OK. So last night I did my second attempt. I picked micas for my colorant and Black Tie from NG. It was a sample that I had been given and had no experience with, but I checked the website and it stated it had "slight' acceleration. So, I went with it. Dumb choice. It started out very fluid and I thought that it was going to be a winner. My base color is gold and I used bronze, copper and pewter colored micas. About halfway through the stripes, the batter started to thicken up. So much so, that I had to take the mold off of my can opener (which I was using for the tilt) and bang it a bit to get the batter to move toward the opposite wall then re-position it on the can opener. A few times. The remaining gold was pudding when I finally got the stripes poured and the top decorated. I did another in the pot swirl with the remaining batter and that's a joke. When I was cleaning up the mess I found my clean hanger. Yep, I too forgot to swirl my soap! I immediately pulled it out of the oven, scraped the high-top off of it, stuck the hanger in, did my swirl and plopped the former-high-top-now-medium-top back on. It looks like crap. But, hey! It smells good. I can't wait to get home and cut it. I have decided that my next try will either be fragrance free or have grapefruit EO in it. Not quite sure yet. However, I really like this technique and am enjoying my trials. Of course, it does help that I have finally purchased a couple of one pound molds, so I'm not having to make a three pound batch to fill a two pound mold. I'm making two pounds so that I have plenty of soap to do the required color work. I'm still really bad at judging what I need.
