Hi, this is Teri with Tree Marie Soapworks. Today I'm going to be showing you
how to make this soap the technique is called Pointy Layers. Stay tuned to the
end of this video and I do a little troubleshooting and give you some tips
on helping this technique work better for you. Okay, let's get started. First, I
use about 1/3 to 1/2 of my water weight in distilled water ice cubes. Then, I just
top off the remaining water weight with cold distilled water. Next, I carefully
measure my sodium hydroxide. I add that to my water and I stir until it's
dissolved. Lye is very caustic and needs to be treated properly, so if you haven't
done any research on lye safety, I have a link below that you can watch a video to
understand how to treat lye. Next, I measure my sodium lactate and I use one
teaspoon per pound of oils, and I just set that aside with my cooling lye water.
After that, I just measure my heart oils and get them melting, starting with my
coconut oil, and then next, my sustainable no-stir palm oil. And this no-stir palm oil
is from Elements Bath and Body. Next, I put these in the microwave to get them
just barely melted, and meanwhile, I start to measure my liquid oils, starting with
my castor oil, and then my olive oil. Next I measure my fragrance and for this one
I'm using Abalone and Sea from Wholesale Supplies Plus. This fragrance is a well-behaved fragrance
and it doesn't accelerate or discolor. Next, I start to prepare my colorant and
my main colorant is from Mad Micas, and it is called Snake Island and I also use a
Activated Charcoal which is called Smooth Coconut Carbon from Elements Bath
and Body and then my Titanium Dioxide but this Snake Islands the main colorant
and it turns out more of a blue-gray than a green and it's a really gorgeous
color, that's rather unique. I used Elements Bath and Body's Colorant
Calculator to figure out these colorants and then I just tweaked them a little
bit because I wanted them to be different enough from each other that
they show up against one another. I have a link to Elements Bath and Body's
Coloring Calculator below and I also have a lot of other information about
the supplies I use below like I've had people ask
what wire cutter I'm using, that green wire cutter, that's below. And also what
stick blender I use, that's also below so just take a look at that. I also give you
all the information you need to put this recipe into soapcalc. All you need is the
total oil weight and the percentages of your oils and then your super fat and
your water percentage and you can put this recipe into soapcalc.
I don't list the exact recipe because I want you to learn so if you have any
questions just ask. I have two videos that I've done on soapcalc. One I did
for Elements Bath and Body and the other one is my video for True Marie
Soapworks, so if you're interested, I'll leave those links below as well.
I'm adding a little extra Activated Charcoal to my first color because I
want that to be definitely darker than my second color. So you can see I added
it here and then I'm going to mix up a little extra just in case I need it.
I keep notes on all of my recipes and I note any adjustments that I make so I
wrote down these adjustments that I did. So that next time I can repeat the same
color if I want, or if I know that it was too dark or too light I can just change
it a little bit. Now that my hard oils are melted, I add my liquid oils and I
pour them down the side of my pitcher so that I don't introduce a bunch of air
bubbles.
Next, I add my sodium lactate to my lye water and then I strain my lye water
into my melted oils.
Before I stick blend this, I want to find out what 1/4 of it's going to be so I
can split off my batter equally. So I weigh my bowl in the contents and then I
subtract off the weight of the bowl. And then I divide that by 4, and that's the
number I'll use later when I'm splitting my batter. Next, just stick blend until an
emulsion is reached. An emulsion is reached when the batter is no longer
going to separate. There's no oils floating on top. and if you pull your
stick blender out of the batter and you look at the film of batter on there, it
looks like an even film and if you look really close there's nothing breaking
apart it's all sticking together. That's a good time to split your batter. If you
wait until your batter has traced before you pour your batter and color it and
add the fragrance, sometimes you won't have enough time to work. So this is a
good time to split it when it's just at an emulsion because you can always speed
up your batter by stick blending, but you can't take it back. You can't slow it
down. So I always just mix it to an emulsion, unless I know that my fragrance
is really slow-moving. Just mix it to an emulsion, color it, and add the fragrance
and then if you need to stick blend, just stick blend.
Next, I just add my colorants to my batter, and I just adjust them as
necessary, so I do need to add the black to my batter, and I will need to add a
little white as well.
Now that I'm happy with the way that my batter looks, I'm going to add my
fragrance.
For this technique, you need your batter to be about at a light or a light to
medium trace and I thought I probably got it a little too thick and as you
will see when I cut my soap, that my bottom the set of points were a little
bit more shallow waves. And that was because of here when I'm pouring the
batter is thicker. You see how thick that batter was? It's fairly thick a little
too thick I would say, but what you do is you watch your batter go down to the end
of your pitcher and you start moving before it ever leaves your pitcher
because a lot of times when it's thick like that, it will just create a big
divot in there. So start moving before your batter leaves the end of your
pitcher. And you just want to make some moves back and forth and any of that
butter that sticks through from the previous layer is what makes the points.
