When Suds Lye…

/ Qrafty Qomic

Wasted days and wasted nights!

Those words from Freddy Fenders song rang over and over in my head as I finally got off the soapbox and scooted it out of my way for some soaping therapy play.

Perusing the web I stumbled upon the teardrop video of Sergio Masala a few months ago and talk about eye candy, jumpin’ jehosaphat the soap he created was one masterful artistic cake.

Quel Surpris when Amy Warden announced the May  2016 Monthly Soap challenge would be the teardrop swirl.  Signing up for the challenge I read all the information I could find on this technique and was again surprised to learn the technique had actually been introduced by a soap craft artist known as Sweetly Sweetly Sweetly. Between Amy’s teardrop swirl demo, Sergio’s and Sweetly3 I spent some good time checking out this method. I also found Kevin Devine’s teardrop swirl video on youtube to be helpful.

Following Amy’s advice on the challenge page I wanted to design a recipe that utilized a lesser percentage of hard oils and leave out butters and clays that could possibly excellerate trace.

For my slow moving recipe I designed a 25/75 oils ratio. 25% hard oils to 75% soft oils.  I went with Avocado, Grapeseed, Coconut, Olive and Sunflower oils. My temps for oils and lye water were under 100 degrees.  I used a 33.333% lye concentration with 2 to 1 water to lye ratio.

 

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Let’s get this party started! Oils, Lye water, micas and scent blend ready to rock, roll and soap!

For this session I used  all Mad Oils micas. Wicked, Silverfinblue, 3 Olive martini, Twilight,Phyllis Diller and Tangering. For my scent blend I used 80/15 Lavender 40/42 to Lemongrass essential oil with 5% a mere whiff of the awesomely scented Black Raspberry Vanilla from Brambleberry.

 

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Oils temperature

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33.333% lye concentration. 2 to 1 water to Lye/Sodium Hydroxide ratio. 

I cut up a half a cotton ball size of tussah silk in the lye water and added 1 tsp ppo, to lye water as well.

The hardest part of this method is keeping a steady hand. My first few runs were wobbly. It takes a moment to figure out which direction to start the cups pour. A slow steady hand helps.

 

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After filling the mold I finished by scraping cups onto of soap in horizontal lines then running a chopstick side to side vertically.

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After 24 hour saponanap!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Phyllis Diller’s Delight!

How I made this soap

 

16 thoughts on “When Suds Lye…”

  4. You achieved a lovely teardrop and I know what you mean about needing a steady hand for the pour. It’s not something I am blessed with! I love your colour palette too, I wouldn’t have thought to put those shades together, but they compliment each other really nicely.

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    • Thank you so much. I had no idea how this would turn out and was pleased with the palette. My 2nd teardrop try turned out to more like a colorful geyser. That batch was done with thoughts of Prince. Lavender base white puffy clouds and rainbow geyser. Will blog that process sometime in the future. Thank you again for your kind words. This blogging is a new and growing on me kinda thing. LOL!

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  6. These are beautiful. I so admire people who are crafty! And your writing makes even something I don’t understand a pleasure to read.

    Bev from SwapBot

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  8. What a great job you did. I loved the colors as well. Pretty neat and crafty. I have not been adventurous enough for making soaps yet. Maybe one day! Thanks for sharing… Michelle aka Peanutsmommy7 from Swap-bot Blog Hop May 2016

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