Soap Challenge Club - Taiwan Swirl

I really couldn't pass up learning yet another swirl from Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks.  Each month she hosts a soap challenge that soapers can join to learn new techniques.  I love Amy's teaching style and I always learn so much for her.  This month's challenge was the Taiwan Swirl.  I have never heard of it so I thought I would give it a try.

Because this includes delicate swirls I made sure to use a slow moving recipe, a well behaved fragrance oil (if it can reverse or slow down trace, that's the one you want), almost full water, and 85°F soaping temps.  Slow moving for me means no castor oil and no sodium lactate.  I use a lot of olive oil, organic palm oil, coconut oil, canola oil, and mango butter.  I also hardly use my stickblender.  I made a video so you can see what I did.  

I'm still in dire need of new soaping colors so I had to use my old standbys of white, yellow and purple.  I chose to mix my yellow and purple micas in a little olive oil so that I wouldn't have to use my stickblender.  It worked really well.  I added a little titanium dioxide to the base to whiten it.  The fragrance oil I used was Lemon Verbena from Aroma Haven and that tends to yellow a bit.  It behaved very well and I really didn't need to use much.  It would make the perfect fragrance for a kitchen soap and it will be a great pick me up in the morning.  

I let it gel and then the next day I took it out of the mold and worked my magic with my soap cutter.  Lots of trimming to reveal the beautiful swirls.

I'm very happy with how this turned out and can't wait to do another soap like this.  I think I want to try it in my slab mold from Brambleberry next.  Some new colors would be great too!

Last, but not least...my soaping videos!  Enjoy!