Summary
Highlights
Safiya expresses her love for fancy soap and her desire to make her own swirly soap from scratch, rather than simply melting down existing soaps. She introduces the concept of saponification, explaining how oils and lye combine to create soap.
A sponsored message for Wix highlights its utility for creating various websites, including e-commerce. Safiya then delved into the chemistry of soap, detailing how fatty acids from oils react with sodium hydroxide lye through saponification to form glycerin and fatty acid salts, which are essential for cleaning.
Safiya struggled to find a comprehensive beginner's tutorial but eventually discovered 'Soap Queen TV' by Anne-Marie, who provided detailed instructions and emphasized the dangers of working with lye. She chose a 'hanger-swirl' soap tutorial and ordered all necessary supplies.
Safiya prepared her hanger tool, colorants, and fragrance oil. She meticulously measured distilled water and lye while wearing safety gear as instructed. After mixing the lye water and oils, she accidentally over-blended the soap batter, resulting in a thick, unpourable mixture (thick trace), making it impossible to create the desired art. This led to a complete failure of the first attempt.
With new ingredients, Safiya embarked on a second attempt, focusing on avoiding over-blending to achieve a lighter trace. She quickly combined the lye water and oils, deliberately blending for less than 60 seconds. This time, the batter was pourable, a significant improvement from the first try.
Safiya incorporated the colorants and fragrance oil into the soap batter. She layered the different colored soaps into the loaf mold, starting with a thickened dark blue base. Then, she attempted the hanger swirl technique, moving a u-shaped wire through the soap in the mold. Despite the soap still feeling somewhat thick, she completed the swirl and created a decorative top layer with a skewer.
After spraying the top with rubbing alcohol and curing the soap under a heating pad and box for 48 hours, Safiya unveiled the soap loaf. While it had artistic elements and smooth sides, the layering was uneven, and the crisp cotton fragrance was intense.
Safiya cut the loaf into individual bars. The internal swirl pattern varied; some bars displayed an 'ocean wave' pattern, suggesting the hanger swirl technique was partially successful, but not exactly as intended. She noted the soap felt like 'custard' during swirling and acknowledged the design wasn't as precise as Anne-Marie's.
Safiya reflected on the outcome, acknowledging the textured top and wave-like patterns, which she found appealing despite not being the perfect hanger swirl. She attributed the consistency issues to underestimating the speed needed for pouring and her inexperience with the swirl technique. Despite the challenges, she enjoyed the process and expressed interest in making more soap, demonstrating improvement in subsequent attempts even if swirling remained a hurdle.