Kaleidoscope Soap - What I have learned so far

[Sandiebrown65]

So I am still pretty new to the craft of soap making. I recently purchased a soap design/pull-through tool and was keen as curry to make pull through designs just like the ones I have seen in videos and on this forum. My first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I learned a few things which helped with my second attempt.

• You really do need to use squeeze bottles with pipette tips for extensions. Simply thinking that you can pour from a long nosed jug was a foolish assumption.
• You need to keep each individual pour small and thin to allow the colour from below to be "pulled through"
• The trick to keeping the batter runny enough is that there is no "trick"! There are a number of things I did to keep the better fluid enough to do this, the main ones that helped me include learning the difference between emulsification and light trace, using the full water amount, only using coconut oil at around 20%, increasing the amount of unsaturated oils slightly, using citrus EO certainly helped keep the batter soft for longer, adding sugar, doing the pour at room temp and finally - be quick. Experience helps a lot with the last point!

One of the biggest things a new soaper wants to know is how to keep the batter from seizing up so you can do all of those lovely swirls we see. Finding this secret was like an elusive holy grail. After a total of 40 batches of soap in my soap making journey I have found that it really does come down to time and experience.

My second attempt was much more successful as I made sure I was totally set up with the right equipment needed, tweaked my recipe and used an EO blend I knew would work. To say I am ecstatic with my second attempt is an understatement.

To all my fellow newbies, don't give up!! Your frustration and patience will pay off.

I have uploaded pics of my first attempt and my second attempt. The orange/black/yellow ones are my first attempt. You can see how the layers were way too thick so the colour barely pulled through and there are no concentric rings that come from the smaller/thinner individual pours.

 

[KDP]

They look great! Nice job!

 

[MellonFriend]

Great tips! Thanks for posting this! I'm going to give a shot to this technique sometime in the future so I will keep all of these things in mind! Your soaps look amazing!

 

[KiwiMoose]

Lovely! But I still pour mine - partly due to laziness ( more mess to clean up) and partly due to my recipe that I don't think would cope too well with squirty bottles because it tends to be on the thicker side (I need to keep temps a bit higher due to use of soy wax and butters) - I'm also afraid of wasting too much batter ( whatever residue is left inside the bottles/baggies once the pour is done).

*Keen as Mustard!*

 

[Relle]

@KiwiMoose, that's the only mustard I use on ham for sandwiches at Christmas .

@Sandiebrown65, did you purchase your pull through tool here in Oz ? I remember you said you were going to have a go at making one in a 3D printer.

 

[dibbles]

They are so pretty! You must have had a lot of fun cutting it too.

 

[Sandiebrown65]

did you purchase your pull through tool here in Oz ? I remember you said you were going to have a go at making one in a 3D printer.

Yes, I actually found some at Aussie Soap Supplies. It would have taken me quite a while to create the design in CAD before I could have printed them anyway. However I will probably still end up designing some, just to add to the assortment that I now have. It will be much easier now that I already have the little threaded rod to attach them to.

*Keen as Mustard!*

Keen as curry, keen as mustard! We tend to use both on this side of the ditch

They are so pretty! You must have had a lot of fun cutting it too.

Do you know how hard it was to wait! I got up at 6am the next morning just to cut it.

Lovely! But I still pour mine - partly due to laziness ( more mess to clean up) and partly due to my recipe that I don't think would cope too well with squirty bottles because it tends to be on the thicker side (I need to keep temps a bit higher due to use of soy wax and butters) - I'm also afraid of wasting too much batter ( whatever residue is left inside the bottles/baggies once the pour is done).

Yes, there was quite a bit of residue left inside the squirty bottles, this resulted in a smaller yield of soap bars. However, I have a plan to overcome this, along with the clumsiness and waste of cutting off the pipette tips (ruining perfectly good pipettes).
Next time I will be using recycled water/softdrink bottles, lined with piping bags. Once the pouring has been done you can pull the piping bag out and snip the corner off and pipe the rest either onto the main batch or into individual soap molds if it is surplus soap.
I designed this tool on my printer and will be testing it out on the weekend, it fits nicely on the tops of the more popular softdrink bottles. Hopefully it is successful.

