Saturday, March 24, 2012

Great Cakes Soapworks Soap Challenge week 1

Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks posted a weekly challenge to soapmakers from all over the world.  Currently there are over 70 of us participating.  The challenge consists of trying a new technique of her choice every week for approximately 20 weeks. 
Week one of the challenge was to do an in the pot swirl with one more color than we ever have.  Seeing i have never done an in the pot swirl or have even heard of it till this week I decided to start off with one color!  I have always done all of my swirling directly in the mold so this was a totally new technique to me! 
For anyone who is wondering what the heck I am talking about by an "in the pot swirl"  It means removing part of the soap from the original batch, coloring it and then strategically pouring back into the original pot.  This is then carefully poured into the mold to achieve the swirl pattern.  It can be done with as many colors as you like.  However the more you use the harder it is to keep the colors from all coming together into one mucky color.
For me this was quite a challenge even with one color!  I am used to pouring my soap and swirling it in the mold at a very lite trace.  I quickly found out with my first batch that I needed my soap to be of a whole different consistency for this.
Below is a picture of the first soap I did.  It was too thin therefor the swirls are not that noticeable. Even so it did turn out quite pretty and smells amazing!


So.... Seeing I wasn't quite happy with it I had to try again :)

Below is the result of my second try.  The dark brown color comes from cocoa powder and the green is chromium oxide green. I added lots of cocoa butter to this bar too and scented it with Peppermint essential oil.   This time the consistency was a little thicker but still probably not where it should have been. 


                                                     
Oh!  In case you didn't notice the log molds are new too!  I decided to finally attempt smaller batches in a log mold  :)  The batches may be smaller but these are all gong to be big 5 -6 oz bars!   I also broke down and ordered some micas for colorant to try something a little different, so for those of you that wanted new and different your going to in for some big surprises!

7 comments:

  1. Love, love the swirls in the second bar. Those are the in the pot swirls I'm trying to achieve.

    Michelle

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  2. Ooooo, the first one is good. The second one is AWESOME!!! Way to nail it!

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  3. Your second attempt is amazing -love love love the colors! I don't normally do in-the-pot swirling either, but it was fun for a change. Happy to have found your blog, hope to see you at next week's challenge! :) ~Becky

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  4. They are both really nice, I like the sound of the peppermint in the second one, like a peppermint chocolate slice, lovely , Linda

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  5. I think they both look nice. Just think about how they can only get better from here. Chocolate mint sounds so yummy and you matched the colors perfectly!

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  6. Both look awesome Lisa!!! Bet the peppermint cocoa one smells divine!!! :) Good job! Tricia

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  7. Wow! I love the colours in the second one, I can almost smell it from here! lol, brilliant swirls, I have so enjoyed this challenge

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