Lovin’ Soap Studio Basic Body Bar - More Moisture

Use Castor Oil for gold drizzle. Try adding 1 tsp of mica into 1 TBS of oil.
Step 1: Create a lye solution. Weigh the water and lye into two separate containers. Slowly pour the sodium hydroxide into the water while stirring. Stir until completely dissolved and set aside to cool. Your solution will start off cloudy and will clear up as it cools.
Step 2: Prepare the base oils. First, weigh any solid oils and butters into a container and melt. You can melt using the microwave or low heat on a burner. Next, weigh each liquid oil into the melted oils. The liquid oils will cool down the melted oils and leave you with a base oil mixture that is about at the correct temperature to make soap. It might still need to cool down a bit.
Step 3: Weigh your essential oil or fragrance oil into a glass or stainless steel container and add to your base oil.
Step 4: Prepare your mold. If you need to line your mold, line it.
Step 5: Check the temperatures. You should now have a container containing liquid base oils and a container containing lye solution. Take the temperatures using an infra-red temperature gun. Be sure to stir each mixture before taking the temp. You want your temperatures to be between 80-110° F.
(NOTE: I usually make my mica/oil mixture at this point. So it can be ready to go in case things move quickly!)
Step 6: Once you have reached desired temperatures, pour the lye solution into the oil mixture and mix to emulsion.
Step 7: Divide the soap into containers to color. (One large main color, four smaller other colors)
Step 8: Add colorants to each cup and mix well using a mini-mixer.
Step 9: Pour the base into your mold. Leave a little bit in case you want to pour some base on top! Totally up to you!
Step 10: Pour each color into your base as you move the cup up and down your mold. Hold your pouring cup up high to make the soap dive down into your base. Hold your pouring cup down low so that the soap will land closer to the top of your base. Add the rest of your base if you have a bit left over like I did. Scrape out each cup into thin lines on top to swirl.
Step 11: Pour your mica/oil mixture on top of the soap in thin lines.
Step 12: Swirl your soap using a skewer or something similar!
Note: I typically spray my soap with rubbing alcohol to combat ash! Just be aware that if you do that on a mica/oil swirl, it might pick up the mica and move it around. So, do so with caution! I didn’t spray this one.
Step 13: Let your soap harden and saponify for at least 24 hours.
Step 14: Unmold and cut into slices!

Step 15: Cure your soap for 4-6 weeks.