Groovy Guy & Hippie Gal

Amy Warden’s Soap Challenge for the month of October was to recreate a soap that looks like the picture below.

She gave us a tutorial showing a couple of different ways to achieve this, and left it open if anyone had other ideas. I went with her second option, and believe that it worked quite well to get the effect we are looking for.
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For my first attempt, I chose a fall color palette, and after bringing the soap batter to a good emulsion, mixed the colors using cocoa, paprika, alkanet infused oils and Annatto seed infused oils - to give brown, orange (light and dark), purple and yellow, respectively.

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The log mold was divided into three equal vertical sections, and the batter was poured while still fairly thin.  I did a wall pour on the end of the mold, alternating colors as I moved from one section to the other.  I also used variable amounts of batter so as to make the design not line up exactly.

The colors with powders mixed in became a bit thicker during the pouring, as they were blended for a longer length of time.  I thought this was going to be a problem because the thinner batters (purple and yellow) appeared to run over the top of some of the thicker colors.

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When I went to cut these bars, I wasn’t sure if I would get the effect that I wanted at all, let alone knowing which direction I wanted to cut them. Amy had done hers both vertically and horizontally, depending on her batch.

So I cut the ends vertically to see what I got.  It wasn’t really the desired effect, so I cut a bar sized block and then cut horizontally.  Bam!  That was beautiful!  Very sixties-esque.  So that was how I cut the remaining bars. 

I made a second batch with lighter colors and fragranced this one with an attempt at a Nag Champa blend of essential oils.  This one is my Hippie Gal, the first, unscented batch is my Groovy Guy.  I really love these bars!

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