'Honeymoon' Peacock Swirl Soap

I'm on an ALL milk soap diet! Well not eating the soap per say, but my last two soaps have been successful milk soaps with buttermilk and goat's milk and I love the practice I'm getting. It's really nice to have such successful yet experimental (for me) soaps after a run of a few disappointments.

Today's soap includes coconut milk! There is a trick with coconut milk, you are supposed to use the kind without guar gum. Guar gum is a thickener used to make the coconut milk look and feel creamier. I have heard it messes with soap, making it trace fast, separate or overheat. Coconut milk is confusing to find. I assumed they would have it at the grocery and they did... but what to choose.

There is canned coconut milk, milk replacement coconut milk (in the milk aisle), coconut water and some invented looking coconut products in the drinks aisle. I believe you can use any of these except the drinks aisle coconut products as they are packed with sugar and thickeners. The canned coconut was hard to find without guar gum and the milk replacement coconut milk was also difficult to find without flavors or lots of sugar.

So I gave up. Good story huh? Haha! THEN, I was at a different grocery than I normally go to and lo and behold, canned coconut milk without guar gum. Hooray! I bought a couple cans and froze it all when I got home like I do with goat's milk.

I have made one coconut milk soap before this with great success. Since I have made coconut milk soap already and it worked great, I had to add a bit of drama to this batch. I decided to soap with a fragrance blend, Champagne and Tropical Vacation both by Bramble Berry. Tropical Vacation is listed on the website as a trace accelerator. Even with that in mind I decided to take another crack at the Peacock Swirl technique.

Woooo I'm out of control! I'm asking for failure! Except it worked. Because I didn't fragrance the design.

The coral reef blue is from TKB Trading, the lime green mica is from Nurture Soap Supplies, the gold sparkle mica and fragrances are from Bramble Berry and the ultramarine blue is from Wholesale Supplies Plus. I wanted a light blue base and ocean colors for the swirl. Plus a little gold for the champagne. Last time I mixed the lime green mica I used the max amount per cup (1 tsp) this time I am cutting that in half to achieve a lighter lime green. I used 1/2 cup soap for each of the four top colors.

So you know that whole spiel I gave about coconut milk? Well it turns out I only have enough frozen to make up about half the liquid needed. *sad face* I should have checked this before I started! I used goat milk to make up what I didn't have in coconut milk.

I strained the milk into the oils this time, I had a lingering feeling there might be some undissolved lye, but I couldn't quite tell...

YUP! There it is! Quite a few pieces undissolved. Yikes... Glad I strained this. Next time I'll stir even longer.

Yay!!! Design pics!! Please forgive the blurry quality of some of these, I snapped them pretty quick between stages.

I added a gold mica line in between the base and the swirl totally forgetting I was going to have to comb and swirl through it! D'oh!

I went ultramarine blue, lime green, coral reef blue and then gold.

Towards the end when I was running out of soap the lines got thinner and messier in an attempt to make it all the way across the mold.

Before I started soaping I made sure my home made soap comb would fit in this mold, it did! Then when I got to the stage where I needed to use it I realized I had poured in the wrong direction!! The comb was too wide to fit. So I snapped off two of the dowels. Harsh, but I had come this far already!

YES! Finally got the curve right to make this a peacock swirl!!! It went into the freezer for 1 hour then into the fridge over night.

On the left is the way I did the swirl the first time I tried this, on the right is how I did it this time. I had to watch someone do it on a YouTube video to finally get the motion through my brain. I did each pass starting at the top and moving down (same as the comb direction). Yeah, that is freehand Paint and probably very similar to how I did it in the soap. I am glad to say it doesn't have to be perfect to look really cool!

Incidentally (really) this looks like a peacock's tail in colors. I was thinking about tropical ocean colors and champagne colors and I got a peacock tail colors at the same time! Aw boo... soda ash. Of course it strikes the top of a soap that is literally ALL top in design!

Ok so surprisingly the pictures taken inside with a flash (!) showed the truest colors. I was able to remove the soda ash, more on how coming soon. The blue base ended up sort of grey which I don't mind. I wanted it light/muted to allow the top to shine. However somehow there are specks of undispersed pigment! I don't think I care for working with oxides and ultramarines as much as neons and micas. I finally nailed this lime green too. Using half as much really let the lime come through. I'd like to experiment with using half the usual for the other colors I have from this company to see what I get. That Coral Reef blue... I love it. It's such an amazing deep blue-green. TKB nailed that one.

This one is taken in natural light and shows more blue than really is there, but it's the only one I got that showed what happened with the mica line! It's either smeared or pretty undetectable, I like the touches of gold here and there though, so not upset what so ever. Also this smells really amazing. Even the top is smelling like the fragrance mix! Like it's spreading throughout even though I didn't scent that part. Really tropical and happy and refreshing. Like a Honeymoon :)