swirl quick mix Archives

10 Easy Ways to Texture Cold Process Soap

July 27, 2018 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Cold Process Soap, Tips & Tricks

Cold process soap has an amazing texture. After a few minutes of stick blending, it thickens enough to hold its shape. That means you can create any design you like – all you need is a spoon or fork.

In this short video, we show you 10 ways to texture cold process soap. Some texture requires a medium trace, while other designs benefit from a thicker trace. Learn more about trace here.

If you’re curious about the recipe in this video, find it below. The Swirl Recipe Quick Mix is specially formulated to give you plenty of time to work, so it’s perfect for creating the different textures. Rose Quartz Fragrance Oil also behaves well in cold process soap with no acceleration.

What You Need:
10″ Silicone Loaf Mold
33 oz. Swirl Recipe Quick Mix
4.6 oz. Sodium Hydroxide Lye
10.9 oz. Distilled Water
2 oz. Rose Quartz Fragrance Oil
1 Tbsp. Dispersed Aqua Pearl Mica

Click below to add everything you need for this project to your Bramble Berry shopping cart!

Lime LaCroix Soap Tutorial

October 20, 2017 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Cold Process Soap

The fridge at the Bramble Berry studios is currently filled with lime LaCroix. It’s a crowd-pleasing flavor that’s the perfect pick-me-up during the afternoon. With so much LaCroix in the office, we had to make soap with it.

This Lime LaCroix Soap is a more abstract interpretation than the Grapefruit LaCroix Soap. Rather than trying to recreate the can, the Lime LaCroix inspired the colors for an In-The-Pot Swirl. Scented with Lime Fragrance Oil, these bars smell bright and fruity.

LaCroix doesn’t contain any alcohol so it doesn’t need to be boiled prior to using it in soap. It also doesn’t contain sugar, so you don’t need to worry about the lye scorching or the soap overheating. Does the LaCroix add any real skin benefits to the soap? No, not really. But it’s fun from a label standpoint, and it’s the perfect gift for any LaCroix lover.

Interestingly, the lime LaCroix behaved better in soap than the grapefruit LaCroix. We found that the grapefruit LaCroix became a little grainy, while this soap stayed nice and smooth during the entire process. Just a heads up that the performance of LaCroix in soap may vary flavor to flavor.

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Grapefruit LaCroix Soap Tutorial

October 18, 2017 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Cold Process Soap

It seems everyone is obsessed with LaCroix right now, and we’re no exception. If you scan the office, you’re bound to see a few cans. The bubbly beverage inspired this Grapefruit LaCroix Soap. It’s made with flat LaCroix instead of distilled water and scented with Grapefruit Bellini Fragrance Oil.

We’ve never made soap with sparkling water before, so this was a fun experiment. Because it doesn’t contain alcohol we didn’t boil it. Instead, we opened a few cans of LaCroix and let them sit for a couple days to get rid of the carbonation. Once we were ready to soap, we added the lye directly to the room temperature LaCroix. Because it doesn’t contain sugar, you don’t need to worry about scalding or overheating.

Overall, the LaCroix behaved fairly well in soap. We did find that the soap thickened more quickly, and at one point it did become grainy. Stick blending smoothed out the texture. Interestingly, when we soaped with lime flavored LaCroix, it behaved better. So, the performance of LaCroix in cold process soap may vary flavor to flavor.

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How to Make Coffee Soap

March 8, 2017 Filed Under: Bath & Body Tutorials, Cold Process Soap

Here in the Pacific Northwest, we are known for our love of coffee. It’s not uncommon to have multiple Starbucks just blocks away from each other. There is also an abundant number of locally-owned coffee shops. If you love coffee as much as a Seattleite, making soap is a great way to include the ingredient in your products. In this coffee soap project, locally roasted coffee is used to really make these bars special. Using a local ingredient highlights the handmade aspect of your products.

Incorporating coffee into cold process soap is easier than you might think. The distilled water in cold process recipes can be swapped for plain coffee. The key is using distilled water to brew the coffee, and allowing the coffee to cool to room temperature before adding sodium hydroxide lye. Using coffee instead of water makes the soap batter quite dark, so keep that in mind when choosing the color palette. If you’re using plain brewed coffee, don’t worry about the soap overheating. Black coffee does not contain sugar.

Using coffee instead of water does not give soap a coffee smell. In fact, when you mix lye with coffee it does not smell very pleasant. This is because the lye “scorches” the coffee, resulting in a noticeable odor. The smell of the coffee and lye solution is usually not noticeable in the final bar. This is especially true if you’re using a fragrance oil in your recipe. For this soap, Espresso Fragrance Oil gives the bars a rich, delicious scent. Espresso Fragrance Oil does discolor in cold process soap due to the vanillin content. Titanium dioxide combats that slightly, but you can notice some discoloration on the top of the soap in the photos above and below. Learn more about vanilla discoloration here.

