Champagne Pear – now cut and on the site

I’ve been a bit slow in getting this up to the various locations that show & list the soaps and other products for Neecy’s, so forgive the delay.  It’s been a very hectic week – again. But it’s now the weekend, yes mine starts on Friday even though I work that day – so there’s plenty of down time ahead to be able to post pics, make more goodies, try a few new things out, and get them photographed too!  Lots to do in the week ahead, but the time is there to get ‘er done.  🙂

The Champagne Pear swirl turned out much better than anticipated though it still cut it rather close in  thickening up as it did.  I’ve come to the realization that colours speed up the firming process, most of all the white (titanium dioxide), but that is more likely due to the extra stirring or stick blending required than any chemical reaction.  The TD, on the other hand, seems to cause crackling effects which many soapers love, and I’ve got to admit, it makes really interesting looks in soaps.  It gives a textural effect that gives the soap more dimension.  None of these bars show any crackling, which is typically caused by heat produced in the soap as it saponifies in the mold and starts to gel, but since I place the soaps mold in the fridge to prevent gel, it rarely occurs in any of the soaps I sell.  Once day, maybe I’ll let it run its course and see what I get, but for now they’ll go in the fridge.

I used Shimmering Red Clay and Peach Sunset micas from The Conservatorie and Hydrated Chrome Green pigment from Bramble Berry.  Micas in green have been hard to find as they sell out quickly and tend to morph unless you find the perfect one for CP soaping.  That’s trickier than you might think.   The greens and purples have a bad habit of changing to something either hideously taupe-ish or any one of 50 shades of gray.  Ugh.  Most sites that sell colours also list or indicate somewhere in the colour’s description whether it’s okay to use in CP or not, so when planning your soaps and choosing the colours from their listing, be sure to read it carefully to find out if it will behave as expected in CP soap as the high pH in  can cause undesirable effects which may or may not change back over time.  From my own experiences, I’ve never had it change back.

White TD was used in the entire batch of soap, plus a bit more to lighten up the ‘white-ish’ part of the soap, though that part  was still a bit on the light beige-y side, or maybe a deep cream, but as long as the contrast between the other colours was obvious, it doesn’t matter.

I’d originally wanted to do a drop swirl in this, but it thickened a bit too quickly and wasn’t ‘dropping’  but rather plopping.  Plop Swirl just doesn’t have the same ring to it, so the spoon was used for a deep spoon swirl moving in an infinity motion through the soap.  What this resulted in was a very pleasant surprise along the sides in one end.  It looked more like an elemental swirl, even though it wasn’t done or planned that way at all.   There were far fewer bubbles in the bars than could have been there and those that were there are very small.  Very pleased to see that!

This batch yielded 7 bars plus I cut it to provide 6 samples as well and all of this will be cured by Nov. 5th, but it’s already listed on my web site here.  My soaps and other products are also found in Pinterest and on my Facebook business page, so drop by & say hi, and browse through the shop for a bit to see all the things we offer.  We’re more than just soap!

Champagne Pear cut view ——————————

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