Fresh Snow Gradient Layer Soap

Winter is almost officially here. When I think of winter, I think of clear big-blue-sky days and clean, chilly air. I also think of snow, but mostly in a romanticized kind of way. Having lived my whole life in either Florida or Louisiana (or Hawaii, if my four-month stint there counts), I don't have much experience with snow. Sure, we get flurries from time to time and it's a super-huge deal. I've been in snow before, though. When my husband and I visited New York City in March 2007, we arrived just in time for a freak snowstorm. And we experienced more snow in Boise, ID in December 2010.

Snow can be magnificent when it first falls - powdery flakes floating all around, covering everything with a blanket of shimmering white. Colors pop like never before all around you, and the air feels crisp and clean. Those first few hours of snowfall make you grab your camera and brave the cold. Over the next couple of days, though, the snow turns gray and slushy. Walking becomes difficult as you trudge through dirty snow puddles, and driving becomes dangerous. That's when you start thinking that maybe the snow isn't so great.

Downtown Boise, ID after a snowfall, Dec. 2010

In my imagination, snowfalls are always beautiful, and the sky is always a flawless bright blue. I wanted to create a soap that captures my idea of a perfect snow day. And so I chose to do a blue-to-white gradient layer soap scented with Bramble Berry's Fresh Snow fragrance oil. (This fragrance oil soaps like a dream and behaves absolutely beautifully in cold process soap. It has a nice, slow trace that allows for plenty of time to work, and it doesn't discolor at all. It also smells fantastic, its scent reminiscent of a cold wintery day.)

The gradient layer technique is also known as the gradated, graduated, or Ombre layer technique. The goal is to create layers that become progressively lighter in color as you move from the bottom to the top of the soap. Gradient layers can be made using a single color or several colors.

If you've been following this blog for a while, you may remember my first attempt at creating gradient layers - a green-to-gold Cucumber Melon soap. Overall, I was pleased with the soap, although I wished that my layers were a bit more uniform. I had poured my layers over the back of a spoon to prevent the soap from breaking through the previous layer, but I had some break through anyway. I decided that the next time I did a gradient layer soap, I would spoon the soap batter instead of pouring it.

That's what I did for my Fresh Snow soap, and the layers did turn out much more distinct. For this soap, I used olive oil, coconut oil, sustainable palm oil, castor oil, and shea butter.

Fresh Snow soap, sprinkled with sparkly glitter

My recipe makes about 44 ounces of soap batter, so I decided to have six 6-ounce layers of blue and one 8-ounce layer of white. I added my FO to my cooled oils before adding the lye solution. Once I added the lye and stickblended the batch to a light trace, I portioned off 12 ounces of soap into a plastic measuring cup. To whiten the rest of the batch, I added some titanium dioxide (mixed with liquid glycerin), reserving some for later.

I added some ultramarine blue oxide (again, mixed with a bit of liquid glycerin) to the 12-ounce portion and then poured half of the blue soap into my mold. Then I mixed 6 ounces of the white soap into the remaining blue soap, and spooned half of that portion for my second layer. Because I added some white soap to the blue, the second layer was a shade lighter. I repeated this pattern for the first five layers, making each layer progressively lighter.

For the sixth blue layer, I added a bit of the reserved titanium dioxide to lighten the soap instead of adding more white soap. I spooned the remaining blue soap (which was very light blue by this point) into the mold and then spooned the remaining white soap on top of it. A mini whisk helped me create some texture on top of my loaf, and I finished the soap off with a sprinkling of shredded iridescent glitter to mimic freshly-fallen snow glinting in the sunlight.

Here is a video I made of the process:


When making gradient layers, it is important that the previous layer is set up enough to support the next layer. It helps to bring your soap to a medium trace and to test the previous layer by drizzling a bit of soap on top of it to make sure it doesn't sink.

I am very happy with how this soap turned out, and I like how distinct each layer is. Spooning the soap definitely worked out better than pouring over the back of a spoon this time. I think these will make beautiful Christmas gifts! (Although I may have to keep a bar for myself!)

One more thing - last call for Bramble Berry's "Givember" event, which continues through the end of November! A few weeks ago, the lovely folks at Bramble Berry sent me some supplies to try (you can read more about that here) and offered a very special treat to my blog readers. Here's how it works: Any Bramble Berry order placed during the month of November that includes the code GIVEMBER50 will get you entered into a drawing for a $50 Bramble Berry gift certificate. This code only applies to orders placed during November - don't forget to include the code during checkout! Happy shopping, and best of luck to you all in the drawing!

Tomato Leaf Soap

As I've mentioned before, I have too many fragrance and essential oils. But I keep buying more. You know how it is - you need some lye and maybe some soapmaking oils and you think, "Well, since I'm putting in an order, I may as well get some more of Fragrance X and ooh, look, I've been wanting to try Fragrance Y, and one of my buddies said that Fragrance Z was uhmazing ..."

And the next thing you know, you have half a dozen fragrance oils in your shopping cart, and that's if you're displaying any kind of restraint.

And that is how I came to acquire some of Bramble Berry's Tomato Leaf fragrance oil a couple of months ago. (Along with a few other fragrance oils, too, of course.) I had heard so many great things about it, and with spring nearly gone and summer approaching, I was in the mood to try something garden-y. And I figured I had better get around to soaping with it soon before autumn and Christmas make me forget all about Tomato Leaf until next year.

Mind you, I am not a gardener, but the idea of having a garden appeals to me very much. I might consider having a garden if I didn't have an enormous talent for immediately killing any and all forms of plant life. I am truly impressive when it comes to swiftly murdering plants. Gifted, really. I'm not bragging. I always feel terrible whenever a plant expires under my "care," and it always does, even when I try really hard to keep it alive. I even somehow managed to dispatch not one but two cactus plants to their untimely deaths.

