September brings fall in all its glory and the soap challenge has returned. This month the technique we’re going for is the mini drop swirl or the advanced mini suspended drops swirl.

To allow for play time with the required squeeze bottles I knew I had to change up my recipe with larger amount of soft oils. The batter needed to stay fluid longer to lay the strips of soap just beneath the surface and gently on top of the soap batter.

Here in photos shows my try at the advanced mini drop swirl technique.

My recipe was 37.50% olive, 31.25% sunflower, 18.75% coconut and 12.50% Shea butter. I use the full amount of water suggested for this batch and scented with burbon geranium and rosemary essential oils.

This soap took 2 days to saponify and slid out of the mold like a greased egg!

Here are some of he cut bars.

The colors remind me of fire balls raining from dark skies. So I’ve named this soap Fiery Night Skies.

This was my first try at the mini drop swirl. My 2nd try was a mini drop fail but a nice swirly soap nonetheless.

The second batch turned to soap stone practically, right before my eyes. I did the best I could using a spoon and chopstick to move and mix the thick colorful soap batter around in the mold.

Here is the end result.

This batch over heated as is evident. Notice the bars with cracks in the top. The recipe was different allowing for larger percentage of hard oils, plus I added sodium lactate to help the batter stay loose longer. I think the culprit might have been the kaolin clay I added to the lye water in effort to achieve a lighter color soap base. This batch is scented with bourbon geranium, basil and grapefruit essential oils.

Good soap crafting time was well spent!

Let me know what you think and Thank you for reading my blog.

The Qrafty Qomic