 

[KiwiMoose]

Keen as curry, keen as mustard! We tend to use both on this side of the ditch

Well i had no idea they made curry too! And I like the alliteration of 'keen as curry'.

 

[Carly B]

I also pour mine. I bought some squirt bottles at the restaurant supply store, but it's a whole lot more time to mix and bottle then pour (both in execution and cleanup) than it is to just pour. What I have found is that using a funnel like this works well. The one have fits the top of the circular mold perfectly. I only have to be careful to lift the mold up when the batter reaches the bottom of the funnel, otherwise it just collects like an ITP swirl in the funnel.

Yours looks great, tho. I still haven't mastered getting the right consistency, but it's fun trying....

 

[Quilter99755]

Wow! Love the soaps. This is on my bucket list. I will need lots of practice in all stages. I'm horrible at detecting emulsion. I seem to blink and then it's at medium trace! LOL Thanks for sharing

 

[janesathome]

So I am still pretty new to the craft of soap making. I recently purchased a soap design/pull-through tool and was keen as curry to make pull through designs just like the ones I have seen in videos and on this forum. My first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I learned a few things which helped with my second attempt.

• You really do need to use squeeze bottles with pipette tips for extensions. Simply thinking that you can pour from a long nosed jug was a foolish assumption.
• You need to keep each individual pour small and thin to allow the colour from below to be "pulled through"
• The trick to keeping the batter runny enough is that there is no "trick"! There are a number of things I did to keep the better fluid enough to do this, the main ones that helped me include learning the difference between emulsification and light trace, using the full water amount, only using coconut oil at around 20%, increasing the amount of unsaturated oils slightly, using citrus EO certainly helped keep the batter soft for longer, adding sugar, doing the pour at room temp and finally - be quick. Experience helps a lot with the last point!

One of the biggest things a new soaper wants to know is how to keep the batter from seizing up so you can do all of those lovely swirls we see. Finding this secret was like an elusive holy grail. After a total of 40 batches of soap in my soap making journey I have found that it really does come down to time and experience.

My second attempt was much more successful as I made sure I was totally set up with the right equipment needed, tweaked my recipe and used an EO blend I knew would work. To say I am ecstatic with my second attempt is an understatement.

To all my fellow newbies, don't give up!! Your frustration and patience will pay off.

I have uploaded pics of my first attempt and my second attempt. The orange/black/yellow ones are my first attempt. You can see how the layers were way too thick so the colour barely pulled through and there are no concentric rings that come from the smaller/thinner individual pours.

Way to go! Thanks for all the tips. I bought a cylindrical mold with a pull-through tool a while ago but haven’t used it yet. Your tips will help me to get started (and I guess I will have to buy some squeeze bottlers with extension tips)

 

[Sandiebrown65]

Way to go! Thanks for all the tips. I bought a cylindrical mold with a pull-through tool a while ago but haven’t used it yet. Your tips will help me to get started (and I guess I will have to buy some squeeze bottlers with extension tips)

The extension tips are just the long part of a transfer pipette cut off from the bulb part. You just fit them over the tip of the squeeze bottle tightly, some people like to tape them with electrical tape but I was able to just push them on hard and they stayed there. I was careful when squeezing though, last thing I wanted was for the tip to blast off under pressure.

 

[janesathome]

The extension tips are just the long part of a transfer pipette cut off from the bulb part. You just fit them over the tip of the squeeze bottle tightly, some people like to tape them with electrical tape but I was able to just push them on hard and they stayed there. I was careful when squeezing though, last thing I wanted was for the tip to blast off under pressure.

Thanks! Good to have options. Either way - more shopping!

 

[Savage Daughter]

So I am still pretty new to the craft of soap making. I recently purchased a soap design/pull-through tool and was keen as curry to make pull through designs just like the ones I have seen in videos and on this forum. My first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I learned a few things which helped with my second attempt.

• You really do need to use squeeze bottles with pipette tips for extensions. Simply thinking that you can pour from a long nosed jug was a foolish assumption.
• You need to keep each individual pour small and thin to allow the colour from below to be "pulled through"
• The trick to keeping the batter runny enough is that there is no "trick"! There are a number of things I did to keep the better fluid enough to do this, the main ones that helped me include learning the difference between emulsification and light trace, using the full water amount, only using coconut oil at around 20%, increasing the amount of unsaturated oils slightly, using citrus EO certainly helped keep the batter soft for longer, adding sugar, doing the pour at room temp and finally - be quick. Experience helps a lot with the last point!

