Hi, this is Teri from Tree Marie Soapworks. Today I'm going to be showing you
how to make this soap. It's a kaleidoscope soap or it's also a
pull-through technique. I took a poll in my last video
to see what you wanted to see next and this one won by fifty four percent of
the votes. This technique was featured in Amy Warden's Soap Challenge club in May of
this year and it was taught by Joann Watkins of Nature's Potion Handmade
Soaps and I got the idea of using apart from a bubble machine from Gosia of
Magi_ do Soaps and I will leave a link to her Instagram page in the description
below. Also Belinda Williams of Love Your Suds has some Soap Shaper tools that you
can buy that do this very same thing if you don't want to make them. You can find
details to her as well in the description below. Ok, let's get started.
First, I'm going to show you a little bit about how I put my mold together. This
mold is from Bramble Berry and it's only ten dollars and I lined it with a piece
of freezer paper. The previous time I made, this I had trouble with my pull
through tools sticking to the bottom. It floated up about a third of the way so
my design was only on the top part of the column. I had to think of a way to
keep it down and what I came up with was using a magnet. So I cut the top out of a
soup can and I put that in between two pieces of plastic and I put that on the
bottom and then I cut down my bubble pull through tool and put a little
magnet in the middle. And you can see that sticks together just enough to keep
it down, but it's easy to pull off when I have it attached to the bottom. I just
brought the plastic up around it and then I fastened it with rubber bands and
then I'll just put the bottom part on. there's a cap that covers the bottom of
this mold over the plastic and over that can lid that I didn't show very well, but
just know that there's something else on the bottom. The first time I made this I
just used a dowel rod in the middle of the bubble tool that just fit right in
there and it was fine, but the problem I had with it was it was very hard to get
the soap batter to be centered in the mold the next time I made it, I tied
strings to four of the points on the tool and I tied them with knots and the
knots seemed to cause a lot of drag so this time when I'm making it, I sewed on
these thin ribbons and that seemed to have less drag when I pulled it through.
And I just arranged it so that the ribbons are in their right places and I
just tape them to the side and I put little tabs on the tape so I can remove
them easily when I'm ready to do the pull-through design. Okay let's get
started on our batch first I use about 1/3 of my water weight in distilled
water ice cubes and then I top it off with the remaining water weight in cold water.
Next, I measure my sodium hydroxide and I add that to my water. Stir right away to
make sure that it doesn't settle to the bottom and form a crust. After I get that
dissolved, I measure my sodium lactate and I use one teaspoon per pound of oils
for that. I don't add the sodium lactate yet. I add that when my lye solution has
cooled. I set these ingredients aside in a place that is well ventilated but safe
from any children or pets. Next, I measure my hard oils and I start with my
coconut oil and then my palm oil. This palm oil is RSPO sustainable palm oil
and it is also No-Stir palm oil. So it just can be scooped out, it doesn't have
to be completely melted before adding it and it's from Elements Bath and Body.
Next, I measure my fragrance and today I'm using Yuzu fragrance and it's a
very slow-moving fragrance and it smells really citrusy. It's wonderful and it's
from Elements Bath & Body. After that, I measure my liquid oils and I start with
my castor oil and then my olive oil. After my coconut oil and palm oil are
melted, I add my cocoa butter pastels and these are from Bramble Berry and I stir
them until they're melted or if I need to microwave them slightly I just
microwave them until they're barely melted. Next, I prepare my squeeze bottles.
And I use this sealed air packaging and I just slide that into the bottles. I
learned this tip from the Soap Challenge Club and it saves so much time and I
don't have to clean out those bottles. It is very hard to get all the soap out of
there. I've cut the lids off of these squeeze bottles a little bit so more
comes out and now I'm actually making extensions for the lids so that they can
be more accurate when I'm pouring. So I cut the pipettes down and I cut little
slits in the end. They'll go around the lids of the
squeeze bottles. I had a little bit of trouble getting the electrical tape to
stick to the bottles because there is probably a little oil residue on them so
I use my isopropyl alcohol and clean them off and they stuck fine. If you're
going to make this batch you actually need four squeeze bottles prepared.
I only had three in this one because this is the following batch that I made and I
decided to film this so you can see how I do it.
Okay, next we're going to prepare our colorants and these are all from
Elements Bath and Body.
For our first colorant, we have Blinded By the Light. I'm using that at a
rate of one teaspoon per pound of oils and I'm using that for 20% of my batter.
I figured out all these colorant amounts using Elements Bath and Body's Colorant
Calculator and I have a link to that in the description below. For the next
colorant, I used a combination of the Radioactive Green and the Blinded By the
Light Yellow and I used each of those at a rate of a half a teaspoon per pound of
oils and I also use those for 20% of my batter.
Okay, for my next color I use Cosmic Aurora Purple Neon Pigment and I used it
at a rate of one teaspoon per pound of oils, so it would be the same usage rate
as the yellow and it is also for 20% of my batter.
For the last color, I wanted a navy blue so I used a combination of
Ultramarine Blue and Smooth Coconut Carbon and I used the blue at a rate of
3/4 of a teaspoon per pound of oils and I use the black at a rate of a quarter
of a teaspoon per pound of oils and I used this for 40 percent of my batter.
Now that my lye water has cooled, I add my sodium lactate, then I add my liquid
oils to my melted hard oils. Next, I strain my lye solution into my oil
solution and I rarely ever catch anything in my strainer but once in a
while there's a little clump of lye that doesn't get dissolved because a little
humidity got to it and it just gets super hard and you just don't want that
in your final batch, so that's why I strain my lye solution.
