Part Time Soap

I haven't included exfoliates in soap before because I'm not a fan of them. I like a little scrubby action, but only on certain parts of my body and scrub soaps are commonly all scrubby all the time. That's a little abrasive for every day! I prefer to wash and exfoliate separately.
A few months back I bought a couple different exfoliants: pumice and ground walnut shells. I was thinking about these being used in a scrub or scrub bar when I bought them. I have since discovered that I really don't care for a scrub bar as much as a traditional scrub and I rarely remember to use a scrub even when I make one I like!! They sat unused for quite a while, nagging at me.

Then it dawned on me, silly me, why don't I just do half the soap with exfoliants and half without and layer them. So I could switch to the scrubby side when needed and to the smooth side for delicate areas! Now that I have had a little more practice with layering I decided to try this idea. I went with the walnut shells as pumice is a little extreme for body soap. I'll save that for a hand or foot product.

I have a Fresh Bamboo dupe from Wholesale Supplies Plus that I have been dying to use. It's a really good dupe and smells so fresh and green. Ok, interesting discovery, I made this soap when I had a cold and even though I didn't think I was stuffed up, I was. Consequently I used a lot of fragrance because it smelled mild in the bottle! Nothing bad happened to the soap, not even any weeping! But it's a pow of scent!!

I made this with all goat milk and the usual kaolin clay and oatmeal. I wanted the bottom layer to be uncolored with the walnut shells and the top to be uncolored swirled with light green. Things thickened up a little too much to swirl, but I was happy to see there is a little bit of color difference when cut. 

I read that 1 tablespoon exfoliants per pound of oil is a good ratio. That didn't seem like enough to me so I poured about double that in the beaker and figured I would eye ball it. I used 1/4 tsp of lime green mica and all 2 ounces of the Fresh Bamboo fragrance. I used about 1.28oz per pound of oils, or 8%... Eeeks...

When I eyeballed the exfoliants, I ended up using about 1 tablespoon per pound after all. 

It didn't seem like much, but once mixed in. it looked like plenty.

Things started to move fast so no design pics. I poured the exfoliant layer at about what it was in the above picture and proceeded to scent and color the rest. It was getting kind of thick though so I added a little distilled water to it to thin it out, but I didn't want to add a ton. It got just to a consistency where I could glop it together. Not a swirl at all, but the texture was spot on for layering!

I thought about doing peaks or something fun on this side but remembered this side is supposed to be the smooth washing side, so I didn't want bumps or points. I just did a zig zag that looked pretty to me and I thought it went with the bamboo idea.

You can see a little bit of uncolored soap on the top! It lightened to a really nice soft green!

Yay! I'm so pleased with the straight line between these layers! From the side you can see more color difference.

Here it is cut! I really like it! It ended up with a little more soap on the scrubby side than the smooth side... I can't get measuring down. It's not too extreme though. I can't wait to try it out and see how this idea works. A view of the bottom. I think the green and speckled brown go really well together and great with a fresh green fragrance. Very zen. Very spa.