hi there my name is Teri with Tree Marie Soapworks. this month i've been having so
much fun with the soap challenge that's hosted by amy warden the technique that we learned for
the soap challenge this month is the column pour there are a lot of examples out there of pouring
over columns that have to do with fluid acrylic pour and it's kind of borrowed from that in this
video i'm going to share with you five of my pores and three of them i use the same color scheme so
if it's a little confusing the first second and fifth one are the same color scheme and
the third and fourth one are different color schemes bear with me the first part and the
first tool that i made was a fail but i feel like the soap came out really nicely so i just wanted
to share that with you too and show you what not to do if you want more information about the soap
challenge i would encourage you to go to the soap challenge club website i have information for that
down in the description below alright let's get started for this technique i was doing research
and i found that i really liked the fluid acrylic pores that used the sink strainer that little
plastic zinc strainer had a lot of holes in it and made these really neat swoops when it poured
i tried to make one myself out of the top of a bottle i just used an x-acto knife and cut it out
and i screwed it to the top of another bottle that had water in it for weight well i could tell right
away that this wasn't going to work it just went right through almost like it was going through
nothing so i needed to make those sections smaller so that it didn't just go through like nothing i
decided i made this a little too complicated and at this point i'm just trying different things i
decided to try and in the pot swirl and i was getting a lot of the colors to come out in the
same place like the black was closest to me and the pink was farthest away from me and i decided
to use the lazy susan to see if i can get that to look better as i swirled it around and that didn't
really help so at this point i realized that the technique is a fail but the batch wasn't a fail so
i just needed to get the batter in the mold and do a nice swirl and move on to the next batch
the first batch i learned a few things the first thing that i learned is that i need to change
out the column tool and use something else and i just decided to use a soda bottle for the next one
another thing that i learned is that my recipe worked really well if you're familiar with my goat
milk soap recipe that i saw on my website that's the one i've used of course i use water instead
of milk but that worked really well this one actually took 20 minutes to trace partially that's
because i used a decelerating fragrance i use pink grapefruit fragrance from wholesale supplies plus
this is one of my go-to's when i need something to cooperate and stay fluid for a long time while
i'm doing swirls the next thing that i'm going to carry over is the colors they really popped and
i got them all from elements bath body they're pretty common colors though you could probably get
them anywhere but the black and white are smooth coconut carbon and then titanium dioxide and the
rest are neons here is a look at how the bars came out for that first batch i had a terrible
time getting the camera to take a true color photo and so i feel like it looks better in real life
than it does in these photos here for the next column tool i used a soda bottle it's a 12 ounce
fanta bottle the reason why i picked it is because it's a smaller bottle it doesn't take up a whole
lot of space in the mold and i cut it above the label and i made some holes in it so that i could
hang some washers and i hung those washers just to add a little weight because the bottle's so
light that i was afraid that it was going to get pushed around in the mold i also cut some slits
in the bottom and that was kind of the same deal i didn't want it to get pushed around
in the mold and i also did it so that the batter would flow inside there and my thinking was that
when i pulled out the column that a bunch of soap wouldn't displace and kind of distort the design
for this second attempt i used about a third of my batter for the bottom you might not be able to
tell but i have a layer of white port and i just got all my batter to an emulsion and i split off
about a third of it and colored it white and then i got it to a light to medium trace and poured
that over my column so while that white butter is setting up i'm coloring the other batters
and getting them to the proper trace and i still had some time to wait for this one because of the
fragrance and the recipe that worked well for me i was very patient on my stick blending too
i did not get ahead of things i didn't get in a rush which i will tell you i did in the next two
batches but for this one i was very patient and i was rewarded for that i poured the white batter
first because i wanted to eliminate some of that scrunching up that happened so i decided to go
with a third of the batter by doing that i only had to pour two thirds of the batter at the end
so there would be one third that doesn't have to be in there pushing on the other two thirds
of the batter so i think it worked well as to not scrunch everything up and kind of distort
things because of the shape of the mold while watching this i think that the next time i do
it i'm going to try to make those let's say flower petals they look like flower petals like make them
touch or almost touch every time you pour so it doesn't really have to be a counting off at
just the amount to make those colors touch or almost touch and so that's what i think
i would try the next time i do it and i am going to do another one we'll see if it turns out good
you'll see it but if not you won't see it because i won't have time but i will make time if i do a
good one i just got some new colors in the mail today from nurture so i'm excited to try the red
that's called trial by fire i also got a purple that i really want to try so my next color palette
will be different for this one my swirls were kind of haphazard i didn't really like how they ended
up but my very last swirls i figured out something i really like that kind of scalloped look where
they all kind of pull in towards the center so this one came out great i can't complain but the
swirl pattern just really bothers me so i decided for the next ones i was going to try to pull
everything into the center here's a look at how the bars came out for the second batch
for my third attempt i switched up the colors i'm using the same column tool for the rest of these
and i decided that the mold would be better if it was square or at least i thought so and so i
have this mold support and i just lined it with the freezer paper and in the previous
batch i put the white in the bottom and this one i decided to put some color in the bottom and i
thought i would have time to work you know how i always like to add my fragrance to the oils
and i thought i would have plenty of time and this one really made me rush i ran out of the
pink grapefruit fragrance so i used green irish tweed from elements bath and body that is a good
