Twenty & Fifteen Soap

Today's experiments are: superfatting over 10%, saturated colors and a twist on the Herbivore (all palm oil) soap.I did 20% Shea butter and 80% palm oil. When I put these ratios into the Soap Calculator to view the soap bar qualities I got:

Hardness 49 (Suggested range 29-54)
Cleansing 1 (Suggested range 12-22)
Conditioning 50 (Suggested range 44-69)
Bubbly 1 (Suggested range 14-46)
Creamy 48 (Suggested range 16-48)

Just what I wanted. I really love a creamy lather and personally don't care that much about bubbles. I like a really low cleansing bar also, since a high cleansing bar can feel stripping. I love the all palm oil bar I made previously. It's rock hard and has a really dense awesome lather. It was superfatted to 10%. That's usually as high as I go, but I have seen soapers talking on forums about going as high as 20%.

I decided to bump it up to 15% superfat. This is named Twenty & Fifteen soap because of the high percentage of Shea butter and the high superfat.

I recently bought some micas from Nurture Soap Supplies. They are BEAUTIFUL. I'm in love. I might have hugged them to my face and kissed them... So of course they had to be tried instantly! Let me tell you, they did NOT disappoint. I only tried two out of the five I ordered and I can't wait to try the others.

I've done a column swirl using three colors once before and I really loved how it came out, so I wanted to do that again, this time with four colors. Since I was going to color this soap super bright and happy I used Monkey Farts fragrance oil from Wholesale Supplies Plus. It's mostly banana but really bright and candy-like. Perfect for a bright soap.

I mixed the neons with a tbsp of avocado oil each (factored into the recipe) and the micas with tbsp of distilled water. I like mixing micas with water because I don't have to fuss with any oil from the recipe, the additional water cures off. I used 1 tsp of each of the micas and a heaping 1/2 tsp for each of the neons.

My column swirl set up. The box I use as a slab mold is a bamboo organizer from The Container Store and holds about 30oz of soap. I line with freezer paper, shiny side up.

Previously I made my column out of cardboard, but I like the idea of washable and reusable soap design toys so I now use this plastic box. I put a weight inside to keep it steady while I pour over it.

Soooo, needless to say I did not do the column swirl as planned. Funny thing, the yellow and fuchsia colored soap thickened up much faster than the other two colors. I poured my lovely lime green, then my purple, then went to pour the yellow and it glopped out all over the place. The fuchsia did the same. I don't think it's the colorants since I've never had trouble with them before. The fragrance isn't known to accelerate and either way, it was mixed into each of the colors. If anything I had to shake/stir the mica bottles more because I overfilled them. Perhaps it was the addition of the tablespoon of water combined with the micas that helped keep them slow moving? That is the best I can think of. Anyway I just sort of glopped and poured the soap in best I could, removed the column and did an S swirl with a chopstick. Even though the swirl didn't turn out, the colors are just glorious!

I had a hard time taking a good picture of the cut bars, the colors were super saturated! But they actually are in real life too! Got some dusty looking soda ash, kind of expected it since in my experience a fattier bar is more likely to get it. Still working on my favorite way to remove it... I think when I wrap these I will rename the fragrance 'I Want Candy' because literally every time I smell them, that song pops into my head haha!