Making Soap Curls

In a previous post, I talked about embedding soap curls in soap. Although it takes a lot more work to do, embedding makes for a fun and interesting finished product. Here are a few examples:

Honeysuckle Soap with soap curls

Bubble Gum Soap with soap balls

Girly Girl Soap with pink soap shreds

One great thing about making soap curls, shreds, balls, etc. is the opportunity to reuse leftovers from soaps that may not have turned out as originally planned. It also allows the soap maker to test out new colors without wasting extra ingredients. The Rosemary Mint Soap inserts were made when I tried out a new red mica. The color was not the true red I was looking for originally, but was perfect as an addition to my Rosemary Mint Soap.

Rosemary Mint Soap with vertical soap inserts

Soap curls are actually very easy to make. First start by selecting the soap you will use. Using a potato peeler or handheld cheese slicer (similar to what you see in this picture),carefully cut semi-soft soap into thin pieces. You want them to be thin enough to curl, but not so thin they are not able to be manipulated.




Using a pen or pencil, wrap the slices around the base and roll on a hard surface. Slide the curl off the end of the pen or pencil and voila! Soap curls!

Rolling the soap curls into shape using a pen

Soap embeds air drying before use

Finished soap curls

Easy and fun. Let them air dry in a plastic bowl or another open air container for a few days and they will be ready to use in your next batch of soap.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMBEDDING SOAP CAREFULLY

Making soap can be a lot of fun. There are a ton of things you can do to your soap to make it more interesting. From colors, to scents, to swirling techniques, and adding other, premade soap shapes (also called embedding), the combinations are endless.

One of the fall favorites I enjoy making is an Orange Clove Soap. Orange Clove is a lovely spiced soap with a hint of citrus. I color it with Celestial Colors Orange dye and embed dark brown soap shavings on the bottom that I colored with cocoa powder. The soap is scented with a fragrance oil appropriately named, Orange Clove.

One thing I learned recently after cutting into a freshly made batch of Orange Clove Soap is: how I add inserts to the bottom of my soap mold is important! I used to just add them quickly and pour the fresh soap on top, but not anymore! 

As you can see, improperly placed embeds can produce interesting results. Whoops!

Unintentional Design in an Orange Clove Soap

You may find the resulting 666 pattern funny (it is Halloween, after all!) or offensive (sorry!) but either way, it wasn’t exactly the look I was going for. Lesson learned.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

Welcome!

Welcome to the launch of the Seattle Soap Girl Blog! In my opinion, one of the coolest things about blogging is the interaction between the Blogg-er and the Blog-ee (if you will) with the possibility for information sharing and communication between those involved.

Although I may like to think I know it all on some occasions (just ask my husband and almost teen son!) I am by no means an expert in most areas and truly love to learn from others. Please look at this blog as an open invitation to read about the 'topic du jour', and add your two cents to it. If you have a fabulous company I need to know about, a topic worth sharing with others, a great recipe (soap, food - whatever!) that can't be beat, I encourage you to shoot me a message and suggest it for an upcoming post.

Anyway, welcome to my Seattle Soap Girl Blog and don't forget to subscribe!!


Cheers,

Shelly Holbrook-Ebeling
Seattle Soap Girl

The Seattle Soap Shop

Being dirty has never been this much fun!