SMF June Challenge Peacock Swirls

SunRiseArts said:

My son's high school is huge! There are over 3200 students. Not easy to know all the teachers :think:

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We do have a smaller school. Even so, I am only gifting the teachers that my daughter actually​ has. I'm not THAT crazy.

artemis said:

We do have a smaller school. Even so, I am only gifting the teachers that my daughter actually​ has. I'm not THAT crazy.

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lol I do gift to those, but only on Christmas time. My son has a learning disability so every class he has, he also has an assistant that works with him, so I have to multiply everything by 2, and then the receptionists, and the nurse ..... :mrgreen:

I am excited to know how everyone is getting on!

1. toxikon - Oo oo so pretty!

2. Omneya- have always wanted to try this

3. earlene - this looks like fun

4. SunRiseArts - Never made peacock swirl, but I want to learn!

5. KCHaystack - You played with me, so I feel I need to return the favor.

6. jewels621 - I'm a peacock swirl/soap challenge virgin, but I'm in!

7. dibbles - you guys will get me through my To Try list yet

8. Dahila - hopefully my hubby will finish my slab mould

9. BattleGnome - if I'm lucky I'll be able to find something for a slab mold soon

10. Soapprentice- time to take out the box my iPad came in again.

11. Cherrycoke216 - After a long stormy pouring rain market day...And now I'm signing up a whole new world I have never traveled

12. CaraBou - Get ready for an upside down pic - I'll be on vacation when the entry thread is open, with nothing but my cell phone

13.Cobbsie - Never say never!...first peacock swirl and first challenge should be fun! (I'm sure I'll be at 50 posts before the start 

14. Artemis - Might be my only soap attempt for the month of June!

15. newbie- I haven't made soap for at least a month. Excellent jumpstart!

Saponista said:

I am excited to know how everyone is getting on!

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Just poured. 1.5hr prep for less than 15min pour (took forever to melt everything).

My peacocks are a bit larger than I'd prefer and I might pour a second when I have a chance to wash everything. Pro tip for everyone: a comb is probably the way to go. I did my swirling by hand and it took long enough for the batter to start firming. Maybe my second batch won't have Shea, it always accelerates for me.

Saponista said:

I am excited to know how everyone is getting on!

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Mine is ready!!! I made another one, but like my previous one better.

I always made HP soaps, some of them really pretty with designs, but this is the type of stuff you can make with CP, that you cannot make with HP. Just love it.

Thank you saponista!

Just for fun, here's the first peacock I ever made. It was a very small batch. I used turmeric and spirulina and just one skewer to make the design.

Also, I have a question, I was looking through the youtube channel for SMF, and came across the spoon channel, and had to find the end pictures. Gorgeous, is this one:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=615222&postcount=2

However, my question is. What is that on top? Glitter? Sugar? So pretty! ( the bottom soap white and red)

That is by LionPrincess so hopefully she will comment. Looks like glitter and dissolvable pearls to me.

SunRiseArts said:

Also, I have a question, I was looking through the youtube channel for SMF, and came across the spoon channel, and had to find the end pictures. Gorgeous, is this one:

http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showpost.php?p=615222&postcount=2

However, my question is. What is that on top? Glitter? Sugar? So pretty! ( the bottom soap white and red)

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The top was made by texture with a spoon after thickened (thick trace). The pearls are literally sugar pearls in the baking section of walmart. They're made for cooking cakes, pastries, happy birthday etc...and I rolled them in glitter for soap. Glitter was purchased from Nurtures soap if I recall.

The glittery glints on top beyond the pearls are also glitter from Nurtures (I'm almost positive it was Nurtures soap supplies). I pinched a tad glitter and free handed sprinkled after I placed carefully the individual pearl candy pieces with tweezers.

So sugar candy and glitter lol.

Ok I got cosmetic glitter. The only think I worry about the sugar pearls is they can attract ants? I hate ants.

And thank you! I have use the spoon technique with HP. Love it

Ok, I did not make any experiment peacock swirl yet. Just a quick dumb question, in the video, the drawing is a mirrored "S" shape pattern. And in some other video I saw, ( forgot who and which name ) it's like a S pattern then followed by a lower S shape. The best I can remember now, is the video of soap queen TV's peacock swirl tool video. I tried draw it on Evernote but I failed.

Can someone please answer me, if the soap queen TV kinda peacock swirl OK for the challenge?

