# New Soaps, first colors/swirls



## Lin (Jan 16, 2014)

These are pretty much my first colored soaps. I used celery infusion and cocoa powder for a christmas soap, but these are oxides and my first swirls. Its funny, I didn't even have an interest in colors or swirls very much before joining this forum. But now I want tons of oxides and mica and to experiment with so much! 

Here's my avocado soap. It was supposed to be green, black, and white but the black really looks dark green instead. Makes me sad but my bf says he likes it better than if it had been black, says it goes better because it resembles the color of the avocado peel. I wanted the contrast though between the green, black, and white. And it looked black before pouring! Oh well. Drop swirl. 








They're still really soft, I couldn't wait any longer to cut though! So I still need to clean up the edges. 

Here's my greek yogurt and cucumber soap. Did the same swirl all the way through. Its even softer than the avocado soap, so I'm giving it some more time. I used a lot of liquids in these soaps to get the most out of my water swaps. There's also some ash on the top, I sprayed with alcohol and I steamed the top after 24 hours but I've still got some more ash! I had difficulty using the iron here though for steaming. And I had wanted the colors more vivid, but not bad for first try. I really love the hydrated chromium green. The picture doesn't do it justice.




And this one also didn't turn out as planned. Its basil soap, I split the recipe in half and half of it the oils were infused with basil to turn them green, and in the other half I used some TD and added strained out basil for exfoliation. I did an in the pot swirl. But the green seemed to bleed into the white a lot, and the swirl was not what I expected with the green part dominating the center somehow.


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## neeners (Jan 16, 2014)

they're gorgeous!  I really like the avocado one.  I know it's not what you're going for, but I'm loving the grey in the soap.


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## The Efficacious Gentleman (Jan 16, 2014)

All nice, but the avocado is simply the best!


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## judymoody (Jan 16, 2014)

All lovely!  The avocado one is superb.


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## Saponista (Jan 16, 2014)

Well done Lin, they are lovely.


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## Trinity (Jan 16, 2014)

Beautiful but my favorite is the cucumber and yogurt


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## MirandaH (Jan 16, 2014)

Those are beautiful! I wouldn't be disappointed in any of them!  Well done!


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## ourwolfden (Jan 16, 2014)

Wow, really pretty!  I love how those turned out!


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## Tienne (Jan 16, 2014)

They all look wonderful! Nice job!  :clap:


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## Lildlege1 (Jan 16, 2014)

Ooooo lala !!!!! I live them very cute!!!


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## kazmi (Jan 16, 2014)

I love them all!  very pretty


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## Ancel (Jan 16, 2014)

I think they're great! Love the avocado one! Looks very nice


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## athallr (Jan 16, 2014)

Lovely!


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## TVivian (Jan 16, 2014)

They all look great!


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## MzMolly65 (Jan 16, 2014)

Mercy .. they're gorgeous!


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## Lin (Jan 17, 2014)

Thanks guys! I think the avocado is my fav, it was my fav before I made them thats why I did it in the loaf mold (first loaf mold for me!), The bars seem HUGE haha, maybe I shouldn't have cut them 1 inch thick. 

I also got to use my wire cheese slicer for the first time which I'm in LOVE with. It works perfectly with my 'loaf' mold too. I just happened to line it up perfectly at first, and half way through I decided to change it slightly and realized it wouldn't cut all the way through after I'd moved it lol. I had lined up the loaf 1/2 inch away from the bottom edge with a ruler, and the front of course 1 inch from the wire, before each slice and then would hold it steady. My bf is going to glue something to the bottom edge to line the loaf up with so I don't have to steady it, but I wasn't going to wait to use it! So I'm super excited about the clean lines. I had to cut the slab mold with a knife before finishing with the wire cutter and need to clean up those cuts with the wire cutter or a veggie peeler now! 

I also can't wait to try the avocado and the yogurt and cucumber in the shower. I did a lot of work on both! The first avocado I bought some of them were overripe with strings in them. So I ended up mashing it all with my gloved hand, and then mashing it through a strainer 3 times! The third time there was nothing left in the strainer too so I knew it was good. I had bought some more avocado worried I wouldn't have enough since I also picked out parts to toss, so I strained that too. I got a teeny bit of fibers on the first straining and nothing on the second so I think I'll probably always strain to help make sure the puree is totally smooth, especially after reading the thread here about someone having issues with scratchy avocado soap. 

Then due to lack of equipment, for the cucumber I had to hand grate them all on a fricken nutmeg grater. Then I strained out the pulp and just used the juice. I want to try again using a blender to puree the whole cucumber and compare the soaps. But I'm out of lye for now, and... dun dun dun... My bf decided he now hates soaping (too much work, especially prep since we have to set up a table and move everything back and forth from totes each use). So I probably will have to wait to get my own stick blender and new dollar store supplies (unless I can convince him to let me keep the stuff he bought...) and make soap at home in the garage (no room in our kitchen.) I'm going to post a thread about him suddenly deciding he hates making soap, awesome warning for people who buy TONS of stuff before deciding if they like it. I'm boggled about how much money he's spent. Now I only hope I get some of the stuff since he won't need it.... 

