Energise – The colour of energy in soap

I have always wanted to do a drop swirl soap but I have never successfully made one. My drop swirls have never worked in the past and have ended up being layer soaps instead. I have learnt from my mistakes and created Energise.

For this soap I carefully selected essential oils known for evoking energy.

Making Energise

I started by mixing my sodium hydroxide and bottled mineral water, then allowed it to cool over night before I melted my hard oils and added my liquid oils. This reduces the amount of time it takes to cool the oil mixture to blending them together.

Once the oils and lye are ready I mixed them together. I personally love the look of the emulsification process. I blended until a thin trace.

Once a light trace is achieved, I separated the soap mixture into a main bowl and 3 smaller containers. These containers will be coloured and the main container is the white base. I mixed the titanium dioxide straight into the container. I did this instead of mixing the mica with oils or water. Always blend from light to dark to avoid colours mixing. The rest of the smaller containers are mixed with the coloured mica.

I hand mixed the essential oil blend in to the coloured containers and the white containers to reduce the soap mixture accelerate.

Creating Drop Swirls

I started by pouring the white base into the mould and then drop swirled the colours one by one. The higher the drop the deeper the swirl. I then added what was left of the coloured containers to the top. I used my home made swirl tool to add extra swirls inside the soap. The extra soap on top looked silly, so I used a tooth pick to create a swirl pattern on top of the soap.

Lastly I sprayed the whole soap with rubbing alcohol to set it, this also helps prevent soda ash forming.

To unmould I used the freezer technique. Placing the whole loaf in the freezer allows the soap to be released from the mould easier and without residue.

Things I wish I had done differently; more colours, lighter trace mixtures and more loaves.

Ingredients List:

Olive Oil 400g
Canola Oil 250g
Castor Oil 50g
Shea Butter 100g
Coconut Oil 200g
Water 300g
Sodium Hydroxide 134.33g
Titanium Dioxide 8.47g
Fiery Red Mica 4.58g
Purple Heart Mica 4.4g
Sunflower Yellow Mica 4.12g
Peppermint EO 13.33g
Grapefruit EO 9.99g
Bergamot EO 6.66g

Tell me what you think. Have you tried drop swirls? Anything different you would do?

Check out Energise on the website.