The tool
http://youtu.be/P6RpXDHAg50

The other peacock swirl

http://youtu.be/C6THpcUE-PU

2:16~3:22
The other shape I'm talking about.

one is exactly as Saponista showed in her tutorial another one no big different. Mine is done, It was my first time in slab mold, after two years of asking DH finally made two but only one is finished and I could use.

I have technically made 3. The first was my practice, and messed up half the soap top by putting the comb too far down into the soap; also too much black overpowered the colors. I like the soap, even though it's not a great peacock. The second I seem to have made some measuring error. I don't really know what happened, but I am guessing I measured out the oil wrong or doubled on one oil or my scale was wonky or something along those line. I triple checked the recipe and there is no problem there. I have made this soap before using the exact same recipe and never had a problem with it. This time, it was too much oil, and has not hardened up at all. I had to pour off about 3 ounces of oil from the top of the bottom layer, and it still never got harder. So the other half of the oil is still in a container for the top half of the soap, but I can't make the top half now. I'll have to try and salvage the soap by adding it to another batch, probably with a negative lye concentration. Anyway, that's another project for another day.
The third one I made at the Swirls class I took this past weekend. I was very happy with it when I was done. The tool used was a modified hair clip (banana clip was what one of the classmates said is the type of hair clip); every other tooth was cut out to make the teeth far enough apart. I am glad I got a picture of it when it was still wet because I was very pleased with it at that time. It did set up before the day was over, but in the course of covering it and transporting it, the top got a bit messy looking with some indentations that may be too deep to shave off without going too far down into the design. I'll have to wait and see when I cut the soap.

So I need to make another one. Maybe on Thursday or Friday I'll make another one.

Artemis -- Think about doing this as a "ghost" peacock swirl something like the high- and low-water soaps that Auntie Clara did, where you are playing with the color difference between gelled (high water) soap vs not-gelled (low water) soap.

artemis said:

Because I had the bright idea of doing a textural peacock swirl. I thought I would soap a little thicker, letting the tool drag through PLAIN batter, leaving just the drag lines. So many of the examples I see have an interesting pattern not just in the colors, but in the 3 dimensional lines. Maybe I will exlore that idea some other time. So, it won't work since it would only have the one color. I read the rules too quickly.

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DeeAnna said:

Artemis -- Think about doing this as a "ghost" peacock swirl something like the high- and low-water soaps that Auntie Clara did, where you are playing with the color difference between gelled (high water) soap vs not-gelled (low water) soap.

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I do like the monochromatic look. I haven't really played with this yet. I may yet do both. When I make plain Jane bar of soap, I like to make the texture fancier. This looks like a way to level it up.

cherrycoke216 said:

Ok, I did not make any experiment peacock swirl yet. Just a quick dumb question, in the video, the drawing is a mirrored "S" shape pattern. And in some other video I saw, ( forgot who and which name ) it's like a S pattern then followed by a lower S shape. The best I can remember now, is the video of soap queen TV's peacock swirl tool video. I tried draw it on Evernote but I failed.

Can someone please answer me, if the soap queen TV kinda peacock swirl OK for the challenge?

The tool
http://youtu.be/P6RpXDHAg50

The other peacock swirl

http://youtu.be/C6THpcUE-PU

2:16~3:22
The other shape I'm talking about.

Click to expand...

I think I'm being a bit dumb as the bottom video is the way I have done it and the soap queen one seems to me to be creating the same pattern but doing it with a different tool that has multiple pegs? It still seems to result in the same pattern to me though so I'm confused?

I have always wanted to play around more with the ghost swirl technique but haven't had chance yet. I think it always looks so beautiful.

I just posted a reply to cherrycoke but it keeps crashing for some reason so I will try again.

I think both of the videos result in the same pattern in effect but the one is using a tool with more pegs on so as long as you get the peacock pattern it doesn't matter how you achieve it. I'm not sure if I'm missing some subtle difference with the swirls but they look the same to me? Correct me if I am wrong.

Saponista said:

I think I'm being a bit dumb as the bottom video is the way I have done it and the soap queen one seems to me to be creating the same pattern but doing it with a different tool that has multiple pegs? It still seems to result in the same pattern to me though so I'm confused?

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It's just another way of dragging through the soap. Most people, I think just make their own comb from skewers and cardboard or modify an actual hair pick or comb. If you have patience and a slow enough recipe, you can even do a peacock swirl with just one skewer.

I had one of those huge plastic teeth combs, don't even know why .... that is what I used. Now it will be my soap comb.