I made a small hand soap with basil before, just adding in some of the strained (after infused) basil leaves. I had made a tiny amount of bastile soap for my first ever soap and broke it up into hand soaps to try different things with it. It had too much basil, and my bf complained it was too scratchy, but I loved the contrast of the white soap against the basil leaves. So thats how I came up with the basil soap. My bf wanted to throw out the basil infusion after I didn't use it on my green christmas soap and I was like NO I have a plan for that! So I envisioned the pretty green basil infused soap with the bright white soap and basil leaves. I don't really understand how it bled so badly, (and I'm sad I wasted TD) it was a beautiful bright white in the pot... I added in the green for in the pot swirl, poured it... And had some left over that I poured into cupcake liners (I'll post those photos too) and immediately noticed the green wasn't so green, and the white was now minty green. Sigh. I think I'll try it again doing ying yang instead of in the pot swirl. Its got less basil than before, plus of course only half with basil for even less. And I formulated the recipe to be as bubbly as possible while still super mild and very conditioning. Added extra sugar to help. So hopefully its a nice exfoliation soap. 

phew, sorry for the novel!


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## Lin (Jan 17, 2014)

Gah, there's so much ash! For the avocado soap I plan on trying to dip the tops in steaming hot water. I'm really frustrated with the yogurt cucumber soap. I sprayed the tops of everything with alcohol after molding, and then steamed the tops after 24 hours. But its ashy again and even the bottoms are ashy. I probably should have waited to steam so I wouldn't have to keep removing ash over and over. 

But I cut the bars and made some soap balls with the edges that were touching the box.


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## seven (Jan 18, 2014)

yay to colors! i really looooveeee the drop swirls, good job, indeed!


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## Tienne (Jan 18, 2014)

Drop swirls are my favourite kind of swirls. They're so dramatic and you never know exactly what you're gonna get until you cut!


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## Ellacho (Jan 18, 2014)

Beautiful!


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## seven (Jan 18, 2014)

Tienne said:


> Drop swirls are my favourite kind of swirls. They're so dramatic and you never know exactly what you're gonna get until you cut!



Exactly! Which makes it worse for me as i have no patience... I just wanna cut cut cuuuttt and see what's inside


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## Tienne (Jan 18, 2014)

Me too! That's what I always use SL no matter what and love CPOP'ing. I need to cut the soap as soon as humanly possible! 6-8 hours max is all I can bare to wait before unmolding and cutting. I made a shampoo bar last week that was in the mold for 36 hours! That was a first! And a last! Never again I tell you. Never! It's just too **** long a wait!


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## Lin (Jan 18, 2014)

6-8 hours?!?! WOW. I actually meant to put SL in the avocado soap but forgot. I couldn't cut it until 2 days, at 24 hours it was still too soft. After the second day though there was no way I was waiting any longer and cut it despite it still being soft, I wouldn't have been able to with a knife but the wire cheese cutter worked great. I put salt in the yogurt and cucumber one but it was quite soft still too and I had to start cutting it with a knife which wasn't going well so I had to stop and wait to finish. I had salt in the basil soap too, a larger amount plus it had less liquid so I didn't have any problems with cutting that one at 48 hours. 

Once I get more lye I'll try out a batch with SL, I want to compare it to salt. Since salt is cheaper if I don't notice much of a difference I'll go with that. But since I use such soft recipes I'm thinking about always adding salt/sl to help them firm up faster.

Oh, and interestingly the purple in my yogurt and cucumber was pink at 24 hours! I used a pale purple ultramarine from BBs oxide sampler, but also added in some blue food coloring after I got such a gorgeous purple from experimenting with that. It was fun to watch the multiple color changes as I stick blended it. When it was still pink at 24 hours I assumed it would stay that way, but on the third day it was purple. I'm glad I added the blue food coloring, I think it would have been way too pale with ultramarine alone.


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## seven (Jan 19, 2014)

watching the color changes can be fun... until you had a perfect color scheme in your head and used an untested mica (green) which turned purple the next day, LOL! these days (altho i'm lazy), i try to make it a habit to test every new colorants i received to make sure there aren't any (ahem) surprises


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## Saponista (Jan 19, 2014)

This sounds mean, but I'm glad to hear that other people go through lots of problems when trying to create new soaps and it's not just me being rubbish.


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## Lin (Jan 20, 2014)

Yea, I was sad when it was still pink! I was hoping it would change but getting doubtful at 24 hours. When I went to cut it and saw it was finally purple I was very excited.


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