What is inside?

I am eager to see what each layer looks like top and bottom. The first layer was very different in that the white batter got much thicker and came out in blobs but it could still look cool. For the second and third layers, all the colors were evenly traced but it's difficult to know how much moving around happened due to pressure of each layer going in. I'm not going to gel so I have a wait ahead of me which is not my strong suit. There will be nine bars and they are for a swap so I can't just dig in as I might otherwise. I might have to stick it on top of the fridge and hope I can forget about it for a while.

Each layer was a Ribbon pour and had the same colors in about the same proportion but they look quite different. I'll have to cut to see which I really like best.

Layer 2

Layer 3:

Chuffed

I am getting closer to getting what I want! I really like the green ones and the front of the one bars, while it appears messy right now, will be better once that layer is gone in a sudsy burst of glory. I made all these bars in the same mold at the same time so finding the right plane for cutting was a bit tricky and although I would love to take a little bit off the face of a couple of these, I'm dreadful at cutting and enough was already wasted getting to their current faces without colors from the other bars on them. The purple one is a bit lurid, I must say. Unfortunately, I got all my colors out and prep'ed and I thought I would have more batter per batch than I had, so they are way over-saturated in the purple bar. It had potential but I'm afraid I blew it. Still, I'm happy to be getting closer to the look I want and happy I didn't have a total botch.

Ribbon pours- different speed and thinner stream.

Finally

It is pretty defeating when you have a run of making junk. I was trying for something particular and each batch was a bust. Nothing dreadful but they ended up being bars you'd look at and just not understand. The colors are fine but the look of the soap is somewhat perplexing. And I generally don't make anything bigger than a pound when I'm experimenting but something went awry in my head, or I was overconfident, and I made 10 bars of one and 7 bars of the other, so now I have 17 bars of bewildering soap, which ticks me off. I reverted to form last night, hoping I could make one good-looking batch and I completely took a break from my trial. This is also a color combo for a Ribbon Pour I've been meaning to try, the soaps below, but I had been planning on cutting a different direction. I couldn't but I'm happy I didn't because I like these bars and they will continuously change in looks as they are used, which I like. Of course, I now have only 4 bars to nice soap to balance my 17 others, but I have big plans for today, so hopefully things will even out!

I was making numerous batches of soap for a friend's daughter's wedding shower and they decided on white and teal/aqua. I made 7 different scents, all with non-discoloring FO's and I made a large batch of the mica so the color would be consistent. It's very unlike me to measure colorants but for this, I had measured amounts of TD and the mica for each part of the batch for consistency. Well, the "non-discoloring" description is a very relative thing. It's not glaring, but the whites don't all match and the aqua turned out somewhat different in each batch. Look at the one on the right!!! The color got so dark! I have to see what the mom thinks about the scents and the color differences and since each soap will be separated from the others for the individual attendees, they may not notice, but that batch on the right was a scent they asked for specifically, so we will have to see if it passes muster. That one is Peak's Black Raspberry Vanilla which everyone claims does not discolor. Right.

On the Fence

I saw a fantastic bar of soap made by Savonnerie du Chapitre which has a kind of outer space feel.

It was done with a surface treatment but how I would love to get that effect all the way through the bar! I thought I would try a multi-layer bar, each layer done with this technique and see if it took the feel all the way through. I can't say I am enchanted with my Pollackness; my spatters look too regular or too much or something I can't define. It's possible these will look better once the soap has gelled or in better lighting or cut into bars. I will sacrifice one and slice it into thin layers to see how it would look as someone uses it. It was very difficult on the last layer not to spin it or swirl it or move it around some to see what else the spatters can give rise to, so that will have to wait for another soap.

Each bar has these 6 layers:

I was trying for a certain type of ribbon pour but got a lot of variety based on how fast or slow I poured. Uncertain where to take this one.