Crafting visually stunning handmade soaps with intricate swirls, vibrant colors, and other designs might seem overwhelming if you’ve been scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, admiring the soap-making feats of others.
Even as a beginner, you can create your own mesmerizing soap creations. With the right techniques and tips, you’ll find that making those beautifully swirled soaps is not only possible but also incredibly enjoyable.
What You Need to Get Started
Here’s a straightforward guide to setting up your soap-making and to achieve the beautiful swirls as you expect. If you are already a soap maker then you can ignore it and go to the other steps.
- Basic Ingredients: pick the oil which you consider for ease like olive, palm or coconut. After that you should have Lye (Sodium Hydroxide) and Water.
- Additives for Swirling: Slow-Tracing Additives Ingredients like kaolin clay or yogurt can slow down trace, giving you more time to work on your swirls. If you use Isopropyl Alcohol which could prevent soda ash and can be spritzed on top of the poured soap.
Technique 1: The Drop Swirl
The drop swirl is very easy to use; it involves pouring different colors of soap and dropping the swirl from various heights into the soap mold to create downward swirls. This technique works great for beginners.
How to perform drop swirl
- Working with a light trace allows more fluidity for the colors to swirl.
- For each color Pour a quarter to half of the soap batter into separate containers.
- Add your preferred colorant to the soap mixture.
- Pour the base color in the bottom of the mold.
- Then pour another color on the top of the base color.
- This thing helps to make thinner soap and that will help to produce intricate swirls. While thicker can produce chunky swirls.
- The key to a good drop swirl is how you pour. Pour from different heights and angles to encourage the colors to swirl and overlap differently it will make dramatic swirls.
Technique 2: The In-The-Pot Swirl
On the list of techniques this one is the easiest and popular method for adding beautiful, intricate swirls to homemade soap. It is straightforward, making it a favorite among soap makers, both beginner and experienced artisans.
In this technique, various soap colors are swirled together ‘in the pot’. It works better when swirled at thin trace, producing more delicate and finer patterns compared to using thick trace.
Steps to perform drop swirl
- Once your base is at trace, divide the mixture into separate containers, depending on how many colors you want in the swirl.
- Add your chosen colorants to each portion of the soap and mix well.
- Take each colored soap and pour it back into your original mixing pot in layers.
- Stir each portion gently with a spatula or a stick blender on a low setting, avoiding the introduction of too many air bubbles.
- Once satisfied with swirls, pour the mixture into the mold.
- Using a skewer or a chopstick, gently swirl through the colors. The idea is to move minimally—think of it as dragging a feather through the mixture.
Technique 3: The Hanger Swirl
This technique will be a more valuable and beginner-friendly technique if you learn it the hanger swirl can give you a lot of different designs. I do use a hanger tool for it which is easy to clean and use it very well as it works with various molds. You can also use draging tools to swirl them together.
Steps to perform The Hanger Swirl
- Bring it to light trace.
- Divide it into separate containers for each color you plan to use. Add your colorants and mix thoroughly.
- Pour the soap batter into the loaf mold. You can pour it in layers or drop it in different spots within the mold. Blend it before pouring.
- Once you complete the pouring then Take your wire hanger or hanger swirl tool and insert it into the soap batter. Starting at one end of the mold, move the hanger through the batter in a swirling, figure-eight motion.
- You can try vertical, horizontal, or diagonal movements to create various swirl patterns.
- After swirling, let your soap sit in the mold until it is firm enough to unmold. Once it’s ready, cut the soap into bars to reveal the intricate swirl patterns inside.