So you can choose to cover those up right away and make small points, or you
can kind of pour on both sides of those and make bigger points. It depends on
what you want to do.
The gaps between the newly poured batter make the points of the previously poured
batter.
So this layer has a lot more gaps to begin with so that means there will be
more points. To force this soap through gel, I preheated my oven to 170 degrees
Fahrenheit. It's the lowest setting on my oven. And I covered my soap and I put it
in the oven and when I put it in the oven I turned the oven off, and I turned
the oven light on, so it stayed warm. And then before I went to bed I just turned
the oven light off and let it come to room temperature. And in the morning I
cut it. If I would have cut it that quickly in the summertime, I think I would have
got soda ash, but since I cut it and it's not as humid now it's fall time and
nearly wintertime, so that's why I could cut it so quickly and not end up with
soda ash. Here I'm just fixing some of the holes. Now I'm just marking the soap into
ten equal divisions, and if you wonder why I slant my ruler, I have a video
telling why I do that, so just check in the information below, or look at my
videos. I'm super excited about how this batch came out and I'm loving this
colorant called Snake Island. and I think I'm gonna have to get a bigger container
because I pretty much ran out on that one. Now that I'm cutting this soap, let me tell
you about what I learned, and one thing is, I think that I shouldn't have stick
blended those first two layers. I think I should have just let the batter thicken
up on its own just not be so impatient with it and just check it every once in
a while and then let it go, because I think that I rushed it a little bit and
it would have been much better if it was just a little less thick. I really wanted
to play with this and make little kind of fingery
veins that came through it, and I to kind of split some of my waves, but
that'll have to be for another time. One thing that I want to warn you is,
when you're pouring your first layer of points, so it's really your second layer,
you kind of need to get your pitcher down in there. So if you have one of
those funnel pitchers like I have, that works the best but depending on how thin
your batter is it's harder to get your spout of your pitcher closer to the
previous layer. Just remember you're trying not to break through that
previous layer, so this method would be much more difficult in a tall and skinny
mold, because of how close you have to get to your previous layer and it's very
tight in a tall and skinny mold, to get your spout down in there. So I would say
you would need a little bit thicker batter for that so it doesn't just run
right out of your pitcher because of the angle you have to pour at. When you're
picking your colors, make sure that your colors are different enough. I feel like
the way that I did it, in the design today, works really well
to do it a dark to light but if you're doing different colors, make sure that
the colors are not the same hue or shade. So if you're looking at mine, I did the
gray and the pink and it seems like they're awful close together, so those
waves just did not stick out, and you can see on the top part, between the white
and the pink they look really good, but you can't even hardly notice them in
the other layer, so just be aware of that when you're picking your colors. Let me
just tell you a little bit about how I figured out this technique. I learned
this technique by accident. I was making a layer soap and the layers were just
taken forever to set up so I just poured very close to the layer before, and this
is what I came up with, I didn't tell you earlier, but I was the guest teacher in
the July Soap Challenge for this very technique, and if you want to see the
results, I will post a link below. There are so many design possibilities for
this technique, and you can do it in the pot swirl and make it look like waves or
you can make it kind of a veiny and fingery like I said. The one that won first place
was just gorgeous, but they all were gorgeous, there were some oceany ones And
so I will leave a link and you can check those out.
I'm just wondering how many of you are soap makers, so if you could comment
below and just let me know how long you been making soap, and if you are
interested in soap making let me know what's holding you back. I have a soap
making Facebook group now and if you're interested it's for learning. It's for
asking questions and troubleshooting and sharing what you've made and sharing
what you've learned, and it's a group that you must ask to join under your
personal Facebook account and not your business account, and also you must read
the rules. There are three questions that you have to answer in order to get into
the group and if you have asked to join the group and haven't been accepted, just
please finish those questions. The group is called Tree Marie Soapworks and my
business page is also called that, so just make sure you're finding the group
page and I have provided a link below so just click on that or search Tree Marie
Soapworks on Facebook. Thank you so much to those of you who have checked out my
website, and also those of you who have placed an order! I really appreciate it!
Thank you all for joining me today, and if you appreciate my videos, please just
give me a thumbs up and comment and share with your soap making friends, and
if you're new to my channel please subscribe and hit the bell to get
notifications for when I post my next video. I have many ideas for my next
video so I could make a mini drop swirl or it might be a tiger swirl or a
gradient soap. Also, I was thinking of another confetti soap, also I have four
ideas sitting here but, I might change my mind I have so many ideas running
through my head! So just stay tuned and thank you so much for watching and have
a great day! :)