 pounds of soap in total). I lined it with a first layer of wax paper, then parchment paper over that. Since the soap batter will be a little thinner, I wanted to make sure this mold didn't leak.
I then pre-mixed my colors while my oils *gently* melt in a double boiler. The lye is already mixed and cooling off (sorry I forgot to take pictures of these steps). I wanted to make one color a purple-pink color, and the other a peachy color. In the cup on the right, I have Ultramarine Violet mixed with a little water and neon pink in the little cup in front mixed with a little glycerin. I will add this after adding the soap to the purple to get the hue of pink I"m looking for. The peach is actually a neon citrus color that I will add a little at a time to get what I'm looking for.
Here I have mixed my oils and lye together with some silk and kaolin clay. This is very very thin trace, as I had to stop for a second to snap the picture. I did NOT add the fragrance yet, because despite the reviews of it behaving well, since I've never personally tried it, I like to add unknown fragrances after color to make sure it behaves. If not, it's easier to move to plan B when colors are already mixed. This recipe is high olive and a little coconut. That way, I have plenty of time to play (provided the fragrance behaves!)
Hey, it behaved! This is the picture after adding fragrance and blending color. The batter is still at very thin trace, so I stick blended a little more to make it a bit thicker. The purple is more purple than pink, which is fine and I think the combo looks pretty good! The peach turned out wonderful. I put aside a little white (little cup in front) to have some contrasting swirling on top.
Unfortunately, all the photos my husband took of me pouring the batter into the mold turned out bad... my hand and the cup were always in the way, so you couldn't see anything anyway. BUT, what I like to do with tiger stripe is, make the batter a little thicker, and rather than keep pouring a line over the last line, I kind of overlap each stripe across the mold. I don't do it methodically though, it's sort of random overlapping in order to achieve the random stripe effect on a tiger. I will find out how this one turned out once I cut it :) But again, I used the same technique on Emerald. In this picture, I was a little heavy-handed on the left side with the white, so there is a bigger blob on that side than I wanted.
This is the first swirling pass I made. I used a basic chopstick and moved up and down against the stripes in the above picture. As you can see, the white blob is dominating the left side. Let's see if we can fix that....
Bah! Well, I tried. It still looks good though, and I got more of the peach to mingle with the swirl so that it's not so white. For this swirl, I just made several curly-q's from left to right on the top half, then from right to left on the bottom half.
It smells very very nice.... quite fruity!
It smells very very nice.... quite fruity!
Well, that's it! I have to let it rest for 24 hours, then I can cut it and take pictures. I have to work the day job tomorrow, so pictures may not happen until evening. Have a good night!