Apparently there is a worldwide silicone shortage and I wasn't able to snag some pipettes from the lab because we are out! I wonder if we'll see it hit mold liner prices.
I ended up using squeezable condiment bottles and learned SO MUCH doing this. This is the first time I've used colorants other than clay or infusions and a fragrance oil instead of essential oils. I made a large (for me) batch of oils so I could play with my molds. The batch was split into 3 sections (blue, violet, and white). I poured in this order:
- A 5-lb loaf mold poured only to 1 bar width (as BrewerGeorge suggested). The long white, blue, and purple bar in the background.
- A 2-lb loaf mold poured using the dancing funnel technique to the top of the mold. The blue and purple bar in the foreground (ran out of white).
- Left over soap went into a silicone mold. No pics yet as they are still too soft to unmold.
I read so much about the time this would take that the soap was barely at thin trace when I started pouring. I'm not sure how the 5-lb mold soap will turn out as it cures. The soap was too thin and I'm wondering if it mixed well enough at the beginning. The mold leaked a bit and I lost track of the dancing funnel pattern so just started making circles that spread out into "not circles". However, I'm going to try this again because I like the stained glass / tesserae feel to it. I just need to be less excited about trying something new and pay more attention!
By the time I started pouring the 2-lb mold, the soap was at a nice thin trace and the circles went nicely. You can see in the first cut bar how the soap at the bottom was probably a little too thin for the pour, but toward the middle it hits the right trace, then toward the top it got pretty thick.
A note here about fragrance oil behaving badly (or maybe not...if you like the colors). This soap is from the exact same batch. I turned the oven on 170 - which I usually do. However, I usually remember to shut the oven off once the molds go in. After about an hour at 170, I saw that I left the oven on and shut it off. They sat for about 12 hours before I pulled them out. The fragrance oil is Warm Flannel from BB - which does turn brown in CP. I didn't know how this would turn out, and this isn't one of my favorite fragrances in the bottle, so sacrificed it to the Soap Gods as a learning experience. You can see that the heat and fragrance oil really darkened the blue and turned the purple an almost purple brown...is that a bit of alien brain I see at the top?
My little experiment really taught me a lot about how complicated soap can be when you move outside of the ingredients and techniques that you are used to! I learned a bunch about trace, new colors, fragrance oils, heat...and how it can all combine differently in the same batch of soap to create a completely different product!
I cut the small loaf a bit too early - just couldn't wait to see the inside. Once I cut everything I'll put in more pics. The left over blue soap that went into the silicone mold didn't go in the oven, and I didn't insulate, so it is a very different blue color.