One of the biggest things a new soaper wants to know is how to keep the batter from seizing up so you can do all of those lovely swirls we see. Finding this secret was like an elusive holy grail. After a total of 40 batches of soap in my soap making journey I have found that it really does come down to time and experience.

My second attempt was much more successful as I made sure I was totally set up with the right equipment needed, tweaked my recipe and used an EO blend I knew would work. To say I am ecstatic with my second attempt is an understatement.

To all my fellow newbies, don't give up!! Your frustration and patience will pay off.

I have uploaded pics of my first attempt and my second attempt. The orange/black/yellow ones are my first attempt. You can see how the layers were way too thick so the colour barely pulled through and there are no concentric rings that come from the smaller/thinner individual pours.

You just inspired me to keep going with this....I've turned out several 'failed' batches attempting various pull-throughs, although they still turned out beautiful, and my last attempt is the nicest one so far. The most beautiful ones I created were using the pull-throughs as stencils for soap dough, rather than their intended use

I found the same things as you....

• squeeze bottles - I don't like them, have yet to find a set with large enough threaded openings, so after a few failed attempts with those thin spouted pitchers which made an unholy mess, I sourced some spiffy tools mechanics would use from eBay, similar to big honking syringes made from HDPE (?) with double o-rings inside a tightly sealed body to prevent mess & waste, which load up to 500ml of liquid & have a 'pump' on them, so to speak, in addition to a having large openings AND extender tubes to make these pours a lot more enjoyable - for me, anyways. They are made to extract oil & other fluids from engines as I understand, so they should hold up to soaping fairly well & seem to be very well-made. I think 4 cost me around $80-90 total / free shipping? and they will last for years. Easy cleanup too! There are some good alternatives to those squeeze bottles if we think creatively.

• don't layer your colors too thickly or too widely - I am aiming for 1" layers maximum for each color at this point; I have a difficult time keeping an eye on how much I'm squeezing vs looking down to get visual confirmation of how much I'm squeezing, so difficult for me, and then I panic as my soap is becoming thicker The above syringes help because they have very precise ml markings on the side. It's like using a giant, powerful, self contained dosing thermometer.

• upping water amount - I went to a 2.4:1 ratio after watching someone else struggling with this on YouTube - upping their water content to 2.4:1 helped immensely (my mind works better with ratios in this situation).

My own experiences:

• avoid clays as much as possible - this made a big difference for me as those clays which I use for natural colorants were speeding things up far too quickly ; I now am using only plant & spice colorants which have been infused in oils for quite some time OR which I have soaked in a spoon or so taken from the total liquid oils in my batch.

• lowering essential oils concentration or choosing just 1 or 2 essential oils for each batch - even if using EOs which are said to not accelerate trace; have definitely found this to help keep things fluid for significantly longer.

• balance saturated / unsaturated fats at 40:60 to keep batter fluid longer - thank you Chass for your detailed instructions based on your experience!

• make smaller batches for pull-throughs - this helps me a lot as switching from color to color with 2+ molds can become head-spinning, especially if using 3-5 colors in sequence for maximum design impact, trying to keep each layer as uniform as possible; and while this is going on, each layer of batter is getting thicker, lessening your likelihood of getting a beautiful design result. I am working on developing better coordination skills with this technique so that I can fill multiple molds at once
•••••

I love the effects which can be gotten from pull-throughs so much & simply can't give up on this yet. Chass from Wild Plantanica got me stoked about this after I ran across her videos on YouTube, which are some of the best I have ever seen in regards to this topic, especially since her designs are so beautiful & striking using only natural colorants. She really knows how to get maximum impact from her colorants.

Thank you again for the inspiration to not give up with this Trusting that my next few batches will be more successful the the previous!

 

[Vicki C]

You just inspired me to keep going with this....I've turned out several 'failed' batches attempting various pull-throughs, although they still turned out beautiful, and my last attempt is the nicest one so far. The most beautiful ones I created were using the pull-throughs as stencils for soap dough, rather than their intended use

I found the same things as you....

