Gumball Soap (MP+CP)

The monthly challenges for the Great cakes soapworks – Soap Challenge Club is getting ever more creative with every month.

The last couple of months, I had submitted videos showing the entire process of making the soaps. Last month was especially different with the Collaboration challenge where I made the soap with my Mom.

But I am back to writing here for this month, as this soap took me 2 days to complete!!  The February challenge required us to combine the 2 soap making methods: Cold Process – where the soap is made from scratch using oils and lye, and Melt and Pour – which is exactly as is sounds – you melt a pre-made soap base, add your creativity and pour it into molds.

I have used the homemade translucent soap bases purchased locally from a soaping acquaintance. This is my first official attempt at making MP soaps and I was apprehensive. (I am guilty of having a mental block against MP as I find it “easy” {which it is not} unless you have enough practise, like anything else). I was also never sure of the quality and ingredients used in the bases until I found this supplier.

I decided to take my time and experiment with it, ask help and be prepared for failure. Fortunately I got timely answers from 2 dear soapy sistas who understood where I was going wrong and pointed me in the right direction.

I have used mica colorants from Micas and More and Frangipani fragrance oil from Moksha Lifestyle.

I made hundreds of little “gumballs” in almost ten different colours using an ice cube tray. This took about 14 hours and a ton of patience!!!

The next day I was ready to get started. A half sized batch of oils and lye was just right to fill up the 1kg mold. So here is my large bowl of MP spheres, my lye water, hard and soft oils, my shot glass of Fragrance oil, TD and the tools.

All set to start soaping

Now, I’d like to mention the new method I tried this time – the thermal/heat transfer method. This method is where you add the hot lye water into the hard oils, stir till they melt and then add the liquid oils. By the time they are all mixed, the soap is at room temperature which has been my favourite method always. So I can say that the new method worked very well and going forward this is my go-to method…cos this soap has used up the last bit of patience I had in me!!

Adding the fragrance

Adding the titanium dioxide

Mixing it all up!

I stick blended until light trace and began pouring the layers.

The first layer…

After adding another layer…

Couple layers later…

I obviously didn’t want this soap to gel, nor did I want to MP layers to sink into the almost liquid CP soap, so popped him right into the freezer immediately… And promptly forgot to  remove it from the freezer for over 24 hours!

No harm done – the CP hardened nicely but I waited another 24 hours before unmolding… and another 48 before cutting. Just to make sure it isn’t too soft to let the MP drag through the soft soap.

 

The Cut

And it turned out just the way I expected!