{"id":7008,"date":"2011-10-06T18:33:07","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T00:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatcakessoapworks.com\/handmade-soap-blog\/?p=7008"},"modified":"2017-09-25T10:02:55","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T16:02:55","slug":"the-making-of-the-winter-rose-soap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatcakessoapworks.com\/handmade-soap-blog\/index.php\/the-making-of-the-winter-rose-soap\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making Of the Winter Rose Soap"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is for Donna<\/a> who asked how I swirled the Winter Rose soap<\/a>! With comments like “it needs its own museum,” and “If I made that I would be putting one on the mantelpiece and spend all day gazing at it,” how could I refuse?<\/p>\n

I wish I had a video of the whole process – or even lots of photos, but I don’t. So you’ll have to settle for the photos I do have and a couple of drawings to help fill in the gaps, ok?<\/p>\n

First, I added the fragrance to the oils before adding the lye solution. We’re talking about a fast-moving floral fragrance here! Then, I blended until it was just<\/em> emulsified. I had three different pink micas to swirl with, plus some titanium dioxide and vanilla bean specks for the base color.<\/p>\n

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Clockwise from top left: bubblegum pink, mauve, and fushcia pink micas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Vanilla bean specks added to the titanium dioxide and water solution<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A very strange thing happened when I stirred the vanilla bean specks into the titanium dioxide solution. You can see the oils from the vanilla beans separating, and the whole solution emulsified! <\/p>\n

Back to making soap. After I blended the soap, I poured two cups of soap into each container for the pink swirls, and dumped the titanium dioxide and vanilla bean specks into the main pot. After each one was sufficiently stirred (I think I only used the stick blender on the main pot, and just stirred the pink swirl colors with a spatula), I poured a layer of the base color into the mold. It was starting to thicken by then. After that, I poured each of the pink colors over it in a zig-zag pattern, allowing them to sink into the base color a bit.<\/p>\n

It looked something like this:<\/p>\n

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Pink swirl colors in the soap<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then I used my bamboo skewer to zig-zag through the mold (really fast!!), first one way:<\/p>\n

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Black line shows skewer pattern<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then the other way (still really fast!!):<\/p>\n

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You get the idea!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Then I took the rest of the colors, poured them into the pot randomly, stirred just a bit<\/em>, and poured it over the top. It was getting pretty thick by then. I barely had time to get it all pressed into the mold! I really liked the effect of the swirl in the mold. It was the first time I’ve done this that it actually looked good! Probably because I have previously been afraid of swirling it too much, but I really went after it this time. I’ll definitely do this again. Let me know if you try it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is for Donna who asked how I swirled the Winter Rose soap! With comments like “it needs its own museum,” and “If I made that I would be putting one on the mantelpiece and spend all day gazing at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[685,684],"class_list":["post-7008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-soap","tag-how-to-swirl-soap","tag-swirling-handmade-soap"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t