SMF February Challenge - Spin Swirl

[dillsandwitch]

1. traderbren - (am I really first? Can I plant an earworm? Cuz this challenge will spin me right round baby, right round)
2. MySoapyHeart (Never done this, I don`thave the right mold. Sure, sign me up!)
3. Misschief (wasn't going to...nope, nope... oh, what the heck!)
4. McGraysoldtowngifts (Insert witty comment here)
5. KCHaystack (Time to take my new mold out for another spin)
6. dibbles (I'll give it a whirl. Yes, I said that.)
7. doriettefarm (here's hoping I don't end up with soap all over the walls & ceiling, wheee!)
8. Judiraz ( I can use color, right? Thank Goodness!)
9. BlackDog (yay! no more black soap!)
10. Steve85569 ( not going to put myself through that this month! On my way back from the shop with fresh built mold - may as well....)
11. Snappyllama (sweet, I love spin swirls!)
12. AMD - what could possibly go wrong?
13. Crispysoap (first challenge and first slab mold......what was I thinking!)
14. TheDragonGirl (Good excuse to build that slab mold I really want)
15. Mrs Spaceship (This should be easy enough...right...right??)
16.JuneP (hope I can get one of those molds/dividers so I can do this!)
17. mintle (will definitely wear two sets of protective glasses for this crazy spinning one)
18. navigator9 (Finally getting off my lazy, retired butt.....I'm in!)
19. Saponista (Better go and dust off the lazy Susan from the loft - I can see this getting messy!)
20. Dillsandwitch ( Its been a while since I have made any soap. No better excuse to get back on the wagon)

 

[songwind]

1. traderbren - (am I really first? Can I plant an earworm? Cuz this challenge will spin me right round baby, right round)
2. MySoapyHeart (Never done this, I don`thave the right mold. Sure, sign me up!)
3. Misschief (wasn't going to...nope, nope... oh, what the heck!)
4. McGraysoldtowngifts (Insert witty comment here)
5. KCHaystack (Time to take my new mold out for another spin)
6. dibbles (I'll give it a whirl. Yes, I said that.)
7. doriettefarm (here's hoping I don't end up with soap all over the walls & ceiling, wheee!)
8. Judiraz ( I can use color, right? Thank Goodness!)
9. BlackDog (yay! no more black soap!)
10. Steve85569 ( not going to put myself through that this month! On my way back from the shop with fresh built mold - may as well....)
11. Snappyllama (sweet, I love spin swirls!)
12. AMD - what could possibly go wrong?
13. Crispysoap (first challenge and first slab mold......what was I thinking!)
14. TheDragonGirl (Good excuse to build that slab mold I really want)
15. Mrs Spaceship (This should be easy enough...right...right??)
16.JuneP (hope I can get one of those molds/dividers so I can do this!)
17. mintle (will definitely wear two sets of protective glasses for this crazy spinning one)
18. navigator9 (Finally getting off my lazy, retired butt.....I'm in!)
19. songwind (Life keeps ambushing me before I can finish my entry, but I'm trying again.)

 

[penelopejane]

I made my spin swirl but it is a single thickness soap and I just don't have the heart to cut it in half for the butterfly. I am happy as a clam with it as I was trying for a galaxy look and got pretty close. I sliced a very thin layer off the top but it broke because my knife slipped. It's hard to capture the variations in black and grays. I don't think I can do better than this so will just post this and not enter.

Hi newby
How did you get the speckles through your soap?
I used salt in the batter to create some stars but I can't get the wispy bits you have. Or the larger dots.

 

[MySoapyHeart]

I made my spin swirl but it is a single thickness soap and I just don't have the heart to cut it in half for the butterfly. I am happy as a clam with it as I was trying for a galaxy look and got pretty close. I sliced a very thin layer off the top but it broke because my knife slipped. It's hard to capture the variations in black and grays. I don't think I can do better than this so will just post this and not enter.

Epic soap! :clap:

 

[Sonya-m]

1. traderbren - (am I really first? Can I plant an earworm? Cuz this challenge will spin me right round baby, right round)
2. MySoapyHeart (Never done this, I don`thave the right mold. Sure, sign me up!)
3. Misschief (wasn't going to...nope, nope... oh, what the heck!)
4. McGraysoldtowngifts (Insert witty comment here)
5. KCHaystack (Time to take my new mold out for another spin)
6. dibbles (I'll give it a whirl. Yes, I said that.)
7. doriettefarm (here's hoping I don't end up with soap all over the walls & ceiling, wheee!)
8. Judiraz ( I can use color, right? Thank Goodness!)
9. BlackDog (yay! no more black soap!)
10. Steve85569 ( not going to put myself through that this month! On my way back from the shop with fresh built mold - may as well....)
11. Snappyllama (sweet, I love spin swirls!)
12. AMD - what could possibly go wrong?
13. Crispysoap (first challenge and first slab mold......what was I thinking!)
14. TheDragonGirl (Good excuse to build that slab mold I really want)
15. Mrs Spaceship (This should be easy enough...right...right??)
16.JuneP (hope I can get one of those molds/dividers so I can do this!)
17. mintle (will definitely wear two sets of protective glasses for this crazy spinning one)
18. navigator9 (Finally getting off my lazy, retired butt.....I'm in!)
19. Saponista (Better go and dust off the lazy Susan from the loft - I can see this getting messy!)
20. Dillsandwitch ( Its been a while since I have made any soap. No better excuse to get back on the wagon)
21. songwind (Life keeps ambushing me before I can finish my entry, but I'm trying again.)

