In The Pot Swirl

It  has been pretty quite around these parts lately. The sun is beginning to shine here in the Pacific Northwest (Yay! finally!). Longer and drier days are upon us as the earth inches closer and closer to summer in the northern hemisphere. The city of Portland seems to have an added sense of inner and outer beauty when it is bathed in shimmery, golden sunlight.  People get out of their houses and participate in outdoor activities, they walk about with their heads held up high, shoulders back, and a twinkle in their eye.  Just like the plants that are returning from their winter slumber, people in Portland start to stand up straight and point their faces to the sun.

This means that there is more daylight to get things done, and more things to get done means less time for me to make soap!  This is a soapmaking blog that, regrettably, I have not been paying much attention to.  I have been storing up some photos to have more content and hopefully get to where I can write once every day.  "Why are you writing a post today but not writing about making soap?" I hear yonder cry.  Well, say no more, say no more! This post today is dedicated to the soap I made this weekend!  In yet another attempt to accomplish something interesting, I tried another swirl.  This time I tried an In The Pot Swirl.

My photographer was moonlighting at his second job the day I made this soap, so I don't have a lot of photographs to show the process.  It all came together rather quickly and I didnt have time to pick up the camera during the process.  These photos are the "after" photos.

This particular soap is a recipe that I formulated on my own that uses vegetable oil, olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil and shea butter.  I scented it with essential oils of Orange, Clove, Bergamont and Ylang-Ylang.  It is sweet and spicy smelling.  One half of the batch was colored with ground tumeric from my spice rack.  I am hoping that it will yield a peachy / orange color. The other half of the batch was colored with ground clove - also from my spice rack.  Natural colorants are the way to go for me, especially if I already have them in the house.

An in the pot swirl is exactly what it sounds like- you swirl two colors in the same pot.  But when you pour it into your mold the colors swirl themselves as you pour and the results end up being something like this.

This soap smells D.Vine!! :)  You can clearly see that not all of the swirls are the same.  I think that this gives the soap a much nicer visual appearance.  After it hardens up a little bit more I will trim off the uneven edges to give it a more polished look.  The technique worked quite well, and I think that I will use it with a lot of my soaps.