Soap Challenge - Week 3

The third week´s challenge theme is "oil mica swirl". This is for the first time that I am trying it (the same with the other challenge techiques).
I chose to swirl with gold mica, and a combination of blue and yellow for the soap. After my last week´s fluid batter which refused to thicken, I wanted to try the ITP swirl again and decided to combine it with tiger stripes - a kind of revision of the learned techniques. This time I really wanted my soap to come to at least medium trace, so I decided to use buttermilk as usually.

For the scent I made a blend of EOs/FOs - Aloe Vera, Lemon are dominant, a little Peppermint and Lavender, with Cedarwood as a base note. I used TD to whiten the base and then coloured the soap - for the yellow I used Gold mica and a bit of Yellow Oxide, for the shades of blue I used Ultramarine, Yellow Oxide, Black Oxide and Zinc Oxide.

For the top swirl I took a little bit of olive and castor mix from the weighed oils and made quite a thick mixture with mica. At the time of swirling my soap was around medium trace and I found the thicker oil and mica mixture easy to work with.

I was lucky this time - no suprises, the soap behaved properly (which means not many mistakes on my side) - and I am really pleased with the results! Thank you again, Amy, for me the Challenge is mainly a great way to learn and improve my skills. And of course I love looking at other´s beautiful and inventive creations!