non-accelerating fragrance but it's not a decelerating fragrance so
for this one i needed a decelerating fragrance decelerating fragrances often have citrus in them
and citrus is a degreaser degreasers just keep the batter fluid for a little longer or even
loosen it up a little more than it would be and that's why it's a decelerator i was pushing it
a little because i needed it to be fluid while i poured the first layer and then mixed up the
second layer and poured that i could have added my fragrance later but i didn't i learned a lesson i
got too comfortable in the first two batches that really were well behaved and then this one it
kind of made me rush and when i poured the second layer it ended up kind of breaking up
on the edges the lines get a little displaced and jagged that happened because of the thick batter
jagged lines also happen because in the middle your batter's pushing in one direction and it kind
of gets to the edge and then it sort of starts to push back so that part can't really be avoided
when you start to swirl the batter that kind of goes away though and it's not so noticeable
i don't know if you noticed it before but my first five lines that i pulled in to the center
were the lines that were made by the column tool they get a little feathery and from this
i learned that all you have to do is pull those in towards the center and they will clean up nicely
from the last one i learned that i really like those scalloped swirls that i did it was just
kind of a set of three that i did at the very end so i decided i'm going to pull all my swirls
in toward the center one thing i learned is that you need to pull that swirl tool out at the very
center each time and try not to pull it out in other places because it just disturbs that
batter and also don't do any little swirls at the end or anything like that because it just mixes
that batter i also learned that that little part that we can fix at the end and add more batter
that got messed up too so it's better just to pull your swirls in towards the center if you're doing
it that way and then add the batter and then do a few more swirls on top of that i tend to
have a hard time knowing when to stop with my swirling and for this one i just kept swirling
and swirling and i really like it until the point where i started swirling around in circles
i wanted to add a little more interest to the bars and i don't really like that i took it that far
and so for the next one i decided that i'm going to do a little swoop on my swirl and not pull it
straight into the center but do a little curve but always end up right in the center and so that's
what i'm changing from this bar to the next and i changed my colors too but this is where i should
have stopped i still like how my bars ended up the colors are a little iffy i don't like
those so that's why i'm changing them for the next batch but here's a look at the final cut for this
batch
for this one i changed up the colors i decided to go with kind of a cyan magenta yellow and then a
black and white i always like the black and white together but cyan magenta yellow i thought maybe
if they mixed they would form the other colors that are in between that didn't really happen and
i'm still striving for a good yellow i like my turquoise and my pink was pretty good but i still
am trying for a good yellow and with this one i used abalone c and again it behaved like the
previous one where it didn't give me much time to work i did pour the white on the bottom and i
didn't add the fragrance until later but it still thickened up pretty quickly again notice that the
first swirl lines were the ones that were created by the columns that just kind of fixes things a
bit and then i just started pulling everything in towards the center but with a little swoop
i always oven process my soap unless it has milks in it or honey or something with sugars in it and
those just heat up on their own for i force gel in them because a lot of times the low water soaps go
through their gelling period more quickly and they can just stop right in the middle and so you get a
partial gel so my oven processing just causes it to fully gel for this one it got glycerin
rivers and glistening rivers usually comes from a combination of high water and a prolonged gel so
i know i didn't have high water but i could have had a prolonged gel period things are heating up
around here and i just have to be more careful and probably just not even turn the oven on just
put it in the oven so it stays warm from its own heat but i don't really need to probably turn the
oven on or i could just use the light instead of giving that little initial blast of heat
sometimes fragrances cause a heat up but in this case i've used it before and i never had that kind
of trouble with abalone c from wholesale supplies plus i used it in my pointy layers video and it
came out beautifully so i don't know if any of you have ever had issues with heating up from that
fragrance but in the past i've never had those kind of issues anyway you'll notice the crackle
when you see the final bars and i actually kind of fell in love with these bars when i was doing the
beveling i still really like them and i do like the swoop that i made so here's a look at the
bars from this fourth batch this photo gives you a closer look at the glycerin rivers that formed
so for this fifth batch i'm back to the original color scheme i just
couldn't get over how vibrant those colors were and that difference between the black
and the white really stand out so for the fragrance for this one i actually
used essential oils and i used just a combination of five and it does include
citrus so it's going to slow things down a bit and the batter behaves very well for this one
i'm going to delay covering up the middle and just start my swirls and try very hard to just
pull that swirl tool out right in the middle to avoid mixing the colors too badly for some reason
i forgot that i was going to swoop this design so i am going to try that on the next batch just
swoop it in so it's a little more interesting than straight lines but i think this came out
really well with straight lines but it's just a little more interesting when it just has a little
swoop to it i just cut this batch yesterday and i beveled it in the evening and i love beveling the
bars but as i was beveling i just kind of fell in love with every bar they reminded me of feathers
and the black and white creates depth and dimension i just really love this color
combination but i think i have one more try in me for this technique and if that turns out i
will try to get a video out for you next week i'm going to leave you with some photos of the
final bars let me know which one you like i think this number five attempt is my favorite so far
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and i appreciate them and thank you for your likes as well if you're interested
in the recipe i used i just used my goat milk soap recipe but of course i switched
the goat milk out for water so that's available on my website so check it out thank you so much
and i hope you have success with this technique so happy soaping and i'll see you back here next time