Taiwan Circling Swirl Variation, Cold Process Soap Making, (Technique Video #5)

Hi, I'm Teri from Tree Marine Soapworks. Today I am going to show you this

soap

. It is a

variation

of the Taiwanese circular

swirl

. So let's start with the colors. First we have half a teaspoon of Groovy Green Mica and it is used at a rate of one teaspoon per pound of oils and gives it a light green color. And that's what I was looking for today for this tutorial. And I'm using a spatula and a sheet of plexiglass to mix my colors. Then we have 1/4 teaspoon and 1/8 teaspoon of Rainforest Green Mica, you can see I'm just diluting it with a little olive oil, just enough to wet it.

Then we have 1/4 of a teaspoon of Ravishing Red Mica and 1/16 of a teaspoon of Purple Reign Mica. Many people ask me why I mix my colors this way. On one hand, it's to get all the little flecks of dye out, but I also have a background in art and I had this spatula from college, and I love using it. It's just one of my favorite tools. next we have 1/2 teaspoon of Purple Reign Mica and just a 0.15 cc tablespoon of Ultramarine Blue. Oxides and ultramarines can be a little more difficult to remove from specs. That's why I took a little more care of this one to remove all the specks.

All of these colorants I'm using today are from Elements Bath and Body. Then I take 1/4 teaspoon of Mild Coconut Charcoal, also known as Activated Charcoal. And I just mixed this to darken some of the other colors that I used, so I'm not going to use all of it, I just wanted a little bit to darken. Next we are measuring the fragrance. Today I'm using Cranberry Salsa. It is from Rustic Escentuals and has a very pleasant fragrance. It behaves well with

cold

process

soap

. And here I've already melted my oils and I'm straining my lye solution into my oils.

Today I soap at 90 degrees, but normally I soap between 85 and 95 degrees. Well, I weighed this bowl before I started so I knew the quantity. And now I'm going to weigh the bowl and the contents of the bowl and then subtract the weight of the bowl, so I have the weight of my dough. I had planned to divide it into percentages, so I calculate all my percentages before applying the mixture, so I don't have to work against time, so now I know how much I'm going to pour individually. I just blended this into an emulsion and now I'm ready to separate the dough according to the percentage I discovered above.

So this first one is for the light green and it's 25% of the mass. And then we have 15% of the mass for the white mass and 20% of the mass for the dark green. Next, we have 15% of the mass for the red purple. And finally we have 25% of the mass for the blue-violet. Okay, now it's time to add our colorings to our separated dough, so for the white, that's the only one I haven't covered yet. For the white I used 1 teaspoon plus some dispersed titanium dioxide and I always have it predispersed and I disperse it at a ratio of one part titanium dioxide to 3 parts oil and I always use olive oil.

And now we just mix it all together and make sure everything is evenly distributed. Okay, now it's time to add the fragrance. And I just figured out the fragrance percentages ahead of time, so I know what I'm adding to each of them, and you don't have to do this again this way, it's up to you, you can watch it if you want. want. It will turn out fine but I always use the exact amount of grams. Ok, next prepare your mold and we will also put two of these colors in squeeze bottles. So I'm preparing my liners and putting them in the squeeze bottles, and for this one it would be the white and the pink that will go in the squeeze bottles.

For this one you want a fairly light stroke and on these. You don't want a heavy tracer, it just won't move like it should to make the

swirl

s. In my last

video

which was Taiwan Circling Swirl, it was my Technique number 3

video

, I showed the difference between a skewer on a thin stick, which was wider than a skewer or a chopstick. For this one I decided to make it even larger, the thin stick was just under 1/4 inch. This popsicle stick measures 3/8 of an inch, and I think it could even go larger to a tongue depressor that measures 5/8 of an inch.

Okay, now the batter is ready and first I will pour the pink and white batter into the squeeze bottles. Now I'm just placing the colors where I want them. And I keep the dividers down while I'm pouring so it doesn't leak to the other side. And I just add a little at a time and then I just add and squeeze the other color right where I want it. And I think the next time I do this I'm going to put little extensions on the squeeze bottles, so I can go deeper because the white and pink didn't go that far, and you'll see when I separate. the soap and a half that the whites in pinks did not reach that far down.

So the top layer looks good but the middle one not so much. It has more of the green in purple. Okay, now it's time to remove the dividers and then I add a little more color to the end of the word that I didn't get before. Go ahead and tap your mole to release any air bubbles. And now it's time to start spinning. Then you insert the popsicle stick parallel to the bottom into the top of the mold and simply make the swirl. This is the fun part! I like the results of using an even larger bar this time.

So I think I'll go ahead and use the tongue depressor next time; I want to try it. I might make the lines a little further apart, but I think they'll really trail and look really good. I'm not crazy about how the soap looks in the end, especially when you turn around in the next step, turning the bar 90 degrees and going towards the mold. I only had to make it twice more than this one because the bar is whiter. But I'm not crazy about how it will turn out in the end, so I'll try something different next time.

I covered this soap and put it in gel and let it sit for 48 hours. Some places don't have to do that, but I found that here in Indiana it's too humid and I think the humidity causes soda ash if you discover it early, so leaving it covered for two days works for me. And now it's time to divide the bread horizontally. I use this wire soap cutter from Bramble Berry and you'll see it had cardboard underneath. I have two pieces that I use just to make it a little taller and get the right thickness that I want.

And I have to cut the top off a little so I can put it in my boxes. So I have these two. That's the top and then there's the middle, that's the most green and purple. And I was going to cut them both at the same time, but I accidentally left one of my cardboard pieces there, so I had to cut this... look, I wouldn't go through that; I had to cut it out and then re-mark it and cut off the bottom layer. And now all that remains is to bevel the soap. And for this I used an old vegetable peeler.

Thank you so much for watching and if you like my videos and would like to see more like this, just hit the subscribe button, and if you want to receive notifications you can hit the bell button if you want and I appreciate that. You're watching and I hope to show you more of my

technique

s. ❤