The February Soap Challenge Club involved creating intentional glycerin rivers in a batch of soap. Auntie Clara was our guest instructor this month. She’s written several posts explaining the science behind these rivers and has tackled several myths about them, as well. Auntie Clara also explains how you can create (or avoid) them in your own soaps. Besides describing the awesome science behind these rivers, Auntie Clara has created some of the most beautiful soaps with glycerin river swirls.

For the challenge, we had a choice of entering the regular category (glycerin rivers throughout the bar) or the advanced category (glycerin rivers in only part of the bar). Since I’ve had accidental glycerin rivers occur in parts of my soaps over the years, I thought I’d give the advanced category a try. I had no idea my previous accidental glycerin rivers would be so difficult to replicate. Let’s just say my overly confident attitude led to plenty of fails. If you’d like to see how I finally came up with a soap to enter and also see my fails, just keep reading. I filmed my process but haven’t yet had time to edit. I’ll hopefully be posting the video next week. :) Continue reading →