Red Fox Soap

Since the movie 'The Fantastic Mr. Fox' came out in 2009 it has been a tradition to watch it on or around Thanksgiving. It really has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, but something about the cider and feasts and the autumn color scheme in the movie just says Fall to me.

Feeling fall inspired, I made a Red Fox colored soap. Orange, black and white could be the colors of many animals (tiger...) or Halloween even. Just try to think "Fox" if you can.

I don't have a dark orange so I tried to make one with Bramble Berry's Tangerine Wow neon pigment toned down with some dark red oxide. I think it worked fairly well, but I could have used more pigment for a more saturated color.(Next soaping experiment will involve some seriously saturated colors!) It also could have been a touch darker.

Imagining what a suave Mr. Fox might smell like, I used a sample of Shave and a Haircut fragrance from Bramble Berry. It sort of smells like something from my teen years, deodorant? But in a good way! I read in comments about this fragrance that it has a tendency to mild out as the soap cures. That in mind I added the whole sample of fragrance oil for a med-strong smell. This did not accelerate what so ever for me.

For the design I opted for a sort of twist on my favorite faux funnel. I poured each of the three colors in next to each other and layered over them. Orange in one spot, black in another and then white. Then orange over the black, black over the white and white over the orange, etc. Layering the three colors in the three spots until I reached the top.

I only made a pound of soap so I used squeeze bottles to distribute the colors.

I read that this fragrance accelerates so I mixed at a thin trace, it didn't accelerate for me, so I poured thin and got a little bit of color muddying.

Top swirl! I just wanted to smear some color around.

Bottom of the soap before cutting. Neato.

Cured top! Even though some of the colors blended, it still looks cool.

Each side of the soap block is different.

Bottom of my favorite bar.

Cut ups. I love how different they all are and even how each bar is different on each side! I've had a couple people tell me it looks like orange and navy in this picture, it does kind of (even though this is natural light) but in person it is clearly black. The crazy thing is I poured and cut this vertically! It looks like a horizontal cut but it's not! Isn't that wild!? That orange in the middle of the upper left and lower right bars is suspended between two layers of white (ehem I obviously didn't go in order haha).