The Mantra Soap Swirl is one of the oldest soap swirls! It has been around for a long time. This soap design was inspired by the original mantra swirl soap design by Nicole Benitez. Instead of having three side-by-side color portions, it has only two. One third is a tiger stripe pour in bright colors and two thirds is a solid color.

Swirled Mantra Soap Recipe

My Favorite Swirling Recipe

  • Coconut Oil (76 degree) – 270 grams (30%)
  • Shea Butter – 90 grams (10%)
  • Olive Oil – 360 grams (40%)
  • Avocado Oil – 72 grams (8%)
  • Rice Bran Oil – 108 grams (12%)
  • Sodium Hydroxide – 127 (5% superfat)
  • Water – 254 (1:2, lye:water ratio)

Use your favorite slow-moving fragrance or essential oil blend.

Here is how I colored the soap.

  1. White Mica
  2. Charcoal
  3. Bleu Mica (Muddy Soap Co.)
  4. Honey Do Mica (Muddy Soap Co.)
  5. Sea Clay
  6. Honey Do Mica + White Mica

Lye safety – Prepare lye solution in a well-ventilated area as it does fume. Be sure to wear glove and goggles. Always pour the dry lye into water and never water into lye or it can explode out of your container. If you are new to soapmaking, be sure to download our free guide, How to Make Cold Process Soap!

Step 1: Create a lye solution. Weigh the water and lye into two separate containers. Slowly pour the sodium hydroxide into the water while stirring. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside to cool. Your solution will start off cloudy and will clear up as it cools.

Step 2: Prepare the base oils. First, weigh any solid oils and butters into a container and melt. You can melt using the microwave or low heat on a burner. Next, weigh each liquid oil into the melted oils. The liquid oils will cool down the melted oils and leave you with a base oil mixture that is about at the correct temperature to make soap. It might still need to cool down a bit. 

Step 3: Weigh your essential oil or fragrance oil into a glass or stainless steel container and add to your base oil.

Step 4: Prepare your mold. If you need to line your mold, line it. If you need to prepare cardboard dividers, get those ready to go.

Step 5: Check the temperatures. You should now have a container containing liquid base oils and a container containing lye solution. Take the temperatures using an infra-red temperature gun. Be sure to stir each mixture before taking the temp. You want your temperatures to be between 80-110° F.

Step 6: Once you have reached desired temperatures, pour the lye solution into the oil mixture and mix to emulsion.

Mixed to emulsion.

Step 7: Divide the soap into containers to color. For this design, I poured 80 grams of soap into five cups. This was about 1/3 of the total mixture. You can create as many colors as you’d like!

Step 8: Add colorants to each cup and mix well using a mini-mixer.

Step 9: Place a cardboard divider into the mold at about 1/3 of the width.

Step 10: Holding the divider in place, pour about 1/3 of the base into the larger section of the mold. Quickly start pouring a tiger stripe design into the smaller section.

Step 11: Rotate between pouring the base and pouring the tiger stripe design until you have filled the mold. Rotating each side helps to ensure the divider stays in place and doesn’t get pushed to either side from the weight of the soap.

Step 12: Carefully and slowly remove the divider by pulling it straight up and out of the soap. Dispose of it in the trash.

Step 13: Using a chopstick, or something similar, swirl the soap as shown below. Be sure to push your chopstick all the way down to the bottom of the soap.

Step 14: Allow the soap to saponify and harden for 24-48 hours.

Step 15: Cut your soap using the stacked bar cutting pattern. View a blog post on that here!

Step 16: Cure the soap for 4-6 weeks.

Please share on Pinterest! 🙂 Thank you! <3