Friday, April 27, 2012

Week 6 of the weekly "Soap Challenge".

This week's soap challenge is a technique called "Faux Funnel Pour". I have made a soap similar to this technique where you pour your lightly traced, colored soap base through a funnel held over your soap mold. In the faux funnel pour you are not using a funnel to pour into and instead are pouring a small amount of your soap base directly into your mold, then you pour the next color on top of the first color, and continue the same process with the other colors. You continue to alternate your colors until you have either used all your colors or filled your mold.

I decided to use 5 colors for my pour, yellow, blue, green, lavender, and white. I prepared my colors ahead for mixing in the soap base, then proceeded to make my soap. I fragranced this soap using Bramble Berries fragrance oil "Ginger Ale" (formally called Ginger Fish), this is an amazing fragrance.   

After mixing the soap base into the prepared colors and stick blending to get the colors completely blended, the soap started getting a bit thick. That is not good for a funnel pour, you want the soap base to be fluid enough to flow when poured. Well I had to "glob" the soap into the mold before it got too thick. I was afraid that I would have a lot of air pockets throughout the soap because of how thick it was getting, so I tapped the mold several times on the counter between layers to hopefully force out any trapped air pockets.
Maybe I should call this technique a "Glob Swirl" instead. It was very fun and can't wait to try it again and hopefully with a soap recipe that won't come to a thick trace as fast. I love how each bar has it's own character, and they smell so good.

I will post some pictures of the process and the finished soap. To see everyone else's beautiful creations check out this link: Great Cakes Soapworks.   I look forward to next weeks challenge. Be sure to check back and see what that will be!


Mixing the colors with the soap base.





Oh no the soap is starting to thicken.




Notice how thick the soap is and no flow at all.

Finished with the "Glob Pour", now to texture the top.
Finished top of soap.

Soap loaf out of the mold.


Cut bars.








8 comments:

  1. The colors are very pretty! It turned out great, especially since it got so thick! :)

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  2. That's beautiful, Margo!! I love the color contrasts. :D

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  3. I really like the colors you chose and it looks like you don't have any holes- nice work!

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  4. It's almost more like a spoon swirl with larger spots of color - I really like it!! You managed your soap well, Miss Margo! :) (And I'm really glad they changed the name of that fragrance. Ginger FISH? Who would buy that??)

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    1. Thanks Amy, the fragrance does smell good and yes the new name is much better.

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  5. Wow, very interesting colours, they look really good . So glad your soap turned out so well, x Linda

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