Title: Marbling Soap
Categories: Soap *
Yield: 1 Batch

TEXT ONLY

You can produce a lovely marbled soap using any of your favorite soap formulas and the colorants of your choice.

1. Choose two (or more) contrasting colors for the two soap mixtures ~ one for the base soap and one for the contrasting soap (use 2/3 base-color soap and 1/3 contrasting color-soap for a more striking effect). Note that you achieve the marbling by removing a portion of the base soap mixture, coloring it, then swirling this colored soap into the base soap. Of coarse, two completely different batches of soap can be marbled into one another.

2. Prepare your marbling utensils and ingredients and have them waiting by the soap mod for the big moment: colorant carefully measured into a bowl, whisk, measuring cup, plate, spatula (or knife), and essential oil.

3. Prepare soap according to the directions for your particular formula. When a light trace has been achieved, use a measuring cup to transfer about 1/3 (or however much you prefer) of the base soap to the bowl or large (6 cup) glass measuring cup containing the colorant. Work quickly and firmly to whisk the colorant evenly into the soap.

4. Still working swiftly, scent the base soap (if desired). Stir the mixture to be sure it is uniform and smooth; then pour it into the soap mold.

5. Scent the smaller, contrasting mixture (if desired) and pour the mixture in parallel lines across and down the base soap from a few inches above the soap mold, to force the soap down into the soap, not just onto the surface. How many lines you make depends upon the size of your soap mold, but aim for a line every 2 to 3 inches both lengthwise and crosswise.

6. Stand a spatula, knife, or honey drizzle upright at one corner of the soap tray, through to the waxed paper (if using a knife, avoid contact with the paper). Using a zigzag mothion (in a diagonal pattern to the opposite corner), marble the contrasting color through the base color, crossing the "pour lines" at varying angles. Stand the spatula at one of the two corners, and repeat the step just described. Save a little of the contrasting soap to drizzle here and there on the surface; otherwise, the tops of the bars will not have enough of the marbled, contrasting color.

If you do not work quickly enough, the base color will begin to set up before you have marbled teh contrasting color. Though the base is soft enough to weave the utensil through, both soap colors will from mounds during the marbling process. The surface will end up looking frosting like instead of being perfectly flat and smooth.

Source: "The Soapmaker's Companion" by Susan Miller Cavitch

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