Goat Milk Soap Mango Swirl

I love goat milk soap.  My shower usually has a bar of cold processed clove soap and a bar of cold processed goat milk soap.  I made this soap with myself in mind.  I thought it was a good time to experiment with color and swirls.  I may have gone a little wild.

I used a Bramble Berry fragrance called Mango Mango.  It’s very sweet and seemed to be a good fit with goat milk soap.  I left part of the soap uncolored, and colored the remaining portions with neon orange and neon green.

First I poured in a layer of uncolored soap. 

Next I poured the green colored soap over the white, sort of in rows. 

 Next I added orange soap in rows between and on top of the green rows.

I used a chopstick to make feathery swirls throughout the soap.

Then I plopped some orange on top and swirled a bit. 

I used the chopstick to try to make hearts, but only some of them turned out.

Goat milk soap just gets better over time.  I just finished up the last bar of a batch I made in 2008.  It was even more wonderful in 2012 than it was in 2008.  I love the soft, creamy feel that the goat milk seems to give the soap.

It’s going to be hard to wait to give this Mango Swirl a try, but then that is always the case with cold process soap.  But wait we must.  Giving the soap some time to cure before use allows the soap to get milder.  It also gets harder so that it lasts longer.

Have you ever tried goat milk soap?  If not, I hope you’ll consider giving some of SoapArt’s goat milk soap a try.  A bar or two of this batch will probably show up in my Etsy shop in a few weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Cleaning and Soap

I cleaned my house.  I’m not looking for applause; I’m just letting you know because my reward for cleaning the house was cutting and stamping soap!  As I proceeded through the mundane cleaning tasks, I kept reminding myself of the soap I would get to cut after the cleaning spree.

The design of the first soap didn’t turn out at all as I had planned.  I was going for crisp lines and a geometric pattern.  As soon as I started pouring, I knew the soap was at too light of a trace to make the design I had in mind.  Sometimes I’m not very patient (Mom, if you're reading this I think you just laughed a little bit.  Or at least smiled).  So rather than waiting for the soap to get a stronger trace, I went ahead and poured.  I’m very happy with the result, even though it does not have the straight lines I originally planned.  Say hello to Sherbet Swirl.

The next one didn’t come out quite the color I was going for.  It’s pomegranate.  I was going for more of a reddish-purple.  I love the deep purple I got out of this.  I’ll be using this dark purple again.  The dark line is colored with activated charcoal.  It's great stuff.

The final soap that I cut after I decided to stop cleaning (note: the cleaning is never “finished”, but I accomplished what was on my list, so I stopped) is clove.  There is always a bar of this in my shower.  And my other shower.  Yes, it’s great to have two bathrooms with showers, but now we’re back to that cleaning thing.  I digress.  Again.  Anyway, the clove smells great.  It smells like my dentist’s office.  I love that it’s scrubby too.  Did you know that clove has natural deodorizing properties?   The soap isn’t anything special to look at, but it is a scrubby natural soap with lots of great cleaning ability. 

Thanks for reading!