Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge September 2015 – Clyde Slide

It’s been a while since I posted anything – I’ve been so busy studying for my accountancy exams (not as exciting as soap I know) and also sorting out our move to our brand new house (soap room here I come ie, garage)!! I have made soaps though so will post a catch up next week.

For now though back to the Clyde Slide invented by Clyde at Vibrant Soaps (can be found on Facebook and on You Tube). Let me start by saying how utterly frustrating this technique is! I have had four, yes four attempts at this technique and in the end am using my first attempt as my entry – I think my husband views this the same as dragging him round every shoe shop in town before returning to buy the very first pair you tried on 7 hours ago!

I watched Clyde’s videos over and over until I found which of his pouring methods I liked the resulting soap the most – it was his green tea and pear, I loved the delicate nature of his feathering in the resulting soap.

I decided not to complicate matters with unknown variables so used a recipe I’ve used many times before and one that I know behaves and is pretty slow to trace – it has lard, olive oil, coconut oil, shea butter and castor oil. The fragrance was the only unknown which to be honest is the biggest risk you can take as most problems with fast trace are usually caused by a naughty fragrance oil – this however was a dream to work with. I used Cherry Amaretto and it smells amazing – the whole house smells like cherry bakewells!

The colours I decided on were white (though the FO made this turn creamy), neon pink and black – I’ve seen a few black, white and bright pink soaps whilst trawling the web looking at soap porn and decided it’s one of my favourite combos. After hitting emulsion I split out 2 quite small portions for my coloured elements and added some TD (titanium dioxide) to my base colour the coloured the 2 smaller portions – using a combination of AC (activated charcoal) & black pearl mica for the black and amethyst pink mica & neon pink mica for the pink (love, love, love the pink!!). As I was trying to replicate as best I could the beautiful feathers Clyde produced in his green tea and pear soap I decided to pour my soap the same way.

I poured a third of my cream base into a large plastic mixing bowl with sloping sides then poured half the pink followed by half the black on one side of the bowl. Followed this by another third of my base colour then repeated the colours before adding the final third of base colour. The technique is basically a faux funnel pour combined with an in the pot swirl minus the actual swirl in the pot – usually after pouring into your pot you would use a tool of some kind to give it once or to stirs/swirls but with this technique you go straight to the pour. I poured from one end of my mould to the other with the spout of my mixing bowl centre of the mould – I made a couple of passes up and down to use up all the soap. Sorry I don’t have any pictures after the pour into the pot or the mould – I was keen not to let it get too thick.

As I really wanted the pink to pop I decided to CPOP this soap to force the gel phase (it may well have hit gel from simply being insulated well but I definitely didn’t want to risk a partial gel!). Once it hit gel I took it out of the warm oven (warmed up and turned off before putting the soap in) and left it overnight to set.

As I’d used the CPOP method I found it was ready to cut the following morning. I was pleased with the first bars I looked at as they had some lovely feathering!

yay!! I had feathers!!

But……

As mentioned previously, I decided I wanted to have another attempt (or three!!), so here they are:

Ordinarily I would have been super happy with this one but the soap was too thick and the feathers just aren’t wispy enough.

there’s that pink again!!

I don’t think I used enough of my colours with this one so there simply wasn’t enough to produce large feathered areas.

I was so disappointed I didn’t get feathers with this one as I love the colours (yep, there’s that pink again!!) but I knew when I poured it was just too thick – though this soap is perfect for Halloween!!

So there it is folks, the perfectionist in me isn’t super happy with my entry but I don’t have enough time to have another go not to mention the fact I already have 36 bars of soap to find homes for (it’s Christmas soon!!).

I will post again next week with an update of the other soaps I’ve made in the weeks since my previous updates, see you soon and thanks for reading.

Also, as usual thanks to Amy of Great Cakes Soapworks for another great challenge even if this one has pushed me to the edge!!