 

[newbie]

PJ- i grated up some older soap into various sized pieces, but pretty small, and added different amounts of it to a few of the different color batters. Not all the batter had grated soap in it. I had some larger chunks, smaller than pea- maybe lentil sized? that I picked up with a tweezers, dipped into white batter and placed at various levels in the soap while I was pouring. I was hoping those would look like comets when the batter stretched out from spinning. It doesn't really look like they did but I did like the effect the few bigger chunks gave. The wispy bits I think are just from smaller pours of soap that got stretched out in the spin. I didn't do a specific pour, like a faux funnel. I just poured each color in a sweep and sometime around 3/4 of the mold- very random and unplanned except the center white, which started out as a spot of uncolored batter. I skewered it around in a circle to get a little of the dark colors into it and the things spread out like crazy during the spin.

Thanks for the compliments. We finally had some sun today so I took a picture with the sun on it which shows the gray sparkle better. I love the gray sparkly color sooooooo much!

 

[Judiraz]

Newbie, I love the galaxy. Very creative.

I was worried about how much I was going to waste while practicing this technique (have never tried it before) so I got some foam board and made an "in between" slab mold. This one holds about 1.6# of oils.

 

[navigator9]

So here is my fail. Way too thick to swirl. I think it might have been pretty if it did. Ah well, I'm thinking that I'll shred it and use it in some plain soap. You can see the top of the slab, and in the next pic, I did try splitting a bar to see if it might be pretty inside...nope. No pretty butterflies, or faces or animals...just blobs. At least is smells really good, Spa Tonic from WSP, my best friend's favorite. Her birthday's coming up, so maybe this will be for her when I remake it.

 

[amd]

Oh! Nav9 that's lovely! Its a flower.

 

[dibbles]

So here is my fail. Way too thick to swirl. I think it might have been pretty if it did. Ah well, I'm thinking that I'll shred it and use it in some plain soap. You can see the top of the slab, and in the next pic, I did try splitting a bar to see if it might be pretty inside...nope. No pretty butterflies, or faces or animals...just blobs. At least is smells really good, Spa Tonic from WSP, my best friend's favorite. Her birthday's coming up, so maybe this will be for her when I remake it.

Navigator, I think it is pretty as is - I really do. I'd be happy to get that soap for my birthday.

 

[navigator9]

Oh! Nav9 that's lovely! Its a flower.

Well thank you! I'm not so sure that I see a flower, but it's very kind of you.

Navigator, I think it is pretty as is - I really do. I'd be happy to get that soap for my birthday.

It's not horrible, it's just very far from what I had planned. I think she'll be happy with it when I'm done.

 

[Rowan]

Navigator, I see a rose on top and the colours are really lovely. Dibbles is right, it would make a beautiful birthday present, just as it is

 

[BlackDog]

Someone posted in another thread about cutting bars for this challenge horizontally to get the mirror image bars. I did a small batch since I didn't want to waste stuff in case my first try was a fail - I poured a single layer into a small slab and didn't cut the bars in half at all. Is that ok? The swirls are all visible - I had some pretty serious ash that wouldn't all wash off so I planed a thin layer off the top. Just didn't know if the mirrors is what we are wanting here.

 

[Misschief]

My second attempt is in the mold. I'll see how it turns out in the morning.

 

[Sonya-m]

Someone posted in another thread about cutting bars for this challenge horizontally to get the mirror image bars. I did a small batch since I didn't want to waste stuff in case my first try was a fail - I poured a single layer into a small slab and didn't cut the bars in half at all. Is that ok? The swirls are all visible - I had some pretty serious ash that wouldn't all wash off so I planed a thin layer off the top. Just didn't know if the mirrors is what we are wanting here.

Yeah the mirror image is a challenge requirement, you don't have to cut all your bars but your entry must be of a bar cut horizontally

 

[BlackDog]

Yeah the mirror image is a challenge requirement, you don't have to cut all your bars but your entry must be of a bar cut horizontally

Oh yep there it is plain as day in the original post. I do not remember reading that the first time around, and now I've somehow become that person that I'm always rolling my eyes at for lack of reading comprehension skills. Sorry!

 

[Misschief]

My second attempt is out of the mold and looking like it might just be a contender. The colour is pretty, it definitely has "movement", and it's thick enough to cut in half horizontally. I'm a little nervous about cutting it, though, anxious about how it will look. I think I'll wait a bit. Until I've had my coffee.

 

[McGraysoldtowngifts]

Hello all

Made my first attempt last night which was a total fail my soap came to a heavy trace to quickly to get to swirl it at all I was able to recover the loaf with a simple swirl done with a spoon. I will post some pics later today.

Todd

 

[Misschief]

Could I be rude and ask what kind of recipe people are using? I found that my "slow to trace" recipes were anything but. Even with my second attempt, by the time I was halfway through pouring (and I used a 4" x 4" mold), it was already thickening up so much that I was plopping rather than pouring. I brought it to emulsion with just one or two pulses of the stick blender and stopped.

 

[BlackDog]

Could I be rude and ask what kind of recipe people are using? I found that my "slow to trace" recipes were anything but. Even with my second attempt, by the time I was halfway through pouring (and I used a 4" x 4" mold), it was already thickening up so much that I was plopping rather than pouring. I brought it to emulsion with just one or two pulses of the stick blender and stopped.

Misschief, the recipe I used was 40% lard, 40% OO, 15% CO, and 5% castor - it stayed fluid for a long time, doing 5 colors. I find often that it's the temperature that matters most for me, not the oil percentages. I mixed everything up when the lye solution was at room temp (about 75F) and the oils were about 95F. I stopped at emulsion then hand-mixed my micas in (pre-blended with a bit of water), then mixed in my FO right before pouring.

It worked like a charm, but that was just my only attempt so far. I'm planning on doing another tomorrow with the same recipe but different colors/FO.