I’ve been playing around with side by side color and swirling with a coat hanger in a log mold.  Here’s my latest (not the greatest) but I’m getting there.

Recipe:
Olive Oil – 7 oz
Palm Oil – 10 oz
Coconut Oil – 7 oz
Castor Oil – 2 oz
Avocado Oil – 2 oz
Water – 8 oz
Sodium Hydroxide – 3.85 oz

For this you’re going need to cut a piece of cardboard to divide your mold length wise and bend a wire coat hanger to fit inside your mold.

Make your soap mixture as usual and stick blend until it’s emulsified.  You don’t want to bring it to trace.

Then pour it into your individual coloring containers.  I wanted my pink and white to be side by side so I poured out an even amount of each into cups.  I thought I would do a stripe of black down the center to add an interesting swirl on top.  I poured about 1.5-2 ounces and colored with 2 charcoal capsules.

If you can mix the color by hand…that is best as you don’t want to thicken it.  I mixed my pink with the stick blender and it got a bit thick.  That’s part of the reason my swirl didn’t come out so nice.  🙁

Next pour your two side by side colors into your mold.  If you pour both at one time it helps to keep the divider in place and also helps if you have any leakage underneath the divider.  The colors are pushing against one another so one shouldn’t go onto the side of the other.

Then remove the divider pulling it straight up and out. 

I thought it would look cool to shoot some black down the middle to add to the swirl.  Unfortunately my soap got a bit thick and it didn’t go down as far as I wanted.  But it still worked out okay. 

Then take your coat hanger and put it down to the bottom of your mold.

Move the coat hanger side to side as you’re pulling upward.  This should swirl the pink and the white into each other a bit.  Mine got a bit thick so the swirl was not as pronounced as I would have liked.

Then you can take a skewer and swirl the black stripe on top.  I just did straight lines but you can also use a circular motion for a cool effect.

And Ta-Da!  It looks so pretty while still wet.

And cut…

Happy soaping,

Amanda

ps.  thanks to my guy Mike for taking pics for me 😉