SMF April 2021 Challenge - Lollipop Swirl

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Not background on my entry here, but background on the entry-that-nearly was...

Inspired by the outcome of the pour that did end up being my entry, I wanted to explore the potential of the spiral further. Despite the name 'lollipop swirl', the traditional soaps are somewhat lacking in a lollipop quality to my mind, so I set out to recreate this:
View attachment 56541

My first plan was to do a full-size pour, trim the edges down, and add a matching soap dough rim. The pour seemed to be going pretty well:
View attachment 56542
And I got a good set of matching soap dough from the excess.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the white was ever so slightly thinner than the rest of the colours, so it ended up getting pushed to the centre and the bottom:
View attachment 56545 View attachment 56546

At this point, and with plenty of time left, I figured I could do better...

I decided to skip the edge trimming, and just pour the centre in the cut-off bottle mould, then insert into the larger one. However I kept struggling with getting the right result. Yesterday's attempt I had very high hopes for; I had proper records of the previous colours used, and the soap dough was good to go. I made a very colourful mess with the pour, but it looked ok:
View attachment 56548

Cut out the dough strips and bent them over a spoon handle to get the curve:
View attachment 56550

Painfully assembled the fiddly mess, filled in the gaps with a fresh batch of white, and CPOP'ed it to within an inch of my life.
View attachment 56551 View attachment 56552 View attachment 56553

Unfortunately, none of the resulting bars were quite it:
View attachment 56554

I'd love to have another go, but it's almost Monday evening and really... I don't need any more brightly coloured lollipop soaps, the house is full of them! It also smells like a sweet shop, since I scented them appropriately with green apple, raspberry and passion fruit!
Those are super pretty! Had the interior lollipop swirl worked out, you would have been vying for a spot in the winner's circle, for sure! And it is still a soap of which you can be quite proud, and which some friends will surely be happy to receive (assuming you are gifting since selling isn't doable for you yet, as I recall).
 
I didn't want to flood the entry thread with extra verbosity, so I'll share a bit of background to my design here.

View attachment 56540

I kept my word! 😌 The single one (pre-announced) exception that I bought after the initial challenge was the rice vinegar, because, what sushi has no rice vinegar? Otherwise, I finally used up cupuaçu butter, infused olive oil, and ran dangerously low on HO sunflower oil, distilled water, and NaOH.
  • Free of palm, oink, moo, baa, chemically modified oils, colourants and fragrances (except for the inherent colour/scent of functional ingredients).
  • The core (salmon) is CP lollipop swirl, red colour with 15%ppo paprika kernel oil. Half of the amount would have been enough! But it was my first soap with it, as well as coconut milk and diatomaceous earth as a mild exfoliant (pure coincidence if it contributed to opacity/whiteness too). My initial plan was to combine green (vegetable) as a third colour into it (yerba mate extract), but as reported, the colour riced (no pun intended), so I kneaded it into soap dough and stuffed it besides the swirl bar.
  • Of course, we need some rice for the mantle, enter triple rice (well in my case, double rice) HP soap with said rice vinegar added to the lye. Grated up and pressed onto the nori like you would make edible sushi, it was still a bit too compliant to offer good mechanical support during cutting.
  • A propos nori, wrapped around is a sheet of soap dough made with a spirulina-infused olive oil I had lurking around for half a year. Perfect dirty olive-black colour, and authentic seaweed smell!
Batch sizes were 100 g oils for the core, 200 g for the rice (still a lot of the gratings left for future projects), and 100 g fir green soap dough (even more left).

Cutting up didn't fully go according to plan. As said, the rice bed was still quite soft, I originally wanted to cut the sausage into 7 slices, but I dared to cut barely 5 times. The core is pieced together from three film container pours (see photo), and of course I wanted to cut through the lollipop parts, not the glue in between (that was kneaded together from all the scaps, and the fourth, very unsightly pour).

ETA: A few words to the decoration: The “wasabi” chocolate is not chocolate, but CP soap coloured with the same yerba mate extract as I planned to use for the swirl. Back then, two weeks ago, it moved so slowly that I ruined it at unmoulding, made soap dough from it, and pressed it into my tiny chocolate bar moulds. The tea isn't really camellia tea, but something no less decadent. And what do you mean by “your vinegar bottle doesn't have a dispenser cap”?

Anyway, a fun challenge, but I'm largely through with that kind of vanity soaping for a while now 🤪. See you again in a few weeks when it's time to watch the rice shreds fall apart at the sink 😰.

So incredibly creative! I love it! You and @Tara_H are unofficially dubbed co creative directors. 😁♥️😁
 
Not background on my entry here, but background on the entry-that-nearly was...

