Today, I am going to share how to make a cold process soap with a drop swirl. This soap is scented with Frankincense essential oil for all of it's amazing skin benefits but you can easily swap out the Frankincense for the essential oil of your choice. The recipe I am using for the soap batter is:
Sweet Almond Oil 5%
Castor Oil 5%
Rice Bran Oil 5%
Cocoa Butter 15%
Coconut Oil 30%
Olive Oil 40%
Superfat 5%
Water as % of oils 35%
If you need help turning the recipe into oz, here is the link to the free soap calculator that I use. The additional additives used in this recipe are:
Sodium Lactate in the lye water
Titanium Dioxide in the lye water
1 Tablespoon Frankincense Powder
1 Tablespoon Kaolin Clay
Shimmering Gold Mica
Gold Holo Glitter
Green Vibrance & Savage Garden Micas
Measure out your lye and distilled water & combine(always add your lye into your water, not the other way around and allow to come to your preferred soaping temperature. Personally I prefer to soap at room temperature. You can then add your titanium dioxide directly to the lye water solution and blend till combined.
While your lye water is cooling go ahead and combine your fats and oils and then melt. Once everything is combined allow to cool to your preferred soaping temperature.
I usually prepare my micas and essential oils while I am waiting for my lye water and oils/fats to come to temperature. For this soap I used Frankincense essential oil and for the colorants I used Green Vibrance, Savage Garden& Shimmer Gold.
Once everything has come to temperature, carefully pour your lye water into your oils/fats and blend to emulsion.
Now split your batter into three separate parts, they do not have to be equal and add the frankincense powder to one of the parts. Blend until the frankincense powder has no clumps and is combined into your soap batter. You will then pour the batter with the frankincense powder into your soap mold.
Now you will add your essential oil to the two remaining containers and whisk in. Next add in your green colorant to one of your containers(I used two colors for my green, green vibrance and savage garden from nurture soap). Whisk or blend to combine.
In the last container pour your final color, I used shimmer gold from nurture soap. Do not whisk or blend this container.
Now it is time to pour your soap batter into your mold. For this drop pour I did two passes of the green and then one pass with the white/gold and repeated until I ran out of soap batter. Be sure to tap the mold down once you have all your batter in to help get rid of any air pockets in the soap.
For the top of this soap I added some gold holo glitter and then swirled the top with a bamboo skewer. Spritz lightly with isopropyl alcohol to help prevent soda ash.
Allow your soap to set up for 18 to 24 hrs(or until it releases easily from the mold) before removing from the mold. I typically let my soap loaf sit for 2-4 hrs after I take it out of the mold before I cut the soap. Once the soap has been cut it will need to cure for 4-6 weeks before use.
Please be sure that you have educated yourself on lye safety before making a cold process soap. This link has some great videos from Brambleberry on beginner cold process soapmaking to help you get started making cold process soap.
If you make this soap, tag me on instagram @essentially.tonya so I can see your creation:)