Taking on the Soap Challenge and Embracing Opposites

I decided to jump right in and to join the Soap Challenge Club hosted by Amy Warden at Greatcake Soapworks. The challenge of this month is Embracing Opposites and I hemmed and hawed over what I could do that would suit this theme and kept coming back to this one thought... Balance. To make a long story short I have GAD and SAD and have struggled through the years to find to come to... a sort of sweet spot within myself.

For this soap I went with a scent blend of sweet orange, spearmint and a titch of vanilla. I am all out of anchors so I hope the fragrance oil can hold the sweet orange... Maybe. For the colours I wanted a pop so I went with black for the base and shades of blue for water and yellow, red and orange for fire. My black did not prove black enough at I had to stick blend it too much to even get it deep grey so that batter was thick than my swirl colours. It also resulted in air bubbles. Hmmf. It's my hope that the titch of vanilla in the “black” layer will darken it eventually. This was a good reminder than I need activated charcoal. It always was my favourite black. In any case, I added the spearmint to my blue segments and the sweet orange to my yellow segments since I did not especially want the yellow discolouration of the sweet orange to play tricks with my blues.

I put a piece of cardboard in the centre of my mold after I poured the grey/black sludge. With each passing squeeze of the thin colours, some at least seemed to penetrate. After all the colours were poured I did a hanger swirl, hope to bring the two sides into each other and back again.

The swirl on the top more or less worked to bring the opposites sides together... Though the black blots I could have done without but I trimmed them away so it's alright. I unmolded the soap a little early but since I trim any bars from this mold (aka Red) no really issues can of it. I'll say this much... I NEED a wooden mold. I'm eyeing the molds at Nuture Soap... Tall and skinny with silicone liners? Yes, please! I think I want to get one tall/skinny mold and one wide/short mold so I have a choice from batch to batch. I've a big holiday coming up at the end of August/ beginning of September so I'll wait until after that to buy molds. For now I'll make soap balls from the scraps. Tomorrow I'll be getting a wire cheese cutter; I cannot for the life of me cut 

in a straight line.

So here's our cut pics. It worked! The warm colours and cool colours are curling against each other. The soap gelled, but did not overheat, thank you soap gremlins for leaving me alone. I should add that I used Maple Water again. The bubbles are amazing in the little bit I sampled of this soaps scraps. I also added silk for the first time. We'll see how it affects the overall soap. I'd be happier if the grey was black but I'll survive. That said I am seeing some bloom from the cocoa butter in this recipe. The projects of the evening, it would seem, will be tempering my cocoa butter so I don't have an on going issue.


So there you have it. Fire and water, calm and exuberance, drop swirls tangling together in a fluid embrace.