This soap also contains used coffee grounds. It’s important to add used rather than fresh coffee grounds. Fresh coffee grounds may bleed in the soap. The bleeding doesn’t hurt the bars in any way, but it is a cosmetic issue. It’s also a great way to use up leftover coffee grounds!

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Sunday Night Spotlight: Quick Mixes

October 18, 2015 Filed Under: Tips & Tricks

Creating custom oil combinations is one of my favorite aspects of creating cold process soap. Each soapmaking oil contributes something a little bit different to the recipe. For example, palm oil makes a firmer bar of soap, while coconut oil creates a more cleansing bar. It can take a little trial and error to find the perfect recipe for you. After years of soaping, I have developed a few go-to recipes that produce consistent results.

These go-to recipes were the inspiration for Bramble Berry’s Quick Mixes. The Quick Mixes are pre-measured cold process oils that you can heat up, measure and use! They save time because you don’t have to weigh and blend oils, and they work great for both cold and hot process recipes. There are three different varieties of Quick Mixes, each designed to produce a slightly different bar of soap. Read more about each kind of Quick Mix below.

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Guest Post: Minty Mocha Mantra Marble Cold Process Soap

September 2, 2015 Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

Today, Erica Pence of Bath Alchemy Lab is taking over the blog with an awesome cold process tutorial. This Minty Turkish Mocha Mantra Marble Cold Process Soap is made using Erica’s newest technique, Mantra Marbles. This technique was introduced by Erica in The Artisan Soapmaker Issue 2 eZine –Soaper’s Toolbox, a publication for cold process and melt and pour soapmakers. I love how this technique turns out, and can’t wait to try it myself! Erica is an accomplished teacher; to find more of her tutorials and techniques, check out her classes including the Gourmet Autumn Cold Process Soap Class, and the Spring Fling Cold Process Soap Class! -A.M.

Hi, I’m Erica from Bath Alchemy Lab. Today I’m going to show you how to create cold process soap using the Mantra Marbles technique. There are multiple varieties and three are demonstrated in the ezine. This is one version using Bramble Berry products. A mantra swirl is an advanced design made in a log mold in which a divider and three colors are used to create a beautiful swirl. Our brand new design, Mantra Marbles, takes this concept a few steps further, incorporating a marble technique into a mantra swirl but using a slab mold instead of a log mold.

In the original mantra swirl, after the soap is divided into two colors and the divider is removed, a third color is added. Then, a figure-eight style design is swirled using a thin tool. In order to actually see the mantra on the front of a bar of soap, you must first cut the log of soap 1 inch deep horizontally, then slice the soap about every 3 or so inches vertically into bars. Only one third to one half of the bars have the mantra swirl – just the top few bars. The rest of the soaps will simply be two-toned.

So, how does one get all of the soap bars to have a true mantra swirl? The answer is simple. Use a slab mold with more dividers. Take that a step further and create a marble on one side of each set of dividers, and you have a Mantra Marble. Use a recipe and scent that will allow you to fully control your trace and at least 3 colors as shown below. Your trace and your manipulation tool will dictate the final design.
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Electric Lemonade Column Pour Tutorial

May 7, 2015 Filed Under: Cold Process Soap

The column pour cold process technique involves pouring layers of soap on top of a column-shaped tool. As more layers are poured, the soap spreads throughout the mold creating fun patterns depending on the shape of your column tool. For this Electric Lemonade Column Pour Cold Process, we used squeeze bottles to creates circular layers of brightly colored soap. After pouring the layers, the soap can be swirled to make more complex designs. To see another example of this technique, check out the Neptune Column Pour Cold Process Tutorial.

Scented with Electric Lemonade Cocktail Fragrance Oil, this soap smells tart and juicy. These bars used the Swirl Quick Mix to ensure the soap stayed at a thin trace for a long period of time. Don’t want to use a swirl mix and want to create your own recipe? Make sure you have at least 60% liquid oils in the recipe to ensure you have enough time to get the column pour to really work well. For tips on creating your own recipe, click here. Also, be sure to use a fragrance oil that does not accelerate trace. Click here for more tips to avoid trace acceleration.

These bars were sent to the first 25 soap swap boxes that arrived to Bramble Berry; I hope those who received them love the fragrance and design! It was so fun to receive all the soap in this year’s cold process soap swap. The team and I were so impressed with the variety and skill in each project. If you’d like to be included in the next swap, be sure to sign up for our newsletter and keep your eyes on the blog and Bramble Berry Facebook page for future announcements.

Just a few of the Soap Swap boxes ready and waiting to be swapped!

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10 Easy Ways to Texture Cold Process Soap

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