Having Fun with Cold Processing

In June I had made a lot of Hot Process Soaps due to a deadline needing to be met.  I am so grateful for the opportunity to “play” around with Cold Process again.  I am by no means an expert, and even when I have an idea of what I want to do, there is a major turn in the road and I have to change my plans fast.  I am completely fine with that, I am still learning and it will take time.
The most recent Cold Process soaps that I have worked on are these:

“Beach Bum”  

I was going for a sandy and brown effect with a nice swirl design.  Hmmm.  I got the coloring correct (using natural ingredients), but the swirl lacks, well, swirliness ( I know not a real word).

 

“Dragon’s Blood”

Here I was going for a purple, blue and tan spoon layered swirl.  I think the swirl effect came out awesome here, but the colors are darker than I had first intended.  I am still hoping that they lighten up with the curing process.  My fingers are crossed. 

“Goat’s Milk Coconut Lime”

Ah!  This one was a remake of a Melt and Pour I had done in June.  Now of course you have so much more control when working with Melt and Pour, but I personally prefer to make my soaps from scratch.  So this was my first attempt at making a Goat’s Milk Soap.  I am impressed with how it came out, very pleased…  I used parsley as my natural colorant and that also I am very pleased with, so over all I think this one turned out well too.  I would have liked to have had the green only in the center of the soap, but when pouring onto another layer, I learned that it sinks through that bottom layer.  So I will need to spoon on the second color so it goes on top of the other color lightly.  Live and Learn, but still it turned out nice.

“Palm Island”

This is another one that I am redoing from a Melt and Pour soap design.  This looks completely different from my first.  I didn’t have any orange pigment powders to make this one pop like my last one.  But I did learn to use a spoon so that it would be stripes not a pour through, and I see that was a helpful lesson to learn, lol.

My vision was to have beach towel striping effect with colors that faded into each other.  I wanted blue, aqua, green, yellow and sand.  I accidently put them in the wrong order, but I still like how it turned out.  I think it looks awesome for my first attempt at the “gradient” coloring technique. 

So there it is.  I have learned a lot, I won’t get discouraged, and I will continue to love what I am doing.  They are still awesome no matter what.  I am pleased.  I hope this gives you a glimpse of the planning and designing that it takes in creating soaps.  Let me know if you have any ideas on what you would like me to try in the future.  I would be more than happy to try them out for you.  Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.