Step one was to make a soap comb the width of my slab mold. This is what I dragged through the top of the soap to make the initial pattern. There are some on the market available for purchase but I chose to make my own out of cardboard and bamboo skewers. I chose small skewers since I had planned to pour a solid base and only add my pattern to the top of the soap. Here is a picture of my soap comb.
After watching videos on this technique, I determined that I needed to concoct a recipe that would be nice and hard, and bubbly once cured yet give me enough time to work with the soap batter before it got to thick to make a nice swirl. I used my basic recipe of olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and sodium lactate and made sure my recipe included full water and my temperatures were around 90* F. I also researched my fragrance oil to determine if it would accelerate the batter or cooperate and allow me to scent the whole batch and not just a bottom part. I decided to us Beach Breezes, after figuring out that it is a friendly fragrance, I added the measured amount to my cooled off oils. I poured in my lye solution and started to blend. Once blended to an emulsion (just enough that the oils no longer rise to the top), I separated out 4 squirt bottles with 8 oz of batter each. I added some Super Pearly White Mica to the remaining batter and poured it in my slab mold. I then proceeded to add colors to the four squirt bottles. I added Black Oxide that had been mixed with some olive oil to one bottle, Aquamarine Blue, also mixed with olive oil, to one bottle, then Fizzy Lemonade was added to another bottle. The last one received Super Pearly White Mica. Once fully combined, I was ready to start laying my lines. I started at one end of my mold and squirted lines across the mold working my way to the bottom, alternating the colors, one layer at a time. Once I started to run low on batter, I made my lines more defined. Here is what the soap looks like after pouring all the lines.
Now it's time to comb the soap! Starting at one end of the soap, I inserted the comb making sure the comb remained vertical. I then dragged the comb through the soap to the other end and lifted it straight up to get a clean edge.
That resulted in a beautiful soap and could be left as is, but I wanted more swirls! Using a single bamboo skewer, I made a curve shape, similar to an S, but overlapped the S's to make more of a figure eight, 8. What ended up coming through was a beautiful "paisley" type pattern.
Now, I am a very patient person but I admit it was hard to wait 24 hours to unmold and cut this one. So needless to say, after watching the clock closely, I carefully pulled this beauty out of the mold and measured my bar size. Cutting bar by bar, I pulled them away and was amazed at how wonderful these look. By far, this is one of my favorite batches of soap that I have ever made. Here is the final product. I love looking at these and am currently planning my next group of colors to try my hand at this technique again.
