Bubblegum cold process soap

I was in the mood for some colour and keen to experiment with soap inserts so decided to try a bubblegum themed soap. This wasn't executed quite as perfectly as I would have liked so in the description for this recipe I'll tell you what I did do and what I would do differently, that way we're all learning! But I'm pretty happy with the result and at the end of the day, sometimes imperfection is part of the charm of handmade cold process soap.

For the inserts I used 150g of clear melt and pour soap and roughly cut it into quarters. I then melted each quarter with a little mica. I did this four times for each colour and poured them into a silicon muffin tray, only up to around a centimetre. You'll see some small pink ones tucked in there, for those I used some old small kraft tubes but, to be honest, it was far more work than it was worth. I'm here to try these things so you don't have to! Stick to the muffin trays! (Of course if you have proper long tube inserts then that would be ideal, I don't, so I didn't.)

What I did:
I combined my oils and lye, added my essential oil, some titanium dioxide, blended it with a stick blender and split it into three jugs. Then I added my purple clay, pink clay and more titanium dioxide to their respective jugs and blended them again.

What happened:
It started to set on me really quickly, the first jug I poured from, with the pink clay, was ok but with the time it took to pour that one, then the purple clay section and then lay the inserts, by the time I got to the white section which was the bulk of my soap it was like cake batter. I had to scoop it in and really press it down to cover everything.

What I would do next time:

• Pour about a tablespoon of my olive oil into three seperate beakers and disperse my clays and titanium dioxide into each. That way I'll be working with liquid colourant which will stir in, rather than powder which needs to be whizzed with the blender prematurely to combine.
• Then combine my oils and lye, just stirring, not blending.
• Separate the mixture into my jugs, add the liquid colour to each, again stirring, not whizzing.
• Pour one third of my essential oil into the pink mixture, whizz and pour.
• Pour the next third of the essential oils into the purple clay mixture, whizz and pour.
• Place my inserts
• Then add the last of the essential oil into my white mixture and pour that.

This way the mixture should stay thin enough until I need it rather than having the essential oil plus the whizzing speed up the setting process.

To get the colour crossover at the bottom I put the loaf mould on a lean, just by propping it up with a book, to pour the pink clay section, then swapped sides to lean the other way to pour the purple clay section.

Recipe
For the inserts:
150g | Clear melt and pour soap
1/2 tsp | Purple mica
1/2 tsp | Princess peach mica
1/2 tsp | Yellow mica
1/2 tsp | Blue mermaid mica

For the CP soap:
230g | Coconut oil
230g | Shea butter, refined (you could also use sustainable palm oil at the same ratio)
230g | Olive oil, pomace
104g | Sodium hydroxide
30g | Bubblegum essential oil blend* (15g pink grapefruit, 9g ylang ylang, 6g eucalyptus radiata)
1 tsp | Purple clay
1 tsp | Pink clay
1 tsp | Titanium dioxide

*I found this recipe for a bubblegum essential oil blend online and wanted to give it a go! I like it and was pleasantly surprised at how much like bubblegum it actually smells! But if you don't want you use three separate essential oils I would recommend one sweet fragrance oil such as strawberry.

(You can purchase an unfragranced CP soapmaking kit HERE which includes the basics required for the base including coconut oil, shea butter or palm oil, liquid oil, sodium hydroxide and loaf mould.)

Method: See our Cold- process soapmaking with pictures HERE and our how-to video HERE