Cocoa Smores

The April 2021 Soap Challenge Club challenge was to create symmetrical polka dots in soaps using straws, soap dough, or some other shape that goes throughout the soap.

I am competing in the beginners category. This means my shapes have to be round cylinders. The tutorial used plastic straws and a template made with a hole puncher. I decided to use wooden dowels, as the selection of straws in my local markets was limited.

Materials:

1. Wooden Dowels of varying diameters
2. 3D Printed Template: upper and lower plates

I was happy to find a small company Woodpecker Crafts selling these for a reasonable price and the shipping. https://woodpeckerscrafts.com/dowel-rod-pack-12-assortment-40-pieces/

This month’s entry must be done in a slab or loaf mold. I only make soap as a hobby so this soap will most likely end up being a gift, so I need it to be as universally appealing as possible. I decided to make a vegetable oil based soap scented with essential oils.

I needed precise placement to achieve anything symmetrical. I used a 3D printed upper and lower plates to hold the dowels.

I mixed up the base soap (30% RSPO Palm oil, 45% Olive Oil, 25% Coconut oil, 5% superfat, water 32% of oil, 2% sodium lactate, and 5% essential oil blend of peppermint and tea tree), preheated to the oven (170F/77C), inserted the soap and turned off the oven, turned on the oven light, and left the soap overnight (CPOP).

The top of the soap looked grainy coming out of the oven. Clearly 2% sodium lactate (of oil weight) might work beautifully for my personal use recipe, but was far too much for this vegan recipe. Determined to see it to the end I started removing the smallest dowels first and filling them slowly ensuring my stream of liquid soap was ~25% the volume of the hole to allow air to escape.

As I progressed, when I removed the larger dowels they created a suction which pulled some of the fluid soap from the previously filled holes to the bottom of the mold. So I decided to remove all of the dowels and move on. The soap was placed back in a warm oven to set the polka dots.

First thing to do was remove the plates and melt and pour soap from the bottom of the mold. The beautiful contrast between the fluorescent colors and white melt and pour, and the dull color of my base color had me really unhappy with my color choices.

Next up the cutting and trimming of the soap. As a home hobbyist, I haven’t invested in the high quality tools necessary to give me clean even right angle cuts, professional looking beveling, etc. Cutting the soap became a frustrating study in diminishing returns. All around I wasn’t truly happy with the soap (crumbly, background color turned out different than intended, poorly cut, white halo in center of soap, etc).

I really did like the overall design. I felt the design deserved another chance, another color scheme, and a new fragrance blend to match. It’s my personal opinion that color choices can make or break art. I found a spring color scheme online that was based on a picture of flowers. It was outside of my normal range of color choices, but seemed fitting for the design. I chose a new essential oil blend of lavender and geranium. I wanted to have a white soap base this time, with some gorgeous pinks, and a touch of green. After an unscientific polling, it was decided to use green as the background color. 🙂

The process and recipe was the same as the first, but only 0.5% sodium lactate was used this time. I also removed all wooden dowels before proceeding. The second time the dowels were a little harder to remove, so I had use a tool to grip and twist a few out of position. The dowels do wick liquids from the soap but seem structurally intact after two uses.

Of course there was still plenty of room for improvement after the second batch, but the soap was a proper consistency, the scent was heavenly, and the design pleasing. I considered doing one more iteration, but was worried about the volume of soap scraps this design produced and what I would do my surplus soap bars. 😅.