August 2016 Soap Challenge - Coral & Sea Glass Soap

I wasn't sure if I was going to sign up for the soap challenge this month, since I didn't think I'd have time, but I really wanted to learn this technique. I managed to find a free afternoon to try this - I only had one shot, so here goes!

I was ambitious and decided to try multiple colors for the fill portions. I had a teal and coral color palette in mind, similar to the images below.  

Rather than use Tatsiana's formula, I used Veronica Foale's recipe from her diagonal ombre tutorial. Although this recipe stays soft for a long time (due to the minimal butters and hard oils), I've found it to be very slow moving. For my fragrance, I used Brambleberry's White Tea and Ginger FO - again, I have found this FO to be slow moving. Since I don't have a smaller slab mold than the Brambleberry 9 bar mold, I definitely did not want my soap to move fast!

I had never tried hand stirring the soap batter before, so was a bit wary. It seemed to emulsify after 10 minutes of stirring with a whisk, but I stirred it for 15 minutes just in case.

I was going for an ombre/gradient effect for the fill portions. The outline color is a mixture of copper and hot pink mica, and I added various amounts of turquoise mica to what would be the fill portions.

Squeeze bottles all ready to go. The color gradient is easier to see in the bottles, don't they look pretty all lined up?

Sorry I didn't take any pictures/videos while filling up the mold. Time was of the essence! Originally I wanted to have my circles be somewhat lined up...but clearly that didn't happen. :) The coral soap batter seemed extra runny and would spread out sometimes - I'm not sure if perhaps I added too much colorant? It was manageable but caused some outlines to be more smeared than crisp. Here's a picture of the filled mold:

I put the soap into the oven (preheated at 170 degrees) and left the oven on for about 40 minutes. I have actually never gelled my soap in the oven before, so I was nervous. I was imagining horrible cracks or volcano soap hahaha. After I turned off the oven, I left the soap in there for about 3 more hours before taking it out. I am AWFUL about leaving my soap alone and keeping it covered for a day, I always want to peak. I peaked several times with this soap, which I think caused a bit of soda ash. Has anyone else ever gotten deep soda ash throughout the soap? It's happened before using this FO - I'm not sure if the culprit is the FO, the colorant, or the soaping temperature, but I suspect some FOs are more susceptible to soda ash than others. I had soaped at ~95 degrees, which I do frequently, so I don't think it was necessarily temperature...

Anyway, here's a picture of the soap after 24 hours:

The fill portions reminded me of sea glass, hence the name "Coral & Sea Glass Soap" :) Doesn't it look similar to the pictures of sea glass below??

The final colors also kind of remind me of robin eggs. Even though I gelled the soaps, the colors did not come out quite as dark as I had envisioned. I think next time I will add a little more teal mica so that the gradient is more obvious. 

After cleaning up the soaps and planing off most of the soda ash, I think the soaps look pretty neat! Here are some of the final results. :)