Oh My: Ombre Soap Challenge

For the June 2017 Soap Challenge Club we are making ombre soaps. Ombre is a fancy way to say gradient and is most commonly seen in fabrics, and ombre hair colors are all the rage right now. As for soap, gradients are always beautiful and inspirational. I just never realized quite how difficult it can be to get a seamless color change. I mean, "Psh", I thought, "it's just LAYERS..."

Yeah just layers, I says. JUST layers. Yeah. This challenge kicked my butt! Here's my soapy adventure this month:

I've been in love with this Dancing Wave design ever since I first started soaping and I wanted so hard to achieve it. It's similar to a Cosmic Wave and once the bars are cut they actually look a bit like the Tall&Skinny Shimmy.

My *plan* was to make a blue gradient soap that looked like water. We have a new bath bomb called Life's a Beach and I wanted to make a soap that looked beachy. Ok, ok, so I knew it wasn't totally original or anything, but *I* had never done it, and part of why I joined the Challenge club was so I could have good excuses to try new things. Unfortunately... I still haven't done my beachy soap...

1) My first attempt could be called @&#! The Beach, because that soap riced. O_o I had have never had a soap rice until then. Maybe I've just been lucky, or I guess I've always checked online to make sure my FO's behave before I use them. Whatever the reason, it happened about halfway through the pour and it sucked. But I was able to learn a few things from that attempt.

• It would require more than 4 color changes to get the look I wanted
• Always do a test batch

2) My second batch attempted to use the same dancing waves technique, this time with Lavender 40/42 and used 9 color changes! It was beautiful as it poured and I was so excited! I had done it! And then, disaster! As soon as I was done I noticed oils starting to pool and separate. I had hand mixed the soap as the tutorial suggested and I hadn't reached emulsification. I learned a few more things from this failure.

• Apparently emulsification took longer than I had expected
• 9+ Color changes would actually create a nice gradient
• A silicone mold just didn't work well with the technique I was trying to use

(As a side note I ended up hot processing attempt 1 and 2 together and it's not a bad combo!)

***At this point I had 4 new FO's come in and I tested them all. This test run also included my disobedient one from the first batch, because now I was thinking it might not be the FO's fault at all, maybe I just never reached emulsification with that batch. It actually performed fine in the test. My next thought was, could an accelerating FO+non-emulsified soap=false ricing?  Still don't know the answer to that.***

3) Fully confident that my FO's (Blackberry and Cherry) would behave I went on to attempt 3. I was tired of trying to get the Dancing Wave technique so I broke away from that. This time I wanted half the soap be a purple gradient, and the other half a pink gradient, with a white mica line in between. I poured the purple soap at an angle going from dark to light... and... the purple side accelerated so quickly that it was almost solid... the pink side did fine though. In fact it was beautiful. I used left over unscented (aka not-accelerated) batter to do a swirl design on top.

So... wth?! I had tested the Blackberry FO and while it had *slightly* accelerated during the test, it should have been fine to work with. Was it because I had used oxides in the purple versus using mica in the pink? Dunno. If oxides in general encourage glycerin rivers, does that mean they somehow cause the soap to heat up thereby exaggerating an accelerating FO? Still dunno. Here's what I did learn though:

• Zinc oxide as a whitening agent allows the colors to bleed a bit more
• But it might have also been because of the Winter White Mica... 
• So I was going to use both on my next attempt
• The gradient achieved in the pink was unbelievable!
• I wasn't a fan of just randomly adding a little more color as you go... I wanted things to be exact

I debated just calling it quits at this point. We were going on vacation and would be back only 5 days before the end of the challenge. Was that really enough time to make soap, cut it, photograph it, and blog? And after I cut attempt #3 I thought to myself, this would work I guess... but at the back of my mind I was dissatisfied with it. The purple had practically disappeared, and I still didn't feel like I had really achieved the goals I had set for myself because I hadn't nailed the Dancing Wave technique yet... so...

4) In my final attempt I got technical. I had 9 colors. I measured them on my scale and labeled them 

1: 35g pink + 0g purple= 35g

2: 30g pink + 5g purple= 35g

3: 25g pink + 10g purple= 35g 

4: 20g pink + 15g purple= 35g

5: 15g pink + 20g purple= 35g

6: 10g pink + 25g purple= 35g

7: 5g pink + 30g purple= 35g
8: 0 pink + 35 g purple= 35g

W: all white= 35 g

My recipe was 

(16 oz oils, 5%SF, H2O:Lye=2.4:1)

Canola 35%

Lard 30 %

Coconut 20 %

Avocado 10 %

Castor 5%

Lavender 40/42 EO and Bramble Berry's Crisp Cotton FO

I evenly split the batter into the cups with color (using my scale... I was determined to get this right!)

I used my 10" wooden mold. One corner would be a purple to pink gradient, the other side would be reversed and be pink to purple. I would use the white between each set to create some contrast and help the colors bleed a little. I soaped at 90*F, I hand-blended for an hour to make sure I reached emulsification. And...

I DID IT!!! It was a bit of midnight soaping so I had no one else to rejoice with me, but I was really excited. It wasn't perfect, but it was a workable soap that had gradients that look gradiated (is that a word). The only thing was that it was soooooo soft even after 3 days. I was able to cut it though and that's good enough for me. I do wish I had done the purple to pink gradient on each side, but that's small beans to me, I'm just glad I was able to finish and have some amazing looking soap when it was all said and done!

Truly... mad respect to all those who have paved the way for ombre designs! It is so deceptively simple looking! I'm so glad that I have learned the Ombre technique and that I forced myself to successfully complete the Dancing Waves technique as well. Many thanks to Amy, the judges and to anyone who takes the time to read this! Happy Soaping!