Inspired by the outcome of the pour that did end up being my entry, I wanted to explore the potential of the spiral further. Despite the name 'lollipop swirl', the traditional soaps are somewhat lacking in a lollipop quality to my mind, so I set out to recreate this:
View attachment 56541

My first plan was to do a full-size pour, trim the edges down, and add a matching soap dough rim. The pour seemed to be going pretty well:
View attachment 56542
And I got a good set of matching soap dough from the excess.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the white was ever so slightly thinner than the rest of the colours, so it ended up getting pushed to the centre and the bottom:
View attachment 56545 View attachment 56546

At this point, and with plenty of time left, I figured I could do better...

I decided to skip the edge trimming, and just pour the centre in the cut-off bottle mould, then insert into the larger one. However I kept struggling with getting the right result. Yesterday's attempt I had very high hopes for; I had proper records of the previous colours used, and the soap dough was good to go. I made a very colourful mess with the pour, but it looked ok:
View attachment 56548

Cut out the dough strips and bent them over a spoon handle to get the curve:
View attachment 56550

Painfully assembled the fiddly mess, filled in the gaps with a fresh batch of white, and CPOP'ed it to within an inch of my life.
View attachment 56551 View attachment 56552 View attachment 56553

Unfortunately, none of the resulting bars were quite it:
View attachment 56554

I'd love to have another go, but it's almost Monday evening and really... I don't need any more brightly coloured lollipop soaps, the house is full of them! It also smells like a sweet shop, since I scented them appropriately with green apple, raspberry and passion fruit!

These are fabulous Tara. I admire your creativity and experimental nature!
 
@Tara_H
I really liked the way it spiralled into the centre (it even triggers a spirally optical illusion if you look off to one side!)
This looks gorgeous! And it's somewhat unique, didn't see anything similar anywhere. It reminds me of the spiral worms of the Mandelbrot fractal. Did you something special to achieve this? I guess this needs some very specific target parameters (mould diameter, batter fluidity, size of the pour additions, rotation angle).
 
@Tara_H

This looks gorgeous! And it's somewhat unique, didn't see anything similar anywhere. It reminds me of the spiral worms of the Mandelbrot fractal. Did you something special to achieve this? I guess this needs some very specific target parameters (mould diameter, batter fluidity, size of the pour additions, rotation angle).
I didn't do anything madly out of the ordinary, but I was trying to push the pinwheel-type result to its limits to see what would happen. The batter was very very very fluid; throughout most of the pour I was thinking it was all just blending together, since it was sinking under a kind of semi-opaque skin which formed on the top. Imagine my surprise when I cut it! The pictured bars are actually most of it, there were only 5 and I omitted the top and bottom pieces. Also the quantity of each pour was very small, I was aiming for the pool at the bottom to go no more than 1cm away from the wall of the mould (in a roughly 7.5cm diameter).

Here's the side view for the spacing - I also got a cool zigzag effect that I've never replicated since either:
IMG_20210408_082254.jpg
 
I also got a cool zigzag effect that I've never replicated since either:
It appears to me that this “zigzag” is how the “bamboo nodes” effect looks like when the amount of pour per round is “push[ed …] to its limits to see what would happen”. Thanks for sharing! IMO, pouring not enough for a single round to cover the whole surface is an innovative twist to the Lollipop technique. And I can now better understand the, umm, passionate durations of your pours ;)

I didn't do anything madly out of the ordinary
🧐
 
Please copy & Paste, add your name along with the next appropriate number.)

1. earlene - I have a few days before surgery, it will probably be my last soap for at least 6-8 weeks
2. dibbles - This will be super fun or very 'exciting' - I'm in
3.Vicki C. - My last day of work is today! Yippee! Soap studio here I come...
4. Tara_H - this is on my bucket list, I'm so in!
5. KimW - Found and fell in love with this about the time I found SMF. Now I have a reason to finally try it!
6. Jersey Girl- Yes, yes, yes! Been wanting to try this!
7. peachymoon - I’m back! And I’m in! :D
8. amd - maybe I can pop a soap for fun into my to do list this month
9. glendam - I have been thinking of trying this technique, good timing!
10. Anstarx - I've been wanting to try this technique for a while. This can be just my push!
11. bookreader451 - I will try to get it in on time this month!
12. ResolvableOwl - Screw it. Cross-over escalation time!
13. Corsara - I'm going to sign up quick before I get cold feet and convince myself I can't do it!
14. Phoenix - This will be fun!
15. linne1gi - Love this challenge - definitely challenging!
16. Peachy Clean Soap's - I'm in how fun, 1st try @ this design. Am I The Caboose.? 🤣🤗
17. Violets2217- I done ADULTING this week, so I’m gonna make some soap!😳🤔
18. Maxine289 - looking forward to trying this.
19. szaza - yay I made soap!
20. AliOop - yay, me too! And some of it even looks like a lollipop swirl! 😂
 
Hrm, good point. I have some blank M&P base lying around, though using it would invalidate my no-palm premise. But – why not? I can try it for one or two pieces. It's actually good so that I can slice them up in few-mm discs to see the swirls in all of their beauty. I have already thought of taking the swirl cores out again and cutting them up, but I can try it with M&P aspic first.

