Hi, this is Teri with Tree Marie Soapworks. Today I'm going to be showing you how to
make this soap. This design is a marbling technique and it's inspired by paper
marbling, and I'll share a link below to the YouTube video that inspired me. Stick
around to the end of the video and I'm going to share a little bit about
acceleration and how to avoid it and how to troubleshoot acceleration. Let's get
started. First, I measure my water and I'm using about a third to a half of my
water weight in distilled water ice cubes and then I pour in the remaining
water weight. Next, I measure my sodium hydroxide which is also called lye. And
this is something that is very caustic and you need to know how to be safe with
it. So if you had never made soap before you need to research the basics of lye
safety. After my sodium hydroxide is measured, I add that to my water and I
stir it until it's dissolved. Next, I measure my sodium lactate and this is
totally optional. You do not have to use it.
Sodium lactate just helps to make your bar a little harder and it releases from
the mold a little easier. I don't add my sodium lactate yet but I always set it
aside with my lye water just so I remember to add it later. Next, I set
these ingredients aside to cool in some place that is well ventilated and away
from any children or pets. After that I start to measure my hard oils starting
with my coconut oil. And then I microwave that until it's just barely melted. While
I'm microwaving that I start measuring my liquid oils, starting with my avocado
oil, then my castor oil, and then my olive oil.
And I use little squeeze bottles to top off the ingredients so I don't go over
by pouring. Today I'm using essential oils for the fragrance and I'm using a
mixture of peppermint, rosemary, lavender, eucalyptus, and lemon. This scent
combination came from an e-book by Benjamin Aaron in it's called Essential
Oil Handbook. And if you're interested I have shared a link in the description
below. And this is a very slow-moving mixture partially due to the lemon,
because lemon is a citrus and citrus is tend to slow down your soap. If you're
looking for something that doesn't accelerate trace this is a good mixture.
Now that my coconut oil is melted, I add my cocoa butter pastilles. And I stir
those until they're melted, and if they don't melt by stirring, I just microwave
them until they're just barely melted.
Okay, now let's start with our colors. For Titanium Dioxide I always mix that ahead
of time so it's pre-dispersed, and it's dispersed at a rate of one part Titanium
Dioxide to three parts olive oil. And I'm using 1.25 teaspoons per pound of oils
which ended up being four teaspoons or 1.3 tablespoons of Dispersed Titanium
dioxide. Next, we have Ultramarine Blue and all these colorants today are from
Elements Bath and Body. And I use this at a rate of one teaspoon per pound of oils..
And I used Elements Bath and Bodies Colorant Calculator to figure out these
colorants and it makes it super easy.
Our next color is the combination of two colorants and they're both neons, and the
first one is The Fuchsia is Bright and the second one is Cosmic Aurora Purple.
And I use both of these at a rate of a half a teaspoon per pound of oils. And
you see I'm putting out these color swatches. This is how I pick my colors. I
have color swatches that I've made ahead of time that I tested at one teaspoon
per pound of oils, and then I can know whether I want to increase that or
decrease it according to the sample. My next color is Groovy Green Mica and you can
see in the swatch that it's a little light and so I increase the rate from
the one teaspoon per pound of oils to one and a half teaspoons per pound of
oils. Just to get a little darker color. My next color is Tahitian Teal and I use
that at a rate of 1.25 teaspoons per pound of oils, just slightly darker than
the sample you see. My next color is yellow and you remember my last batch, I
had trouble with my yellow mica so I ended up this time using no mica, and I
used .75 teaspoons per pound of oils of the Blinded by the
Light and I used 0.25 teaspoons per pound of oils of the yellow oxide. To get
my yellow this time. I did talk to Carrie from Nurture Soap and she said that
light colors of micas need to be used at a higher usage rate. She said for the
yellow sometimes she goes up to 3 teaspoons per pound of oils, so just to
let you know that if it's a lighter color of mica, you'll probably have to
use more than one teaspoon per pound of oils.
