Soap Challenge Club - Mantra Swirl

This month's soap challenge is the 'Mantra Swirl'. I have wanted to try this technique ever since I saw some of the beautiful soaps made by other soapers and fell in love with the swirls and the beautiful colors. You want your soap batter to stay very fluid to accomplish this swirl so I and use more soft oils in my recipe, you also need to use a fragrance that does not move fast, Pink Sangria from WSP. When you cut the soap you cut it horizontally instead of the usual vertical cut so the swirl shows up on all the bars.

Amy Worden of Great Cakes Soapworks, showed a great video on 2 different ways to do the Mantra Swirl, the "Original" version and the "Advanced/Modified" version.  I am a visual person so her video's really helped me to understand the whole process.  After watching both of the video's (twice), I was ready to jump right in and give it a try.  I decided to do the Advanced/Modified version, after all this is a "Challenge" right...................fingers crossed.

I saw a Modified Mantra swirl displayed on a Facebook page that was made by Ramy Sanchez, that soap was so amazing! She was so gracious to post a picture tutorial showing us the process that she used to create it, needless to say we were all so excited.  You can visit her blog here and see all the fabulous soaps that she makes. Thank you Ramy for sharing your talents and technique with us. Here is a picture of one of Ramy's soap that inspired the design of my soap. Isn't it so pretty.

I absolutely love the Mantra Swirl and I am already thinking about what colors I can use to make future batches. Amy I loved this challenge and can't wait for the next one you have planned for us. I love all the other soaps made by the other participants, the colors and designs are amazing.

I hope you enjoy the pictures of the process of me making this soap.

I have everything ready to start the soap.
I have printed out some pictures of Ramy's soaps,
remember I mentioned I was a visual person.


 

 

Here my colors are mixed and I have added fragrance to the soap, .
The colors I used are Titanium Dioxide,  
Fluorescent Pink (WSP), Activated Charcoal.

 

 

  


I have pulled out the cardboard dividers. Next onto the swirling.


 

 

 

 
 
 


Here is the first swirl, my soap is staying nice and fluid.
Now for the second swirl pattern.

 

I am very happy with this swirl, and it smells amazing.



Here it is unmolded. I can't wait to cut it and see how the swirl
turned out in the middle. I will be cutting this horizontally to
have the Mantra Swirl show on each bar of soap.

 

 

 



Here are the cut bars. I had some soap trimming from
the ends of the loaf and I made the soap balls that
I will use in a future batch of soap.