Well I tried the peacock swirl for Amy’s challenge and everything went great.  I was so very organized (for me) and took lots of photos to show you.  I’ll include some.  The first below shows my brand new soap mold — I made it!  Very proud of that.

Lots of colors out to choose from.  Finally decided to go with the colors that would look most like a peacock.  Here are the colors mixed and another pic of the soap in the bottles with a few lines poured.

Got it swirled and it looked pretty good to me.  See:

I decided to put it in the oven for what is known as CPOP (cold process oven process).  The heat is supposed to make the colors pop.  The way it works is you set your oven as low as it will go.  For mine that was 170 F. You leave it for about 30 minutes to an hour than turn the heat off and let the soap stay in the oven over night.  Okay so when I go to turn the oven off, I peaked.  OH NO.  There were bubbles on top of the soap.  When I took it out of the oven, my soap had ugly warts.

I was very disappointed to say the least.  After I cut it, I planed the soap and was able to salvage it.  Those who don’t read this blog will never know there was a problem with the soap.

The one on the left looks great after a visit to the planer.  I am happy to say the rest now look good too.

I have been meaning to start a blog for some time now.  I mainly want a place to archive my experiences doing the things I love to do — soap making, gardening, cooking and golf.  Since my golf game is going down hill because I am spending so much time doing the other things we probably will not spend much time on that subject.

I just got back from the Soap Guild conference in Raleigh.  Three days of soap, soap and more soap.  It was so much fun being around like minded people not to mention the great speakers and demonstrations.  And the vendors had so many tempting things.  I did buy a new soapy toy – a shrink wrap system.  I can’t wait until it gets here.

This is a picture of the peacock swirl soap Amanda Griffin (of Lovinsoap.com) demonstrated at the conference.  I came home with this at the top of my to do list. And, this morning I got an email from Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks announcing some details of a new Soap Challenge Club.  The first challenge is going to be the peacock swirl!  Amy said the preferred way to enter your soap is on a blog.  That was motivation to finally get this set up.  I am looking forward to the challenge and sharing my creation with you.

 

Related articles

• What is the Soap Challenge Club? (greatcakessoapworks.com)