Mosaic Soap - Scented in Blueberry Lemon
I really love the creativity that soapmaking can bring out and I have seen so many awesome soaps with a lot of piping, surface embeds and unique shapes (especially the food soaps - love making cupcakes). But..... I find people tend to not want to or are confused over using such beautiful soaps and I want my customers to use the soaps that I create. Because of this I am sticking to creating beautiful and unique soaps in usable shapes and sizes. These mosaic soaps perfectly fit this goal.
This tutorial is an experiment in action. Much of it is based on theory and experimentation - please keep this in mind as your results with this technique may very based on formulation, molds and oven temperatures. I consider this a starting point for others to experiment with in design and method.
My base soap is created with 38% hard oils (coconut, palm), 4% butters and 58% soft oils (olive, castor, avocado, etc.). I add sodium lactate at 5 grams per pound of oils and superfat at 5% with close to full water (35 - 38%). You need to fully gel your soap so that it is pliable after a full gel and cooled.
For this design, I alternated a solid yellow soap with an In The Pot Swirl of ivory, blues and purple (with a tiny hint of green). I also used a solid green to separate some of the layers. All pieces were created using the same formulation and created within a few days of the others (so that none of the soap has cured much and hardened).
Color Palette - Yellow Mica for the solid portion
Ivory, light blue mica, dark blue (ultramarine blue and black mica) and
purple mica for the swirled portion
purple mica for the swirled portion
The start of the In The Pot Swirl
