Dirty Fluid Pour Soap Challenge – Nov. 2017

This was my first soap challenge.  I’m so glad I participated.  Lots of new experiences for me as a newbie soap maker.  First time using a slab mold, first time using micas for color, first time using a slow moving recipe, and of course first time trying the awesome dirty fluid pour technique.

Pretty good picture but background too dark

Another shot with a light background – I like this one better

I used the recipe that Amy Warden provided in the tutorial except I subbed sunflower oil for the safflower oil and used fresh goats milk from my own goats for the liquid in the lye solution. I live in Kent, Ohio where we have the most beautiful fall colors this time of year.  I knew I wanted my soap to capture the colors of this magnificent time of year.

The Inspiration for my Soap

Setup for first try

Autumn Colors!

Tubes filled – oops 😬  forgot to plug the holes in my cheese mold

First attempt – cool, but I really wanted more movement and less blobs

Second attempt – this is definitely more what I had in mind

My first attempt led me to change up how I placed and filled my tubes for my second attempt.  I placed the tubes much farther apart and poured my colors into the pipes on the wall with colors rotated around the tube.  I think this really helped bring more movement to the soap because the soap flowing from the release of the tubes had more time to flow before meeting the color from the other tube.  The colors I used were matte yellow oxide, matte American red oxide, matte brown oxide and two micas that I do not know the names of as they came to me as samples. I used a blend of essential oils for a woodland smell – cedarwood, amyris, and lavender

Oxides and micas for coloring the soap

This soap took FOREVER to firm up. I’m not sure why the soap was so soft.  Even when I cleaned it up for photos it was still really soft.  Interestingly the white soap on the bottom was firm just like all other Soaps I’ve made before.  Could the mica powder be the cause of the soft effect?   I made batch on Saturday November 11th -today, Friday, November 17th and I was finally able to clean up the edges and get ride of the soda ash.  I was pretty worried earlier in the week that this soap was never going to firm up. I’m confident now that the soap will be hard after a good long cure.  Patience is truly a virtue.

And now for the photo shoot…

Thanks Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks and Joan Watkins of Nature’s Potion Homemade Soaps for providing the excellent tutorial for the November 2017  Great Cakes Soapworks Soap Challenge Club . I learned so much and had a lot of fun working with this really interesting technique.