Peacock Swirl with Lilac Fragrance Oil

I’ve been wanting to try a peacock swirl, and since my soap forum of choice is having a challenge in which one can interpret a specific theme (May’s is florals), I decided to be very brave and do a peacock swirl with lilac fragrance oil. I wanted my colors to reflect real lilacs, so I busted out my cellini blue again (for the purple), electric bublegum neon colorant (for the pink, hoping the titanium dioxide added to the oils would tone it down a bit), cappuccino mica (for the brown bark of the lilac bush), and titanium dioxide (for white). 

As I’ve said before, florals speed up the soap making process. They can have the ability to turn a nice emulsion of raw soap into a thick glopy mess in a matter of seconds. Since the peacock swirl is fairly time intensive, I decided to leave my colors for the swirl unfragranced to keep them liquid longer and fragrance only the bottom bit of my soap. Good thing, too, because when I put the dividers into my mold, the bottom was pretty firm.

 

I added some titanium dioxide to the raw soap and mixed it up. I poured some soap off into separate containers for the top swirl, then I fragranced the rest.

 

If you want to know more about the peacock swirl or cold process soap making in general, there’s tons of resources out there. I read the Soap Queen blog (soapqueen.com) and the Teach Soap Forum (teachsoap.com). YouTube is also a fount of knowledge, as well. You can also find the Rhino Song there. But I digress . . . .

 

The swirl came out really neat, and even after I shoved the dividers into my mold, I’m still pretty impressed with the results. Don’t tell, but I think this soap may be bridesmaid’s gifts once June 23^rd rolls around . . . .