• squeeze bottles - I don't like them, have yet to find a set with large enough threaded openings, so after a few failed attempts with those thin spouted pitchers which made an unholy mess, I sourced some spiffy tools mechanics would use from eBay, similar to big honking syringes made from HDPE (?) with double o-rings inside a tightly sealed body to prevent mess & waste, which load up to 500ml of liquid & have a 'pump' on them, so to speak, in addition to a having large openings AND extender tubes to make these pours a lot more enjoyable - for me, anyways. They are made to extract oil & other fluids from engines as I understand, so they should hold up to soaping fairly well & seem to be very well-made. I think 4 cost me around $80-90 total / free shipping? and they will last for years. Easy cleanup too! There are some good alternatives to those squeeze bottles if we think creatively.

I have some big syringes that I use because the waste using squeeze bottles bugs me. Mine are 200 ml, so not as big as what you found. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077FX5B6G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They do work well, but I’ve found that I need to lubricate the o rings with spray on cooking oil, as they can get really stuck. Also, if you squeeze them to their fullest extent while you are working they can be really hard to pull apart again to refill. With 500 ml you might not need to do that. Would love to hear how yours work for your pull throughs.

 

[Savage Daughter]

I have some big syringes that I use because the waste using squeeze bottles bugs me. Mine are 200 ml, so not as big as what you found. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077FX5B6G/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
They do work well, but I’ve found that I need to lubricate the o rings with spray on cooking oil, as they can get really stuck. Also, if you squeeze them to their fullest extent while you are working they can be really hard to pull apart again to refill. With 500 ml you might not need to do that. Would love to hear how yours work for your pull throughs.

These are the ones I bought, and it looks like they are cheaper than the syringes you got (in the 500ml category, I mean), which I'm shocked to see. 200ml/500ml Car Oil Fluid Extractor Portable Syringe Type Plastic Kit Auto Tools | eBay

They are super heavy-duty, so I am hoping they last for years. They have a large spring in them as well, between the plunger & the thinger-inside-which-pushes-stuff-down....diaphragm? LOL so I think they will be pretty well protected. They also came with extension tubes which lock into place, but they seem unnecessary.

Yes, the o-rings concerned me, but I also thought that they will prevent soap from squeezing past the plunger sides when things get a little thicker, although thickness is something I am doing my damnedest to avoid with the pull-throughs, as I have learned. They still turn out pretty, but look nothing like a kaleidoscope I will keep an eye on the rings & make sure to keep them lubed up, but they did come with an extra set for each syringe.

 

[Bubble Junkie]

So I am still pretty new to the craft of soap making. I recently purchased a soap design/pull-through tool and was keen as curry to make pull through designs just like the ones I have seen in videos and on this forum. My first attempt was a bit of a failure, but I learned a few things which helped with my second attempt.

• You really do need to use squeeze bottles with pipette tips for extensions. Simply thinking that you can pour from a long nosed jug was a foolish assumption.
• You need to keep each individual pour small and thin to allow the colour from below to be "pulled through"
• The trick to keeping the batter runny enough is that there is no "trick"! There are a number of things I did to keep the better fluid enough to do this, the main ones that helped me include learning the difference between emulsification and light trace, using the full water amount, only using coconut oil at around 20%, increasing the amount of unsaturated oils slightly, using citrus EO certainly helped keep the batter soft for longer, adding sugar, doing the pour at room temp and finally - be quick. Experience helps a lot with the last point!

One of the biggest things a new soaper wants to know is how to keep the batter from seizing up so you can do all of those lovely swirls we see. Finding this secret was like an elusive holy grail. After a total of 40 batches of soap in my soap making journey I have found that it really does come down to time and experience.

My second attempt was much more successful as I made sure I was totally set up with the right equipment needed, tweaked my recipe and used an EO blend I knew would work. To say I am ecstatic with my second attempt is an understatement.

To all my fellow newbies, don't give up!! Your frustration and patience will pay off.

I have uploaded pics of my first attempt and my second attempt. The orange/black/yellow ones are my first attempt. You can see how the layers were way too thick so the colour barely pulled through and there are no concentric rings that come from the smaller/thinner individual pours.

Great job!!!