Indigo & Paprika Lotus Flower Soap

/ Holly

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The Great Cakes Soap Challenge for January 2016 involved a technique called the Circling Taiwan Swirl that produces a lotus flower when the soap is cut horizontally. I went with natural colorants and tried out a new blend of essential oils. I ended up making 3 attempts at this swirl technique. The best part is cutting the soap and having absolutely no idea what you’re going to see. :)

Recipe
I used my slow tracing, olive oil heavy recipe for this technique.

Olive Oil – 45%
Sunflower Oil – 10%
Coconut Oil – 25%
Organic Palm Oil – 12%
Avocado Oil – 5%
Castor Oil – 3%

Essential Oils
I wanted to try a new blend of essential oils in this soap – Lavandin (4 parts), Eucalyptus (2 parts), & Peppermint (1 part). I’ve used all 3 essential oils in various blends before, but never together. The blend smells wonderful, but my soap did thicken up considerably more than usual. I’ve had this happen once before with Lavandin, so maybe that EO was the culprit. I didn’t get bad acceleration (I was still able to pour it), but it was much thicker than with my final circling taiwan swirl attempt when I just left the Lavandin out of the blend.

Colors
Blue – Indigo Root Powder infused Olive Oil
Navy Blue – Indigo Root Powder infused Olive Oil & Activated Charcoal in Sunflower Oil
Orange – Paprika infused Olive Oil
White – Kaolin Clay hydrated in distilled water (just a small amount or the soap gets too thick)

Video
I made a video of my circling Taiwan swirl entry. I even managed to remember to adjust the white balance on the video camera this time. :)


My Other Attempts
I made 3 attempts at this technique. My entry soap was the 2nd attempt. It was fun to see how the consistency of the soap and the tool used for swirling changed the lotus flower design. The differences within the same batch of soap are also really interesting.

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Indigo Root Powder & Paprika (same batch as the entry soap)

Thanks for reading my post!

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23 thoughts on “Indigo & Paprika Lotus Flower Soap”

  2. Holly:
    The paprika gave you a really nice orange!
    I love the white, black, & grey ones too – especially the one on the left…was that grey from using indigo? They look beautiful…nicely done!
    Sly

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  3. Your entry soap looks fantastic!! Thanks for sharing the video also. Do you strain out the paprika (or put it in a teabag) when you infuse it? I noticed that the color is quite smooth. Your natural colorants are quite inspiring – I’m using some of your tips for my soap for the February challenge!

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    • Thank you so much, Amy. That’s so sweet of you to say. I always put my Paprika loose into the oil, shake it up before heating, and then strain it out. For this challenge, I did add a bit more paprika to the infused oil in hopes of getting a darker orange, but I don’t think it added anything except a few orange specks in my soap. :)

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  6. This turned out fabulous, Holly! I love the color combination and how vivid it turned out! I have to say that soap would fetch a pretty hefty price right now here in Bronco (Denver) Country! I’m a New England Patriots fan but I still love it 😉! (maybe I shouldn’t be announcing that publicly 😕)

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    • Thank you so much, Debi! I didn’t even think about the Broncos colors. Haha. I went to a college with these colors, so they are usually at the top of my idea list. ;)

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  7. Gorgeous! I am voting for ones that have the soft curls,that are crisp and smooth and clean. And look like a lotus flower. I think you nailed it! Gorgeous! Such a hard decision this round!

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