Naturally Colored Stained Glass Beauties

This month,Amy Warden's Soap Challenge has thrown me into the "unknown to me" world of melt and pour soaps. 

This has really not been my wheelhouse, in fact, I have never before used melt and pour soap bases.  There are a couple of reasons for this. 

For one, the whole reason I delved into soap making was for the health benefits I saw after my family started using our very first bars of cold processed soap - eczema went away and our skin was visibly happier after that first bar!  The second, is my obsession with controlling the ingredients.  Melt and Pour bases have not always been clear on what is actually in the soap base, and oftentimes, if I did see the ingredients listed out, I didn't like what I saw.  My journey has led me to wanting to know what I put into and onto my body, and this just wasn't an avenue I was interested in going down, especially since my cold process soap is so wonderful!

That being said, making my own melt and pour has been on my todo list for a while, as it did carry an air of intrigue for me.  Could I do it?  What would the resultant soap be like as a soap, in comparison to my beautiful cold processed soaps?  Would I like it at all?

So, here we go!  This month is my opportunity to explore!

The tutorial on Hybrid Stained Glass Designs is guest taught by Sharon Czekala of Great Lakes Natural Soap Co. in Canton Michigan.  Example soaps made by Sharon are below.

The challenge this month is not divided between experienced and beginners, but instead by whether you pipe the pattern by free hand or using a template.  The soap on the left is a free hand style, while the butterflies and bird were created by first printing a pattern on paper that dissolves.  You create the design with piped cold processed soap, fill that design in with colored melt and pours, then finish it off with a top layer of clear melt and pour.  The results are stunning!

I decided to pipe without a pattern.  First step was to pour a layer of naturally colored base, made from cold processed soap.   Second step was the piping.
Here is a process video...

Piping Without Pattern

And, this is a better picture of what it looked like after this step was completed.  I did various designs, including sunsets, flowers, turtles and a hummingbird (not a very good one...lol!  Can you find the hummingbird in this picture???)

Next comes the colored melt and pour, which was really the challenge for me this month.  Making my own was my only option, and I thought that making the melt and pour would be extremely difficult.  However, I tried several different recipes, with good success from each of them - not at all the beast I thought it would be.  The clearest recipe was obtained using the recipe in Edgar Kameraki's video, which can be found by clicking here.  But, I think my favorite recipe, as far as a hand soap goes, is a variation made after reading the Lovin Soap Blog, which you can read here.  I suppose it depends on what you are looking for, soap wise.

After tackling MAKING the melt and pour, I had to figure out how to COLOR the melt and pour.  Since I only use natural colorants in my soaps, this proved to be a higher challenge yet!

My initial coloring experiment showed that some of what I typically use transfers nicely to the melt and pour.  I also tried to use some of the experimental colorants for cold process that did not work out, thinking that they may work well with the melt and pour.  However, I did not find any that worked better with the melt and pour - it may have been that I did not give the soap base a chance to cure?  pH may play a part in this???  I'll have to revisit that in a few weeks.  I also tried some plain old food coloring...but I later read that this will bleed and is not suitable, so I abandoned that idea.  It also faded more than the other colors over time, which I found interesting.

In the above picture, you will see, from left to right, top row to bottom row, green food coloring, annatto seed infused oil, alkanet infused oil, rose clay, charcoal, butterfly pea powder (can't tell from the picture, but it really did not dissolve well), beet root powder and nettle infused oil (which did not show any color) combined with chlorophyll (which worked) to make it green.  It's not a huge color palette, but it would have to suffice.  Color variations are made by changing up the amount of melt and pour base/colorant added to the mix. 

I also made a batch of the melt and pour base using indigo in my lye, but the indigo pretty much just laid on top and did not play well with the recipe.  In my final soaps, there are some very light blue sections, and this was made using this batch.  Not at all what I had intended, as I really wanted to make a sea scene, with various shades of blue.  Oh well...plans change :)

Here is the process video of adding the colored melt and pour.   Most of the sections were filled in with solid colors, but for the suns I played with mixing the colors and they turned out very nice!  The result is a perfect ombre effect.

Here is what it looked like just after pouring the final layer of melt and pour over the top.

After Final Clear Coat

This is the slab the following morning, taken out of the mold, before cutting.

As other soap makers have mentioned, the black turned a bit gray, and for me, the clear top coat was a little "foggy".  Not really a surprise to me, as I knew my homemade melt and pour was not crystal clear, which you would expect from the store bought variety.  I also think there is a fine line between having enough of this top layer to cover the black piping (need to ensure the black does not stick up too much...) and having the layer be more clear.  I see more experiments in my future :)

After cleaning them all up though, I think they are beautiful! 

I do love to learn new techniques!!!