ETA: Fingers crossed that the salmon colour doesn't bleed. With red palm M&P confetti soap, it was impressive to literally watch (over hours/days) how the carotenoid colour diffused out of the shreds into the base. The base became bright yellow, and the shreds appeared (in relation to its surroundings) white.
 
Wish I had a video so we could all have a good laugh. My table and counters are too high for me to pour into this mold. So it was sitting in a holding container which was sitting on towels on the kitchen floor. I was sitting on a step-stool, wearing sweats, slippers, a headlamp, gloves, and a face shield, and rotating my three color containers around the towel. No actual swearing happened, but there were swear-word substitutes and lots of muttering. 😅
OHHHHHHH - I LOVE it! I could see it all in a video playing in my mind. ☺
 
This was my first ever attempt at any kind of swirl, so I kept it really simple. I'm pretty pleased it even kind of worked!
I was running low on some of my oils, so I tried out some canola oil for a more fluid batter.
1/2 TSP activated charcoal in half of the batter, and I used a 3 inch pvc pipe coated in vaseline.
Convincing in its simplicity! And these two zones (one whirling directly around the “eyes”, and one outside) add just some unique personality to it.
M4_corsara_zones.jpg
And I have to remember that intriguing, yet perplexingly simple presentation 😉

What hard oils and temperatures/heat protocol have you used? I'm constantly on the search for ways to provoke stearic spots.
 
I'm so sorry to announce I wont be able to participate in Lollipop soap challenge' I was looking forward to it' but other things got in the way & Ive run out of time. Good luck everyone 🤗💫🧼

My father-in-la passed away yesterday so everything is in a bit of an upheaval. Will hopefully photograph my entry tomorrow or Sunday. Staying present for my hubby and putting all my energies into keeping him emotionally afloat. Soap can wait...
So sorry for your loss Dear 🤗🙏🏼
 
I didn't want to flood the entry thread with extra verbosity, so I'll share a bit of background to my design here.

View attachment 56540

I kept my word! 😌 The single one (pre-announced) exception that I bought after the initial challenge was the rice vinegar, because, what sushi has no rice vinegar? Otherwise, I finally used up cupuaçu butter, infused olive oil, and ran dangerously low on HO sunflower oil, distilled water, and NaOH.
  • Free of palm, oink, moo, baa, chemically modified oils, colourants and fragrances (except for the inherent colour/scent of functional ingredients).
  • The core (salmon) is CP lollipop swirl, red colour with 15%ppo paprika kernel oil. Half of the amount would have been enough! But it was my first soap with it, as well as coconut milk and diatomaceous earth as a mild exfoliant (pure coincidence if it contributed to opacity/whiteness too). My initial plan was to combine green (vegetable) as a third colour into it (yerba mate extract), but as reported, the colour riced (no pun intended), so I kneaded it into soap dough and stuffed it besides the swirl bar.
  • Of course, we need some rice for the mantle, enter triple rice (well in my case, double rice) HP soap with said rice vinegar added to the lye. Grated up and pressed onto the nori like you would make edible sushi, it was still a bit too compliant to offer good mechanical support during cutting.
  • A propos nori, wrapped around is a sheet of soap dough made with a spirulina-infused olive oil I had lurking around for half a year. Perfect dirty olive-black colour, and authentic seaweed smell!
Batch sizes were 100 g oils for the core, 200 g for the rice (still a lot of the gratings left for future projects), and 100 g fir green soap dough (even more left).

Cutting up didn't fully go according to plan. As said, the rice bed was still quite soft, I originally wanted to cut the sausage into 7 slices, but I dared to cut barely 5 times. The core is pieced together from three film container pours (see photo), and of course I wanted to cut through the lollipop parts, not the glue in between (that was kneaded together from all the scaps, and the fourth, very unsightly pour).

ETA: A few words to the decoration: The “wasabi” chocolate is not chocolate, but CP soap coloured with the same yerba mate extract as I planned to use for the swirl. Back then, two weeks ago, it moved so slowly that I ruined it at unmoulding, made soap dough from it, and pressed it into my tiny chocolate bar moulds. The tea isn't really camellia tea, but something no less decadent. And what do you mean by “your vinegar bottle doesn't have a dispenser cap”?

Anyway, a fun challenge, but I'm largely through with that kind of vanity soaping for a while now 🤪. See you again in a few weeks when it's time to watch the rice shreds fall apart at the sink 😰.
Just... stunning. At first I thought the swirl - salmon pieces were inside real rice and nori, which still would have been impressive.
 
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