Great Cakes Soapworks February, 2014 Soap Challenge

I'm participating in this month's soap challenge sponsored by Amy of Great Cakes Soapworks. This challenge is to use soap embeds in cold-processed soap. The embeds have to be made of cold-processed or hot-processed soap (not melt and pour soap).

This was a fun challenge and I learned a few things, as usual. I've made hot-processed soap before, but it was never this easy. The microwave method  for hot-processed soap as demonstrated by Amy works great. For this challenge I wanted to make small, white soap balls and cover them with colored soap to make larger, colored balls that look like fruit loops when the bars were cut. I ran out of white so some of my soap balls had to be solid.

Colorful Soap Balls

The balls were then placed into a batch of white cold-processed soap. Easy and fun!

In the Mold

I used the Fruit Loops fragrance oil from Wholesale Supplies Plus and it smells fruity and good. I didn't want to forgo using goat's milk in the cold-processed portion since I normally add goat's milk to my soaps. The drawback is that the hot-processed white soap turned out whiter than the cold-processed white soap. For this reason I may try using the cold-processed method for making embeds in this particular soap next time, but I'll definitely be trying this technique again soon!

Cut Bars Showing Embeds

Great Cakes Soapworks November Soap Challenge: Squeeze Bottle Design Technique

I wish all of life's challenges were as fun as November's soap challenge hosted by Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks! This month's challenge is to make a design on soap using squeeze bottles. The design is applied with squeeze bottles to the mold and then the remaining soap batter is poured over the top. 

 I decided to divide up my normal nine-bar slab mold and only use only a third of it to keep my batch size small in case I needed to make several attempts at this design. My first challenge was to find a design that was simple and still interesting. Sometimes the simple designs can be the most difficult to pull off, don't you agree? Amy made it look so easy in her tutorial! 

On the first attempt I didn't take a water discount and became impatient waiting for the design to firm up. The design flattened out when I poured the base over it. Also, the circles were supposed to be silver but morphed to beige. I used an essential oil blend of fir and lavender which smelled wonderful, but produced some serious ash. Also, I decided I wanted something more Christmassy looking. Lessons learned. Back to the drawing board.

For my second attempt I went with a simpler design. I also used a water discount to try to speed up trace. I used sage green oxide for the green colorant and red lake #7 with a touch of merlot mica for red. Here's how it looked after I finished squeezing the design into the mold and then after the base was poured. At this stage this soap appeared to be everything I'd hoped it would be!

Here's what I found when I removed the soap from the mold. The beautiful red color had morphed into an outrageous orange! The orange flecks in the white base (probably from residual colorant on the stick blender) were another unwelcome surprise. On the bright side, the water discount was definitely the way to go. This batch traced much faster than the last one and yet was still easy to work with.

The objective for the third (and final) soap was to use the same basic recipe and design as the second soap but with a color closer to red this time. Again, I used sage green oxide as the green colorant as I was happy with the green it produced last time. I mixed brick red oxide, burgundy oxide, merlot sparkle mica and a bit of black oxide attempting to achieve red. I let the soap trace to the proper consistency and proceeded to squeeze out two green trees instead of one each of red and green. Oops. After I recovered my composure I made the remaining four trees in the correct order. Next, I carefully ladled some of the white base over the trees and then swirled the remaining red and green into the what was left of the white batter for an in-the-pot swirl which I poured over the base. I used Kentish Rain fragrance oil from Brambleberry to achieve a nice, fresh, rain scent. Perfect for Christmas in Oregon!

Challenge Soaps Completed!