My next colorant which is actually an additive is Smooth Coconut Carbon which
is also called Activated Charcoal. And I always use that at a rate of one and a
half teaspoons per pound of soap. It comes out nice and black and I always
gel my soap, so I'm not sure how it comes out if you don't gel your soap, but
if you do, it should come out nice and black for you.
Next, I add my liquid oils to my melted hard oils, and then I add my essential
oils. Now that my oils and my lye water have cooled down to temperatures between
85 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, I add my sodium lactate to my lye water
and I stir that in. Snd then I strain my lye solution into my cooled oils.
Next, I weigh my bowl and the contents, and then I subtract the weight of the
bowl off. And I have divided this into different amounts. For the white I
figured at 44%, and for the yellow and the turquoise I figured at 14%, and the
rest of the colors I figured at 7%. Next, I stick blend until an emulsion is
reached, and this one actually took quite a while. Like I said earlier, this mixture
of essential oils kind of slows down trace. Now that an emulsion has been
reached, I split my batter off and I have four that I split into seven percent, and
then I have two that I split into 14 percent and my last one is my white
batter and that ended up being forty four percent.
Next, I just add my colorants to my batter and I start with my white, which
is the biggest amount of batter, and then my turquoise and yellow are the next
size down, and then the last size down is the black, green, pink, and blue.
I was just going to pour these in the mold without any squeeze bottles but at
the last minute I decided to use squeeze bottles and I'm glad I did; it worked
really well.
I'm preparing my squeeze bottles here. And I'm just lining them with the sealed
air packaging that you get in your shipments. I just cut the top off and
slide them into my squeeze bottles and, they work really nicely.
At this point, I just put a good amount of base batter in the mold, and I still
wish I would have put a little more in there so I use 44% for my white, and I
should have probably used around 60 or 70% for the white. I should have just
listened to my own advice I gave in the Heart Swirl Video but I didn't, and I
will have to remember that next time when I'm doing a slab mold. I want a
little more on the bottom. You can only put so much on the top. Since this is a 9
bar slab mold each of these little circle groups are situated right over
where a bar would be, so it worked out really well to have each of the colors
in each of the bars.
Besides the swirling, this is the most fun part of the design. It's inspired by
that other YouTube video I was talking about. And I think if I were doing it
again with soap, I probably wouldn't use so many colors and the concentric
circles because they end up being such thin lines, but it was so much fun!
Phase 2 of this design is the same only just using different colors.
Here I'm just popping a few bubbles with my skewer. If I do something like this
again, I might try it without the black I like it with the black and I use black
on about every single batch I make but, when I had just the colors in,
without the black I think I like that so we'll see what I do next time. Let me
know if you like this color combination or if you think it would be better
without the black or any certain color. My kids didn't like the yellow, so they
thought I should have left that part out, but I like the yellow! I made a cover for
this mold with a sheet of foam board and I cut it to fit the top of the mold and
then I cut another one to fit down inside the mold. So I fastened those two
together, and it makes there not be that much headspace. In some of the
previous batches that I made I mentioned that when I use a slab mold I get soda
ash, and I really think it was to do with the amount of headspace. When you have a
lot of headspace it seems like you're more likely to get soda ash. I processed
the soap in the oven like I mentioned in all my videos, and one thing I wanted to
tell you about oven processing, I do that to force my soap through gel. Because I
use a lower water amount, it's harder for it to go through gel. Higher water
amounts go through gel easier and they overheat at lower temperatures. So it's
not necessary to force your soap to your gel. It usually goes through gel pretty
easy on its own. My water amount is 25% of my oil amount, so when you use soap
calc, where it says 38%, I change that to 25% and
that's what I'm considering lower water. And if you're using a higher percentage
in that percent area, and you processed yours in the oven, you just could
possibly run into overheating. The reason why I process my soap in the oven is
that I'm trying to avoid partial gel since it's harder for my soap to go
through gel because of the lower water, I need to nudge it a little and that's why
I oven process. Here I'm just slicing off the edge of my slab because I want the
edges to be 90-degree angles. Next, I slant my ruler and I mark and
divide to my soap into three equal parts. If you're wondering why I slant my ruler
to divide my soap, I'm posting a video next on why I do that and show you a
little bit about how I do it. So stay tuned for that video. next, I divide those
pieces into three as well. Since I'm just cleaning the bars now, and I kind of
already told you what I would have done differently, we're going to talk a little
bit about acceleration and how to stop it or how to slow it down. Fragrances
often cause acceleration and the ones that are usually the bad actors are the
ones that are florals and also the more are hot and spicy ones, and I find that
the ones that are like ocean scents sometimes can cause acceleration also.
