Playing With Fire

When this month's soap making challenge of acrylic pour technique with straws came out, I was excited to try it - until other soapers started complaining of burning lips.  As much as I like to play with my soap, I have never been harmed by it, as I know the dangers and take the necessary precautions - lessons taught by many years of working in a biochemistry laboratory, as well as the experience of meeting older scientists with limited or no sense of smell or taste.  However, I decided to give it a go this month anyway, being extremely cautious and using my experiences to guide me. 

I'm glad I tried it, as I really like how the soap turned out, however, I will have to think about whether or not to repeat the procedure, as the fumes still got to my lips a little bit.  There are so many other ways of making beautiful soaps, I prefer not to disregard all those years of safety training, that's just me.  In case you are wondering, I also have never zap tested a soap - pH paper is definitely my friend!

For the Great Cakes Soapworks July 2017 Challenge, Acrylic Fluid Pour Technique taught by Joanne Watkins of Nature's Potion Handmade Soaps, we were to make a soap design with only the use of gravity and the blowing of air through a straw.  What fun!  I saw an interesting video demonstrating the technique with paint where the artist made a fire painting on a black background.  This inspired the soap I am entering for this month's challenge.  This soap is scented with cinnamon and other essential oils to give a spicy, hot fragrance.

I started with a very thin layer (less than 1/8") of black soap batter (colored with charcoal).  Using gravity, I tilted the mold to cover the entire bottom.

 Next, I added stripes of red, orange and yellow (colored with clay, paprika and annatto seed infused oils, respectively) and used the straw to blow the colors around to look like fire.  I did not notice any lye fumes at this point, and was wondering what all the complaining was about.  However, as time went by, the fumes got worse and worse and I couldn't figure out anyway to lessen them.  Maybe it would be best to just do one layer of design?  Or invest in a low pressure air brush, if there is such a thing!

This first layer is what I had really envisioned the soap to be.  However, I had a lot of soap batter to use up, and the bars would be too thin at this point, so onward I went!

I repeated this process three or four times, and each layer muddled up the black background contrast a little more, until you really couldn't see it much anymore.  I actually can't wait to use this soap and see how it changes as you move through the bar.  I love that about the bars that have color, they morph as you work your way through them.  So much to distract and entertain while cleaning up!

After a few days of cure, I cut the bars and noticed that the top layer did not really gel too well.  This phenomenon creates a bar that had lost its shine and color intensity.  So, I tried cutting the top off of one of the bars, but felt that what really gave it its fire feel was the dynamic texture, and the resulting bar (on the right, below), although still a cool looking bar of soap, was a bit lack luster - the movement of the fire is gone.

So, I decided to keep the textured top on the soaps.  I tried oven processing it for a bit to see if it would gel up a little, and although it's not quite as vibrant as it would have been if it had gelled with the original cure, I feel that the colors did brighten up a bit.  The final product is very interesting, and definitely has a look and feel of "fire".  The scent is absolutely wonderful!  Totally different from any of the other scents in the rest of my collection of soaps. My customers will love this bar!