jelly roll Archives - Soap Queen

Water Soluble Paper – Using a Silicone Baking Tray

March 24, 2010 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Melt & Pour Soap

I was going through my old photos, cleaning out my sadly overstuffed Flickr account, and found these photos. While this was one soap that didn’t make the final taping for the Microsoft Small Business Summit (didn’t see this series back in 2008? Check it out here), I wanted to share the technique with you. This is a good way to embed larger photos using Water Soluble Paper.

Step One: Pour a thin layer of Clear Melt and Pour Soap down. Don’t spray alcohol. Alcohol makes the ink bleed. When the Clear Melt and Pour has slightly set up, gently set the photo down. The goal is to not allow the soap to get the water soluble paper wet. Wet paper = bleeding paper.

Optional Step: 24 hours before embedding your Water Soluble Paper page, lightly spray with a very fine drizzle of hairspray to help set the color on the paper.

Step Two: When the Clear Layer is fully set, gently pour cool temperature opaque soap on the back of the paper. Why cool temperature? The cooler the soap, the more viscous and thick the soap is. The thicker soap doesn’t make the ink bleed as much as freshly poured, very wet soap. You don’t have to keep the soap totally straight white either! You can lightly color the soap base to make a light pastel. Blue based tones look best. Warm tones seem to enhance the natural yellow of the clear soap base and yellow out the photo.

Step Three: When the soap has fully set up, gently peel away from the mold.

Step Four: Use a sharp large butcher knife to cut the soap into the shape you want.

The photo I was able to embed using the Jelly Roll Pan is double the size of a standard soap mold. It’s just one more use for this amazing, versatile product.

Jelly Roll Pride

May 11, 2008 Filed Under: Bramble Berry News

Big kudos go to Christina in Customer Service for making this adorable Jelly Roll soap. Some of her layers are separating because she waited too long in between layers but the soap is still very cute and stays together well in the shower.

She used Dark Rich Chocolate for the dark brown, Carmel lip flavor in the gold and White Tea & Ginger in the white layer. Christina had fun with Cappuccino Mica (brown), Sparkle Gold (gold) and Super Pearly White (white) for her layering and wisely colored the layer that had Dark Rich Chocolate a brown color. Why was this such a good idea? Because the Dark Rich Chocolate color naturally turns brown so Christina incorporated this brown into her design.

If you missed how to make Jelly Rolls, the multiple part tutorial is located here.

Jelly Roll Love

February 5, 2008 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Congrats to Gassner Custom Soaps for clearly getting the gist of the Jelly Roll Tutorial down! Doesn’t the soap look great?

Learn how to make your own Jelly Roll Soap here. While you’re learning to that, I’m making chocolate … from scratch! It’s Amber’s 2 year anniversary with Bramble Berry and she loves chocolate. So, I’m making chocolate and, if all goes well, the outcome will produce Peanut Butter Cups, Marshmallow Cups and maybe toss in a few candied spicy dried fruit chocolate just for fun. The chocolate is tempering right now. Here’s to hoping it all turns out … or else Amber will be stuck with a store bought cake tomorrow! Then again, given the um, newness of this chocolate making venture, perhaps she would prefer the store bought product.

Final Photos & Instructions for Jelly Roll Soaps

December 16, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Click here for Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Three-point-Five Rolling Video, Day Four instructions for more information on the abbreviated instructions below.

Instructions for Jelly Rolls

1. Melt 5 ounces of melt and pour soap in the microwave. Bramble Berry soap takes one 35 second melt & stir, plus another 20 second melt & stir for 5 ounces of soap to melt.

2. Add fragrance and color and stir well. Add .5 ounces of Liquid Glycerin to this mixture. Stir well.

3. Pour mixture into the 9 x 9 silicone baking pan. Spritz layer with Rubbing Alcohol to get rid of excess bubbles.

4. Allow to harden for approximately 10 minutes or until a very thick skin, capable of supporting another layer, has formed.

Repeat 1 – 4 until there are 4 or 5 layers.

Pop out the entire block of soap. With a firm grip, quickly start to roll the soap up. Massage the soap into a tighter roll. Let the soap sit for three to five minutes and cut gently with a sharp knife.

Let the soap sit overnight before wrapping. This allows the layers to fully adhere to each other and excess moisture to evaporate from the soap.

That’s it! You’re done. You’ll make 18 (or so) adorable, cute, oh-so-complicated-looking soaps in 30 minutes or less.

Jelly Rolls! Jelly Rolls! Day Three

December 13, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Click here for Day One (Set – Up for Jelly Rolls)
Click here for Day Two (Color and Liquid Glycerin Addition)

I couldn’t resist this photo. The contrasting colors are striking. The wet, moving Super Pearly White soap seems almost alive with its light catching undulations. Colors that contrast in a wow! way are important to making Jelly Rolls really eye-catching.

Pour each of the layers as soon as the layer beneath it is hard enough to support the new layer. Time is not your friend. The more fresh each layer of soap is, the higher chance you have for the layers to adhere together. After each of the layers has been poured, it’s time to get the soap out of the mold.

Whoops. I can immediately see that this is too thick to roll. But, on the plus side, the beautiful layers are sticking together (the first hurdle), there is no running between layers (the second hurdle) and the soap came out in one piece with no splitting between layers (the third hurdle).

Now, the soap is ready to roll. It’s important to roll quickly after plopping your soap out of the mold. If you wait too long, the soap will harden and become inflexible.

Check back later tonight for a video of the soap release.

Jelly Rolls! Jelly Rolls! Day Two (Video)

December 11, 2007 Filed Under: Melt & Pour Soap

Below is the first layer for our Jelly Roll Soap. It is colored with Lavender Mica and Liquid Violet Colorant in clear melt and pour soap. It reminds me of a delicious vat of molten blueberry taffy.

The secret to successful Jelly Rolls is 2-fold – timing and 10% liquid glycerin addition to melted soap. Add 10% liquid glycerin to your melted soap base along with the fragrance and color for each layer.

There is approximately 3/4 of a teaspoon of Super Pearly White Mica in 8 ounces of melted soap. It is overkill to use this much mica. The same density of color could have been achieved with half of that amount.
Note: The Sparkle Violet Mica previously used in this recipe will be discontinued when supplies run out. You can use Super Pearly White Mica instead.

Alcohol is essential for mixing in the mica. The mica tends to ball up on the surface of the soap, similar to how hot chocolate clumps when you’re making hot chocolate. As you can see in the photo below, there’s a large mica bubble that is stubbornly refusing the mix in.

The video below shows the magic of Isopropyl Rubbing) Alcohol to break up mica bubbles by breaking the surface tension of the soap. The video quality is poor but it should get the point across (sorry, I was stirring while trying to hold the camera and spritz with mica at the same time).

Check back tomorrow for more on how to make Jelly Roll Soap!