Hi, This is Teri with Tree Marie Soapworks. Today I'm going to show you how I
made this soap. It's a heart swirl soap. And stick around to the end of the video and
I will tell you what I would have done differently for this batch, and let's get
started. First I start with my distilled water and I use about 1/3 of my water
weight in distilled water ice cubes and then I top it off with my remaining
water weight in just cold distilled water. And I use the ice cubes to help
cut down on fumes and also it does help the lye solution cool down a little faster.
Now that I've measured my lye, I add that to my water and stir that until it's
dissolved. At this point, I measure my sodium lactate which is a hardener and
it's not necessary but it just helps you be able to unmold your soaps sooner and
it makes your bar harder, which will make it last longer. I use a rate of one
teaspoon per pound of oils, and I set that aside with my lye solution and I
will add it later when my lye solution has cooled. Next, I measure my coconut oil
and I get that melting and then I start to measure my liquid oils. I start with
my avocado oil then my castor oil and then my olive oil. I use these little
squeeze bottles just to top off the weight so I don't go over. Once the
coconut oil is melted I measure in my cocoa butter pastilles and I stir those
until they're melted and if they need microwaved I microwave them until
they're just barely melted. Next, I prepare my colorants. First, I have
Carribean Kiss and that's from Rustic Essentials and I use that at a rate of
0.8 teaspoons per pound of oils. I just put that on a sheet of Plexiglas
and then I add a little olive oil and I mix it with my pallet knife until it's
completely combined. The next color I'm using is Sunshine Yellow and it's from
Nurture Soap and I'm using that at a rate of 1.25 teaspoons per pound of oils.
For my next color, I'm using smooth coconut carbon and that's from Elements
Bath and Body and this is also known as Activated Charcoal. And when I use this I
always use it at 1.5 teaspoons per pound of soap Elements Bath and Body has a
Colorant Calculator and if you're wondering how I figure my colorants at
.8 teaspoons per pound of oils or 1.5 teaspoons per pound of soap, it's
really easy by just using that calculator and you'll get the answer so
you only need to input a few things and the answer comes out, and super easy.
I've added a link below that tells you where you can find the description of the
calculator. It's on the elements bath and bodies YouTube channel and then also
where you can find the calculator. For my last color, I'm using titanium dioxide,
and I'm using that at a rate of one teaspoon per pound of oils. The fragrance
I'm using today is from Bramble Berry, and it's called Energy, and it's one of
my go-to fragrances because it doesn't cause acceleration.
Next, I add my liquid oils to my melted hard oils. Since Energy is a well-behaved
fragrance I just go ahead and add that to my oils. Now that my oil solution and
my lye solution are between 85 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit, I add my sodium
lactate to my lye solution and then I strain that into my oils.
Before I start stick blending anything, I weigh my bowl and my contents and
then I subtract off the weight of my bowl. And then I figure out my batter and
today I'm using everything at 20% except for the turquoise color, I'm using that
at 40%. At this point, I stick blend until an emulsion is reached. And you can tell
an emulsion has reached when you look at the bell of the stick blender and you
see if that batter that's running off there is breaking apart or if it's a
consistent than film over the whole bell of the stick blender. Now that my batter
has reached an emulsion, I just go ahead and split my batter according to the
numbers that I got earlier, and I divide it into three of the 20% and one of the
40 percents.
Next, I add my colors to the battery, and I add the turquoise to the bigger of the
batters and the other three get the yellow, white, and black.
At this point, I just want to make sure my batter is tracing and it's not still
at an emulsion. Trace is when you can trace a line with your spatula and you
can see the trail, and also when you stir your batter or you can feel a little
resistance. It's not like you're just stirring plain old water. At this point, I
just add my batter to my squeeze bottles, and these squeeze bottles I lined with
the sealed air packaging you get when you get your shipments. I just cut the
top off and that works perfectly. Next, I just pour about half that turquoise
batter in the bottom of my mold, and then I start to make my dots. And I just do
random dots on top of each other, and fill in the spaces, and just have fun
with it.
And now the swirls, and this is the fun part.
I just wanted hearts in this one, so you just kind of go through the middle and
just connect a bunch of the dots together and swirl around and make it
fancy. It's so fun! I wish I had so many more to swirl. It makes me want to
take up the Japanese marbling or it's Suminagashi I think it's called, or
there's Ebru another word, but just marbling. I just I love watching the
marbling videos and it gives you all kinds of ideas for soap. When I finished
my design, I covered my soap and I put it in the oven that was preheated to the
lowest temperature. And when I put the soap in the oven I turned the oven off
and I turned the oven light on and I just leave it that way
overnight and then I turned the oven light off in the morning and then I just
let the soap come to room temperature naturally. And this helps it go through
gel of course but, also helps it to not get soda ash. And I usually keep my soap
covered for another 24 hours after that before I cut it. It depends on where you
live and how the humidity is, but here it's kind of humid and that I believe
causes soda ash as well as airflow so I keep my soap covered for an extra 24
hours.
Okay, now my soap is out of the mold and it's 48 hours later I use this guide to
cut off the sides of my slab. And then I divide the soap into two-inch bars this
way. I'm making these into guest bars since my slab came out so thin.
Next, I just need to divide these two-inch bars in half. And I do that by
slanting my ruler, and finding a measurement that I can easily divide in
half. So I put the 0 on went in and the 7 inches on the other end, and then I
marked my halfway points at the 3.5-inch line and then I just cut them
in half. And that makes me 10 bars but these are a little small.
Since I am just cleaning my bars now, I'm going to tell you a little bit about
what I learned from this batch. And the first thing I learned that kind of
frustrated me is the yellow, it came out really dull, and I've had that happen a
lot before with yellows and oranges and I think when yellows and oranges that
our Mica's go through gel, a lot of times they're just kind of a dull or pastel
shade of yellow or orange. And I'm going to have to do further testing, but I have
my color swatches that I made, and since they probably didn't go through gel
because they're a little smaller in a single cavity mold, they didn't go
through gel so they're a deeper color. But whenever my yellows go through gel a
lot of times they're like this. A few videos back I did a soap that had two
greens and a yellow and that yellow came out really nice and deep, and I used this
Sunshine Yellow mica and I also used a yellow oxide and neon and that soap came
out just a gorgeous yellow, it was a really deep yellow. And I think if I
would have done that here, it would have been fine, and now I think I probably
wouldn't have even needed the mica. I could have just used the yellow oxide
and the yellow neon and it probably would have been the same color.
The other thing I learned when using a slab mold and you're just doing the
design on the top, I should have poured more base color I used 40% of the batter
for my base color, but actually, I use less than that because part of that
color I used on top so probably about 30% I use for my base color. And I think
I really should have used probably about 60%. So that's why these bars ended up
being so small. My batter kind of got thick, so I didn't want to add anymore. so
I just ended up cutting these a little smaller and they're kind of like a guest
sized bar or between a guest size and a regular-sized bar. Other than that, I was
really happy with how these bars came out, and I can't wait to do some more
marbling. I just love playing with soap this way. if you're interested in
soap making I started a group that's called Tree Marie Soapworks, and I have
a link down in my description, and it's for learning about soap. It's strictly
about soap so you can share some of your projects and we can troubleshoot and
we can learn together. And so if you're interested you have to ask to join,
because it's a private group. And please ask to join under your personal Facebook
account and not your business account. Thank you so much for joining me today.
and if you appreciate videos like this, please give me a thumbs up and subscribe
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post just hit the bell. And I appreciate those of you that placed an order this
week thank you very much! And have a great day! :)