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Drop Swirls & Standardisation

I’ve been using a partial drop swirl for all my essential oil soaps for a long time but for my fragrance oil bars I’ve been using a mix of styles – In the Pot, Tiger stripe, Drop –  whatever took my fancy at the time of making.  As I’m now selling more wholesale soap than I am retail, I’ve slowly come to the realisation that my FO bars need to be of a uniform design too.

It took me a little while to settle into the idea.  Soapmaking is such a creative process and half the fun is coming up with new designs and trying out new techniques. I reluctantly came to accept that I needed to choose a style and stick with it, making it synonymous with The Soap Mine brand and making my soaps (hopefully!) instantly recognisable.

I wanted to retain a link between my EO soaps and my FO soaps, while ensuring it was easy to tell them apart, so the obvious choice was to make my FO soaps using a full bar drop swirl.

I’ve been making soap with this technique for a long time – this was the first one I ever made (years ago!),  fragranced with coconut FO.

Black & White Drop Swirl
              Black & White Drop Swirl

And these are some more recent makes – this is what my FO soap bars will look like for the foreseeable future.

Delicious (Similar in scent to the DKNY designer fragrance Be Delicious)

Delicious
                    Delicious

Oatmeal Milk & Honey:

Oatmeal, Milk & Honey
        Oatmeal, Milk & Honey

Welsh Rose:

Welsh Rose
          Welsh Rose

Blue Belle (Similar in scent to Jo Malone’s ‘Wild Bluebell’ designer fragrance)

Blue Belle
                        Blue Belle

I guess the next thing to focus on is standardising the photography :-O

Thanks for reading – back soon!

6 thoughts on “Drop Swirls & Standardisation

  1. Your soaps are beautiful. I love your partial drop swirls like the second picture from the left. How do you achieve them? By pouring the colours very close to the surface? Have you ever thought of doing a video?

    1. Thanks Nicola! Yes, that’s exactly it – I pour the main colour until the mould is nearly full then pour small amounts of coloured batter into it – sometimes from fairly high up, sometimes lower down. I’ve OFTEN thought about doing videos but I don’t really have the gear (or the time) to fanny about with it. But I will. One day 😀

      1. Thank you. I look forward to seeing one of your videos – one day!

  2. Gorgeous drop swirls! What level of trace do you blend to? Your colors are quite distinct so I’m guessing a relatively thick trace. Also, how do you get the drop swirl in the mounded top of the soap? Do you blend the base soap to a consistency thick enough that you can mound the top and THEN do the drop swirl? Seems like if you are using small amounts of soap, it would wouldn’t penetrate that level of thickness. I’m stumped! Thanks, Elizabeth

    1. Hi Elizabeth! It’s not too thick actually (well, ideally anyway – sometimes it does go a bit to far) the thinner the better, as long as it has definitely traced. As for the drops in the tops, I fill the mould to about four fifths full of the base colour, then drop the coloured batter into the top. Once it’s thickened up enough (about 15 mins on average) I then texture the top. Hope that helps 😀

      1. Thanks so much! I’ve been working on improving my drop swirls, and yours are about the prettiest I’ve seen on Pinterest. I’ll give your technique a try.

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