Really. I don't know how either.

With that kind of track record, I don't think I can be trusted with even a window box herb garden. The poor thing would be doomed.

Also, I would have to get over my inability to tolerate heat in order to be a gardener. I hate being hot. And I would also need a yard for a proper garden, and I don't like yard work.

A garden actually sounds like a terrible idea for someone like me. I think I'll stick to soap.

Burgundy and green oxides, mixed with a bit of glycerin

When I first sniffed the Tomato Leaf fragrance oil, I was transported back to my grandmother's little tomato and green bean garden that ran alongside her house. The fragrance oil smelled just like I remember the tops of the tomatoes smelling right after we snapped them from the vine. Very green and herbaceous. I immediately thought that I wanted to do a red and green layered soap with a gold mica line running between the two layers.

For the red portion of my soap, I opted for Bramble Berry's burgundy oxide, and their green chrome oxide for the green. I also used their Gold Sparkle mica for the mica line.

I added my fragrance oil to the cooled base oils before adding the lye solution and then split the batch after reaching trace. I poured off one-third of the batter into another bowl, leaving two-thirds behind in my original bowl. Then I added the burgundy oxide to the two-thirds portion, and the green to the bowl with one-third of the soap. The goal was to make the soap look sorta like a tomato - well, a rectangular tomato, I guess - with most of it being red with a bit of green on top to represent the leaves. I figured the mica line would add some interest and contrast.

To build the layers, I poured the burgundy soap at a medium-thick trace, dusted the red layer with the gold mica (using a tea strainer), and then poured the green soap at thick trace over the back of a spoon to cover the mica line. (Tip: Wipe your mold clean after pouring the first layer of soap, and wipe it clean again after dusting the mica line so you don't have any errant soap or mica all over the sides of your bars.)

Here's a video I made of the process. I also share a little trick for cutting the soap so that the mica line doesn't drag down through the bars - cut the soap on its side! (This trick also works great if you have herbs, oats, seeds, or any other sort of additives on the tops of your bars):


Overall, I am very pleased with how this soap turned out. I was trying to get some texture on top of the red layer so that my mica line would be a bit uneven. I like how the line is a little crooked, but I think I could have gotten a more interesting line if my soap had been brought to a thicker trace. I like the texture that my mini whisk gave the top of the green layer - it looks almost like the veins that run through leaves!

In the finished bars, the Tomato Leaf fragrance is a soft, delicate leafy scent with a touch of sweetness. It would be lovely in a gardener's cornmeal scrub soap, too. Or maybe a soap made with tomato juice or puree.

What are some of your favorite spring and summer soap scents?

Cucumber Melon Gradient Soap

My Cucumber Melon gradient layer soap

One soapmaking technique that I've really been wanting to try is making gradient layers. I've also heard them called gradated and graduated layers - I don't know which one is correct. Perhaps they all are. Anyway, the idea is to have a color gradually change from dark to light with each progressive layer. Of course, you can use more than one color for gradient layers, too.

I had seen the technique many times, but never tried it. The first time I saw it was on Anne-Marie's Soap Queen blog. When Anne-Marie posted this tutorial, I had just started my journey into cold-process soapmaking and didn't feel up to the task. I vowed to try gradient layers someday when I had more experience, though.

Sometime later I saw this very helpful YouTube video about making an Ombre layer soap (which is yet another name for this technique) that one of my forum friends, Emily from Shieh Design Studio, created. (I like her method very much and borrowed from it to make my own soap.)

When Amy Warden from Great Cakes Soapworks recently coordinated a weekly soap challenge that included a gradient layer challenge, I decided to finally give it a try. I didn't get my soap done in time to participate, but I followed the weekly challenges closely and was inspired by all of the beautiful soaps created by such talented soapmakers.

For my gradient soap, I decided to use a Cucumber Melon fragrance oil from Elements Bath and Body. (I would link to the fragrance oil, but as of this writing it appears that Elements is no longer carrying Cucumber Melon, which is a shame because it behaves beautifully in CP soap and it smells wonderful.) This fragrance is one of my dad's favorites, so I wanted to make a batch to share with him. (Father's Day is right around the corner!) For my colorants, I chose Bramble Berry's green chrome oxide and gold sparkle mica.

I made my main batch of soap and added the fragrance oil to my base oils before adding the lye solution. Then I portioned the soap off after I brought the main batch to trace. I wanted mostly green layers with a little bit of gold on the top. For my batch size (which was 2 pounds of oils), I started with 2 cups of green soap. I poured one cup of the green soap into my mold and then added another cup of uncolored soap to the remaining green soap, lightening it. I repeated this process two more times, each time getting the soap a lighter shade of green.

For the gold layers, I wanted the opposite effect - I wanted my layers to start out lighter and gradually get darker. So, I poured off a half-cup of soap and colored it white with some titanium dioxide, and then colored the rest of my main batch gold. Then I added a half-cup of gold soap to the white and poured a half-cup from that portion into my mold. Using that process, I made two more gold layers, each one a bit darker than the last.

Here is a video I made of the process:



Overall, I was very pleased with how my soap turned out. I was hoping that my layers would be more distinct and the lines a little straighter. Perhaps my early layers should have been at a thicker trace, and maybe I should have poured with a bit more care. I did pour over the back of a spoon to prevent the soap from breaking through the layer below it, but I still may have been a bit sloppy. I still think it looks cool even if the layers are dipping into each other a bit, though.

I am looking forward to trying this technique again. Next time, I think it might be neat to do a gradient that goes from blue to green to yellow, or red to orange to yellow. And, of course, the single-color layers are gorgeous, too.

What do you think of gradient layers? Do you like the look? Have you made gradient layer soaps? What are your favorite color schemes?