Spin Swirl Soaping - Challenge Attempt #2
SOAP FAIL….Famous last words…”this is so easy!”
After seeing how easy the first swirl was….I thought maybe it would be a good idea to try a second one with a more fluid batter so you can really see the swirls. But, I didn’t want to make another 5 pounds of soap (18 bars that will take me a long time to use up). So, the husband made me a new flat mold that is 6” x 6”. Again he put the hinges on it and made the other two sides removable. Works like a charm!
So this time I used the same recipe as before that Amy suggested but this time I wanted to try putting sugar and salt into the batter to harden the soap and give it more bubbles once it had a full cure. So, I put the sugar in the water before adding the lye and then put the salt in after the lye was incorporated and cooled a little. I went through the same process as before; mixing my oils and cooling both the lye water and oils to 90 degrees. I mixed this batch to what I thought was mixed…but looking back I’m not so sure…then added my FO: Crisp Cotton from Brambleberry. No acceleration which was good…a little TOO good…
I let the batter sit a minute until I got my colors mixed into the oils. I split the batch and the batter was still fluid. I was very excited! I was going to have amazing swirls this time! That was until I started pouring this and it just mushed all over the place. I tried to pour this one in a V pattern…yeah right…that didn’t work out too well. I spun the soap which didn’t look like much because the batter STILL hadn’t even reached a light trace yet. I put the cover on it and left it until morning. 20 minutes after pouring I realized I forgot to spray it down with rubbing alcohol. So I lifted the lid and sprayed it then put it back to bed.
Next morning this batch was REALLY soft, but I thought it was okay to cut. I unmolded it – it came out easily which was the good news. But with the first cut, the soap began to disintegrate right in front of me. It was literally crumbling as I tried cutting it. I was devastated…it was my first real soap fail. So, I did what I’d seen so many others do before me. I grated the pieces and made 1oz balls that I’m going to use as embeds in the future.
So every soap-fail has a silver lining.
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