I also added my fragrance to the mixture.
Next, I stick blended my batter and I just stick blended it until an emulsion
was reached - that's when it's going to stay together but it's not at trace yet.
And then I split my batter off into three 20% and one 40%.
Next, I add my color to my batter and I use the navy blue for the bigger amount.
Once all the colorant is mixed in completely, I want to make sure and get
my batter to trace. So this batter was still a little thin so I wanted to just
speed it up slightly. Now that I'm happy with the consistency of the batter I
just add it to my squeeze bottles.
I just started squeezing these in and when I first started the squeeze, I
squeezed really slow just to make sure that my point was centered.
And then I squeezed a little longer than I thought I should because in my
previous one I seemed to get a lot of color, more than I wanted in each design,
so now at the top of this I did get a little too close together and you could
see on my final design how close the colors are and I didn't like it as much.
But it was getting thicker and actually when I finished this I didn't think it
came out at all. I thought my batter got too thick.
Here, I'm pulling out the tool; it's not really much to see and it happens pretty
quickly, but you can see the top was kind of smeared and that's why I didn't think
I really got anything in my design, but as I cut it I really was super
excited about the outcome. So here we go. I'm just marking these for 1-inch
divisions. And the first end I will be cutting is what was the bottom end. Now
that I'm cutting my soap I'll just share a little bit about what I've learned.
This is my third pull through I made so I've kind of been sharing my tips all
along of what I have learned, but here are a few that I wanted to highlight. First,
the mold that I got from Bramble Berry has a liner with it but I would suggest
if you get that mold which is only it was like $9.99 or something, it's a column
mold and I have all the details in my description below, but if you get that
mold I would still suggest lining it with freezer paper and make sure that
you seal up the bottom like I did with the rubber bands and some plastic around
the bottom because it does kind of seep out a little bit. The next tip I have is
just to make sure that you're using contrasting colors or that you're
pouring contrasting colors next to each other. Just so you have the maximum
impact of this design. Next, just make sure your pull-through tool is going to
stay on the bottom mine didn't stay on the bottom and one of my designs and it
was because I was just using string so there wasn't enough weight to hold it
down. So maybe you could come up with something like I did with the magnet. It
just needs to be weighted a little bit to stay at the bottom. Another tip is to
make sure you're using a recipe that doesn't have too many saturated fats in
it. My recipes for doing swirls and things that need to remain fluid are
usually about 43% saturated and 57% unsaturated fats so that's how I usually
could tell if my recipe is going to remain fluid longer. If you use soap calc,
you can find your percentage of saturated - unsaturated, or as a ratio
actually, out of 100, it's in the upper right-hand corner
of your printout, when you're using soap calc. Also though at the same time you
want to pour your soap when it's thick enough so it doesn't get muddied
together, so make sure your soap is a light trace or light to medium trace.
It just needs to be thick enough. It can't be watery. And if it starts to get thick
on you, don't panic just keep going because you saw that mine got thicker and
I thought it was not gonna work and it pulled through fine, so just keep going
and don't get flustered. Another tip is just to try your very best to get your
design centered. So that means just starting barely to pour and then if it's
not centered adjust a little bit before you pour more because the design just
comes out so much better if it's centered. Another tip that I have is just
to pour a little more than you would think because it seems to come out a lot
better when you have a little bit bigger amounts of color together, so those last
few that I did you can see they're kind of muddied together and to me they
didn't come out as good, and that's when the batter was getting thicker, so if the
batter is getting thicker squeeze just a little more than you would think, so that
you can get that great color. The last tip I have for you is just a bang down
your mold periodically. When you use squeeze bottles it tends to get a little
bit of air bubbles in there, so just take it and bang it down to get those air
bubbles to come to the surface and pop. I hope you've learned something today and
if you have just comment below and let me know what you learned. Thank you to
all of you who voted in the poll and the next result was the mini drop swirl.
I don't think I'm doing that next because I'm participating in the soap
challenge this month so I will probably be focusing on that. I would like to
encourage you all to participate in the soap challenge it's just something that
you learn so much and I have learned so much of what I know from the soap
challenge, so there's a link to the soap challenge below and if you are wondering
about those other techniques that I showed for the poll, I will be eventually
doing all of those. Also if you're interested in joining a soap making
group I have one and we talk about different soaping issues and also do
troubleshooting and just share what you've done.
And you get a lot of encouragement. If you're joining the group make sure and
join under your personal facebook page and also there's going to be three
questions to answer, and you have to answer those questions to get into the
soap making group. If you're already in the soap making group and you're in it
under your business name please leave the group and come in under your
personal facebook name because we've had a little trouble with things pertaining
to that. This is a Facebook group so you can go on Facebook and search it and
it's called Tree Marie Soapworks but my business page is also called Tree
Marie Soapworks, so look for the group and also you can just scroll down in the
description and I have a link to both of those. Thank you to those of you who
placed orders during the week and also my inventory might be going rather low
because I'm having some local craft shows and the earlier you placed your
orders the better because my selection will be getting rather slim in these
days coming up. If you're new to my channel and haven't subscribed yet
please subscribe and hit the bell for notifications for the next time I post. I
hope you've learned something today and if you have please give a thumbs up and
comment and share with your soap making friends and have a great day! :)