Galaxy, Nebula, Deep Space Soap

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I said I was done, but then made one more batch so I could keep the loaf mold batch for my own gift giving. For the record, here’s the last batch I made in a slab mold. I used NS EnviroGlitter on the top.

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Thank you @Catscankim ❤️ I’m not sure if anyone else is making soaps quite like mine, but the answer is probably, even if I haven’t found them yet. I’m using combinations of techniques that are fairly common. ITP swirls and drop pours work well for making a base layer. I added some useful links to YT videos by Ophelia’s Soapery below. Some of the circular features were poured into tubes that I glued down with cocoa butter in advance - think pipe divider swirl technique - and others were mini faux funnel type pours. Other than that, I just pour colors in wherever they’re needed and then manipulate the batter a bit with a skewer or glass rod. Using a slow recipe and a slow scent and having colors pre-mixed are all essential because it takes 20-30 minutes to create the design once I start pouring and the batter has to stay fluid until the end. It helped that the tallow/lard recipe I used for this series is stubbornly slow even if I start with the oils at 100F. The base layers were mostly poured from a pitcher and then I used small paper cups to pour most of the rest of the design elements. The cups work well because I can pinch them to adjust the flow for small details. I’ve thought about filming myself making soap, but my work area is so small that I’m sure my phone would end up falling into the mold. 😂

Ophelia‘s Soapery has great YT videos of ITP swirl and drop swirl pour techniques that work well for this design, but I think she always cuts her soaps vertically/loaf style, which doesn’t take advantage of the spacey effects on the top. Her batter is a bit thicker than what I use.

ITP swirl - watch 6:00-6:50 in this video (but don’t scrape that last bit of soap into the mold):



or 2:55-3:30 in this one:



Drop pour - watch 2:30-3:00 in this video:

 
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I have yet to figure out how to do this properly. They never end up looking this pretty.
When I first came up with the idea for this type of design a few years ago, I used a 6” square slab mold and less than 500 g of fats. That lowered the stakes and took the fear of failure pressure level way down. For a bigger mold, it helps to have more soap than you need for the mold capacity you’re aiming for. That way you can “fix” the design by pouring more base soap over the top of anything you don’t like and then add a bit more accent soap over top of the base.
 
I’m finally done with a large order of deep space soap for a friend who works at NASA. She was excited about this soap I made for her a couple of years ago and wanted me to make the soap last year, but didn‘t ask until Dec. This year she asked me in July. I told her I could do it as long as she didn’t expect the batches to be the same. 😉 That gave me the leeway to try some new things, like adding grated salt soap for stars, which I won’t do again because it looks like stearic spots (#1), adding TD stars, using different proportions of colors and different color schemes. All of the batches were made in a slab mold, except #4, which was made in a T&S loaf mold. The simple ITP swirl with an embed in a loaf mold was the easiest batch to make, by far, but to me the feel is not quite like the others (or is that just in my head?). I hope you like them!
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Love your work! Thank you for sharing
 
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