When you're dealing with essential oils, the ones that are the more spicy sense
like the cinnamons and cloves and things like that cause acceleration, and the
ones that are citrus slow down acceleration or slow down trace. Certain
butters can cause acceleration and often it's the ones that have a higher melting
point, and shea butter is one of them and I know Palm Kernel Oil, which is solid at
room temperature causes acceleration but a lot of times I think it's just because
it's false trace and it's getting cold again, and it's just starting to falce-trace
If you don't know what false-trace is, it looks like trace but it's
actually kind of a more grainy consistency and it's when the hard oils
are kind of getting hard again. So if your texture is grainy and it seems like
it's accelerated really fast, it's probably because of false trace and if
it's grainy you can just stick blend through that. This week on the Tree Marie
Soapworks Facebook Group, I had a post about water and using
25 percent water as a percentage of oils and you see my videos, and you see how
it's working for me, and I have plenty of time to work I think if you're switching
to that discount and you're having acceleration, I think it could be due to
your recipes having a lot of saturated fats in them. If you look at your
printout from soap calc and you look in the upper right corner, there's a ratio,
and the ratio is saturated to unsaturated fats. When I make swirl
recipes, I always have about a rate of 43 percent to 57 percent or so. But if
you're having a higher number of saturated fats or you're having near
equal like 50:50 saturated fast unsaturated, you could be getting
acceleration because you have a lot of saturated oils, and saturated oils aren't
necessarily just your hard oils, all of your liquid oils have saturated fats in
them as well. So you can look at that ratio and kind of predict what your
recipe is going to do. So you want a lower number on the left side for the
saturated fats and a higher number on the right for the unsaturated. And like I
say, mine is close to 43:57. Another thing that causes acceleration is your stick
blender so if you stick blend it too far, and you can't go back, so what I would
suggest is just stick blending it until an emulsion is reached. And that's when
it's not separating anymore. When you pull your stick blender out and you look
at the bell of your stick blender and it doesn't look grainy on your stick
blender. It looks like a thin even film over your stick blender but it's
still fairly watery. I would suggest doing that and then you split your
batter and you color your batter and you add fragrance. And that gives you more
time to work and then if you need to stick blend it more after that you can
stick blend or you can just kind of wait for it to set up. It will set up on its
own eventually, but you have to have patience, and if you don't have patience
you can mix it with a stick blender, but often times when it's in smaller
quantities it's harder to mix because you introduce bubbles. And this is where
I like to use my cordless mini mixer because it's smaller and it doesn't
introduce so many bubbles. if you're interested in the Facebook Group I was
talking about, we discuss topics and you can ask
questions, and we can troubleshoot, and you could share your beautiful soap.
Coming up soon I'm going to post the video about why I slant my ruler when
I'm dividing my soap. And I made some confetti soap out of some of the soap
that I cut off of this one and I also had another pour off soap from this
batch, so I made that into some confetti soap, so as long as it comes out
when I cut it we will have that video after the ruler slant video. if you found
this video helpful, please give me a thumbs up, and subscribe, and hit the bell
for notifications and share it with your friends! Thank you to all of you who
placed orders this week! I really appreciate it! Thank you, everybody, for
watching and have a great day! :)