Swirling Soap Series: French Curl Swirl

So, the second swirl in my series begins with the nonpareil swirl that we did two weeks ago. Head over to that post to catch up if you need to. This swirl starts off as a nonpareil swirl, then adds a little twist!

A few things to remember...

Basics:

You will want to start off with a slow moving recipe (recipes with 70% olive oil or above work well for me) and a fragrance that does not accelerate trace. Mix your lye and oils together until you reach emulsification, which is where the oils and lye are mixed together, but not thickening. You will want your mix slightly runny. Once you reach emulsification, add your fragrance, then set aside a few ounces of soap into separate containers to color. When choosing the colors for your soap, remember that bright, contrasting colors work great! The addition of black, white, and brown can make a very dramatic effect. 

Tools:

You will need a combing tool, which can easily be made at home. I made my combing tool using cardboard and chopsticks. I attached my chopsticks to my combing tool using a hot glue gun. It works great!  

Now, let's get started!

1. First, start by drizzling your colors left to right in your mold until you run out of color. Toward the end, make sure that all the colors you chose are showing on top.

2. Now, use your combing tool and drag downward on one fluid motion to create the nonpareil swirl. For the first tutorial, this is where we stopped. Today, we are going to take it one step further.

3. Using a chopstick (or similar tool), start at the upper left hand corner of your mold and draw a small to medium sized curl. Keep drawing curls in your soap until it looks similar to this:

Curls!

You're done with the french curl swirl! I made my french curl soap with Pomegranate Vanilla fragrance oil in shades of pink, magenta, and white and topped it off with a little glitter.

The french curl swirl