Saturday, September 22, 2012

My first attempt at using mica

I used mica for the first time last Thursday!  It's not as easy as it looks...
 
Coconut Oil (76 degrees) - 6 oz
Palm oil - 6 oz
Olive oil - 16 oz
Water (33%) - 9.24 oz
Lye (7% superfat) - 3.83 oz
1.5 oz Blackberry Sage FO from Peak Candles
1 oz Sparkling Deep Violet Purple Mica Powder from sjmsupplies (Etsy)
1 oz sparkle mica from Peak Candles
 
I went with a simple recipe because I was trying something new (the mica), so I didn't want too much extra fuss.
 
I poured half of the mixture (after light trace) into a separate container and then added the purple mica.  I added the sparkle mica to my original bowl.  So half and half purple/sparkle.  I then poured the purple soap from a height back into the sparkle soap to create a swirl.  I think it created a pretty marble.
 
 
 
The one thing I erred on is the size of the batch.  I should have made it perhaps a pound bigger so that it would have filled my mold more.  I was using a silicone loaf mold that I got from Amazon:
 
Click the above image to go buy it at Amazon.com for $9.99.  The soap unmolded really easily and it's straight rectangular, not angled, which I like.
 
The above referenced soap recipe only fills this mold up about halfway, which is why the soap bars are so squat.  Next time I will resize the batch to about 3.5 to 4 pounds total.
 
Today or tomorrow I'm going to try doing a pink mica swirl by layering the colors in the mold and swirling with a spoon.  We'll see how that goes!
 

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