Squeezing in Drop Swirls for the Soap Challenge Club

After a rather long hiatus from making soap (thanks to having messy baby #8), I’m back in action with the Soap Challenge Club! Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks started this challenge club back in 2012 when I was just a baby soapmaker (and I only had FOUR messy babies). The club just came back after a several month break, and I’m so happy that it’s been revived and we’re all together again! In preparation for this challenge, I’ve been dropping all kinds of swirls around here, trying to find the perfect consistency to get those beautiful dripping drops.

I pulled out the handy dandy slow-moving recipe that’s been with me like a trusted friend through so many of these challenges: 35% olive oil, 30% lard, 25% coconut oil, 10% rice bran oil. This blend of oils makes for a relatively hard bar of soap with a lovely thick lather. It’s one of my favorites! To these particular batches, I also added goat milk, colloidal oatmeal, and silk to make the soap extra nourishing and luxurious.

After practicing with a few batches (basically to dust the cobwebs off of my soapmaking skills), I landed on a batch that gave me results I was almost satisfied to enter. It’s worth taking a peak. I used Nature’s Garden “Bite Me” fragrance, another trusted friend that I’ve used for several challenge soaps in the past, like this teardrop soap, this tall skinny shimmy, and this spinning swirl. It smells just like Zebra Stripe gum, sending me right back to my childhood summer days of dime-store candy before hitting the community pool!
After letting the oils and lye solution cool to just above room temperature (about 80 degrees), I took my time alternating between hand stirring and pulsing the stick blender, carefully getting just to emulsion. A bright yellow mica was the base of the soap, with pink, purple, and white diamond micas to drop in. It was a lovely fluid consistency as I poured it into squeeze bottles. But as I continued squeezing in drops, the soap began to set up faster than I anticipated, and it was to a medium trace by the time I was finished.
After mixing in all the micas and beginning to pour, I realized how crucial the squeeze is! To get a real drop effect, the squeeze is essential! Not too hard, but certainly not too soft, either. Yep…it’s called a “challenge” for a reason!
After cutting into this soap, it was apparent that I hadn’t squeezed quite hard enough. I also hadn’t made enough colored soap to drop in, and I’d reserved too much of the base soap to add to the top at the end. Not quite what I was hoping for, but an excellent learning experience. And it’s still a lovely soap to use!

The final batch I made was the same recipe, same method, but I chose to use another trusty slow-moving fragrance: Yuzu from Bramble Berry. I have found this fragrance to actually slow down trace…a soaper’s best friend for a technique like this! Since this is a sweet citrus scent, I chose a color palette of orange, yellow, and pink. The base of the soap was orange mica, and the drops were grapefruit pink mica, raincoat yellow mica, and a combination of fruit punch red mica with pumpkin orange mica. Bright and happy colors to go with this mood-lifting scent!

Soaping at room temperature again, this soap was extremely fluid and loose throughout the pouring. This time, I inserted the first squeeze bottle (pink) down in to the soap to make a stand-alone drop suspended toward the center. I inserted the yellow soap not quite as deep, and followed with the darker orange closer to the surface. Then, I gave each color a good squeeze as I dropped it into the base. It stayed very fluid throughout squeezing, and the linear swirl on top turned out gorgeous!
Upon cutting into this soap, I was giddy to find those pink drops suspended in the base! And the drops turned out just as I’d envisioned.
This soap smells divine, and I’m very pleased with the results.


I’m so excited that the Soap Challenge Club is back up and running! Thanks again, Amy, for another fun one! There is so much talent in the soapmaking community, and I can’t wait to see the amazing work created for the challenge!