Swirling, Layering & Embedding
Once you’ve made your first few soaps, you’ll be looking to experiment and change up the look. You can make your soap reflect your aesthetic and personality through little tips and tricks that change its appearance. Swirling, layering and embedding are a few techniques you can use with your melt and pour soap. These are some of our favourite melt and pour methods at ZenseMe, so we’re sharing with you our favourite tips and tricks to help with your soap making.
What is Melt and Pour?
Before we jump into these popular techniques, we want to quickly recap on how melt and pouring works. This is the easiest way of making your homemade soaps. You don’t have to worry about dealing with lye, and you can be inventive with your soap design. We’ve already dealt with the saponification process for you, so it’s a more streamlined process for your soap making. It’s the perfect choice for anyone making soaps at home as a hobby or as gifts for friends and family.
You can even get your children involved as the melt and pour method is easier to control. You’ll still want to make sure that you’re taking all the health and safety precautions, regardless of which melt and pour method you use.
Layering with Melt and Pour Soap
Layering is the easiest technique for you to use and the perfect choice for beginners. It’ll give you the appearance of clean lines as you will pour each layer individually, placing them on top of each other to create a crisp contrast.
When you’re using this technique, the emphasis is on getting the temperatures right. If you make a mistake, you could end up making one layer melt into the other. Your first layer should be allowed to cool after you pour it. You don’t want it to become hard, but it should have formed its top skin before you go in with the second layer.
Rubbing alcohol is your best friend to keep the layers together but separate. You can add it to the top of each layer to help each layer adhere to the other.
When you’re adding in your second layer – and any others after that – you want to make sure they’re not too hot. If the temperature is too high, you could end up melting the layers underneath.
You can keep repeating these steps until you have all the layers on your soap and achieve your desired look.
Swirling with Melt and Pour Soap
Swirling is one of the trending techniques in soap making right now, driven by the love for tie-dye and ombre effects. With this method, you can mix and match colours to create a work of art. Depending on your aesthetic, you could use pastel shades for a romantic look or similar shades for a uniform and minimalistic look.
The advanced method
Swirling takes a little more time and patience to achieve. It’s a good method to try after you’ve mastered the art of layering your melt and pour soaps.
If you have it, get some rubbing alcohol, along with stir sticks to help create the swirl. Your soaps should be at a lower temperature, around 130 degrees, so that they don’t melt into each other and create a less structured look.
Start by adding your first layer of soap. Leave it to sit until it has already formed its top skin, but before it goes entirely hard. Take your stir sticks and soak them in rubbing alcohol to stop them from sticking to your soap.
You have two options when it comes to adding your second layer. You can use the stick to scrape along the first layer of soap before pouring on your next layer. Alternatively, you can pour it directly onto your first layer.
Once you’ve got your second layer down, you can move the stir sticks in circles along the layers to create a distinctive swirl. It’s best to start small and not do too many swirls as this can create a less uniform look.
If you’re experimenting with brighter colours, it’s best to choose white as your base colour to create a stronger contrast. It may take you a few times to get the hang of the swirling method. With a little practice and some patience, you’ll be able to master the art of swirling in no time.
The easy method
There also an easier way to create swirled soaps with our Soap Making Kit. This way is to simply add the color dyes after you melted the soap base, and then stir. Use 2-5 drops of our dye per 2 soap bars. You can add more drops if you want to enhance the color. And you can mix the colors as you wish.
The next step in your soapmaking journey is embedding. This method allows you to let your imagination run wild by embedding items into your soap for a textured look. You can even make your soap look like a garden if that tickles your fancy.
Embedding with Melt and Pour Soap
This method is another one where the temperature is important. You don’t want to add in the embellishments too early in case they melt, but you also don’t want to wait until your soap has completely hardened as it won’t set properly into the top layer.
For this method, you want to pour your soap into half of your mould. Wait until this base layer has started to harden so that your embellishments won’t sink and disappear into the soap.
Take each embellishment, whether it’s a seashell or an artificial flower, and add rubbing alcohol to help them stick to your soap. You want to decide your placement for each embellishment before pressing down on gently to keep them in place. Once you’ve got your embellishments secured, you can fill your mould with your remaining soap batter.
These three methods will take some trial and error to get right. If you’re a beginner, we recommend starting with the layering technique and gradually working your way up to swirling and embedding. While these two techniques are a little harder to master, they’ll help you add a touch of luxury to your handmade soap, whether you’re planning to give it as a gift or add it to your bathroom countertop.
At ZenseMe, our soap making kit comes with everything you need to create natural and organic handmade soaps. Enough to do your own swirling, layering and embedding!
Are you looking for other tutorials? Perhaps you are interested in our essential oils that come with the soap making kit, or how to add flowers & herbs.
Our all-in-one SOAP MAKING KIT
Make your own soap with our Melt and Pour natural soap making supplies kit
★ BECOME A SOAPMAKER – A great place to start and learn the art of soapmaking. Make about 8 luxurious homemade soap bars with our all natural ingredients! Great for beginners & experts. 100% safe, no harmful chemicals.
★ ALL-IN-ONE – 6 pure essential oils, dried flowers, 1 heat-resistant (re-usable) silicone design mold (6-cavity) with, 2 lbs. of Shea Butter, 4 color dyes, 8 wrap paper labels and instructions.
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★ EASY INSTRUCTIONS – Our step-by-step instructions contain pictures and clearly explained directions. Or just watch the how-to-video.
