Soap Challenge Club. Peacock Swirl.

The peacock swirl is something I have always been in awe of. So I was very excited to try it when Amy set up the new round of soap challenges. I am not sure what was more challenging making the soap which took me 3 goes to get right, or trying to find a little bit of time this week to take the last few photos and write a blog post. This afternoon the sun was shining so I dropped everything and grabbed some of the last batch of soap and went out to the wood pile to take some photos. I am too late to join in on the link up, which I am sad about. But I can't wait to find out who won the prize of a new soap mould.

All my soap mixes lately have been tracing pretty fast, which usually doesn't bother me too much, as I only seem to have time for simple colouring lately. My usual recipe isn't too different to that offered by Amy but I do discount the water, and mix a bit more to make sure it is good. So I added the full amount of water, only only added fragrance to the bottom layer. Everything is going great. I was organised and made my tool

 

I did try and look for roller pix but I couldn't find them so I just improvised with skewers.

 

My squirty bottles. I will use the ones with the long nozzles again, but the flat lidded bottles just didn't quite do the job as well. I used activated charcoal, yellow liquid dye, purple mica and green mica. Unfortunately I didn't put enough mica in and had to add extra.

 

But in the time it too to adjust the colours it started to set up. At this point I am pretty happy.

 

At this point I am not. The mix was just too thick to drag.

 

Set and cut. Pretty but no peacock.

 

Attempt #2 Same recipe, but I didn't muck around with the colours and it set up even quicker.

 

Attempt #3. Recipe change. I went with a castile this time, extra water, and soaped at 25 deg. Again I used the purple and green micas and charcoal and left one plain. Scented with Lemon Eucalyptus. YAY I got the swirl. I put it into the oven to hopefully get a gel, but a set I would be happy with. I then left it for 3 days. before I even peeked into the oven. I was happy when I went back and it had set. It was still a bit soft, but that is castile soap. The colour faded, but I am still happy that I got the swirl. I can't wait now to sit and check out every body else's entries. I have seen a few on face book and am in AWE. Amy you are a champ, thank you so much for working so hard to keep organising the challenges. 

 

 

Congratulations to Tanya who was the winner, and totally deserved to be. I really think voting would have been very hard, they were all beautiful soaps