Holly Swirl - Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge

Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks has been hosting a monthly Soap Challenge at her blog.  This month's challenge is the "Holly Swirl" or swirl-in-a-swirl.  I'm all for trying new techniques, and the prize is pretty awesome as an incentive.

I made 2 loafs but only managed to take final shots of the loaf I'm submitting.  The challenge was a lot of fun and there's a nice satisfied feeling when I realized I'm getting better at something.  This swirl is one I'm going to be trying out again for sure.

Holly swirl

 This one is scented with rosemary, peppermint, and citronella essential oils - reminds me a little bit of Lush's Demon in the dark soap... but looks more like "Elves lost at night or on crack" or something.

Sure, let's go with "Elves, lost at night".

I'm really happy with how these swirls came out - mixing the white and green together in a separate bowl mixed a lot better than adding one to the other (which is what I did with the first one - those pictures below).  And my black soap batter was much less traced than the first swirl.


Photos of the first loaf after the break.


The first Holly swirl I did I had more of Pina Colada theme (because I wanted to use the coconut pineapple f/o I got).  Unfortunately I don't have any yellow oxide and was too impatient to infuse the annatto seed powder, hence the speckled look of the yellow.

Soap batter

The first swirl - red poured into white.  I found it doesn't swirl as much this way.

In the loaf

The swirl :) 

It does smell awesome though.