Followers

Saturday 5 May 2012

Gradient Colour Soap!

We're on Week 7 of the soap challenge set by Amy Warden of Great Cake Soapworks- Gradient colored soap! This week it's ....made in Portugal! (Shelley)
I've had friends here from the UK for the last week so I thought it was a good opportunity to invite them to join in, and make a really fun bar which they can take back as a souvenir of their trip! Plus it's been raining all week so what's better to do when its grim outside- make soap!!
Some of our soaps do have simple layers in, but not quite to the degree which we have been asked to do in the challenge this week!
We've used our usual recipe which has lovely Portuguese olive oil and Goats Milk (this time from my neighbour Glorias goat!), but we only made a small 2lb/1kg loaf sized batch.
My friend Kate chose the fragrance we would use- it's called Tropicana, and it's a lovely blend of fresh tropical fruits-  papaya, succulent peach, crisp melon, dry pear and strawberry. This immediately made us want to choose bright, fruit-inspired colours, and feeling brave we thought we'd do two colour gradients- red/pink and yellow/orange. The only problem was I couldn't remember if it was fast tracing so we made sure the temperatures were low and kept the soap in a very liquid state!
We started off with the bright red at the bottom (which actually came out a fabulous hot pink!) and whizzed up each layer just before pouring it, so we wouldn't be waiting too long for the layer to set. We added the titanium dioxide and made paler pink layers, and then we went onto the orange layers, which we did in reverse- so we started with the pale creamy yellow and then a bright yellow, and then an orange (i did add a little bit of red to the very last layer to get a good papaya colour!).
I just couldn't wait to turn the soap out the next day to see how it had worked- and was so pleased with the result- i LOVE it!!



Amy's soap challenge has really pushed our soapmaking skills and I can't wait to try this technique out again!
The finished bars cut and stamped with our logo
                     If you want to have a look at all the other challenge results please visit this page

                                                                                                                                          Shell

12 comments:

  1. Cool! Love the pink color you started with!

    ReplyDelete
  2. its very different to the other gorgeous subtle ones people have done- trust me to go all larey! Shell

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love it!! Yes, it's different, but that's the whole idea - to take the challenge and create something that's uniquely yours! It must smell absolutely fabulous too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. These are so wonderful! Nice job you two! I want those darling little bottles in the first photo of the colorants. Now those are really nifty and I hope suppliers are tuning in to all this soaping glory in this challenge! Yeah

    Shelley I'm signing up for your newsletter and hope you will email me about those colors and the bottles, tooooo cute and very useable!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Going all larey! Priceless!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Way to go M8, brilliant soap, I love the colours but then I would as I like bright stuff too. Tropicana is a great choice too it does behave well and goes with those lovely sunny hot colours. You are a star Mrs!! XXX

    ReplyDelete
  7. Lovely colours and lovely soap!

    ReplyDelete
  8. thanks- i loved making this- i'm definately going to get braver with my colour layering now- i will try a nice one-colour subtle one at some point aswell as i think they all look beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Beautiful !! My daughter stopped by while I was making my loaf. When I told her I was worried that I wouldn't have enough of a color change with each layer, she suggested the dark to light, light to dark pattern! I wasn't sure how to do it, but love how your bars turned out with the dark/light to light/dark but with two colors !! Your friends must have been so pleased - and they learned a new craft - how cool is that?

    ReplyDelete
  10. I love your soaps, the bright colours are gorgeous, looks so creamy and luscious, x Linda

    ReplyDelete
  11. Love the colors - so beautiful!

    ReplyDelete