April Soap Challenge - Pour Through/Pull Through

One of the benefits of being out of work and being told to stay at home to prevent the spread of Covid-19 is that I have a lot of time for crafting and soap making (not that I'm making a lot of soap). Thankfully, each month, the Soapmaking Forum has a challenge; the challenge for April is the Pour Through or Pull Through technique.

This technique is borrowed from acrylic painting and can make some interesting patterns. The Pour Through technique involves pouring coloured soap batter through a strainer or colander, depending on the size of your mold. The Pull Through technique involves pouring your batter into a mold that has a shaped strainer at the bottom of it. Once the strainer (or whatever is being used) is pulled up through the soap batter, patterns are made. If it's made in a column mold, it usually ends up looking like a kaleidoscope. I've seen some beautiful examples of this technique but I've also seen some muddy looking examples. It's a technique I've been wanting to try for a while but really didn't have time for experimenting.

Well, now I do and this technique just happened to be the challenge for this month. I've already made a first attempt that I'm pretty happy with but I think I'd like to try another one, tweaking with what I learned in the first try.

Here's the tool I used for my attempt #1.

It's from a Pickle (Gherkin) jar, meant to pull the pickles up from the bottom of the jar. I tied two strings to it, one at the top of the handle and one at the opposite side, making it easier to pull out of the soap batter. My mold is made from the 3" core from a roll of blueprint paper (working at a print shop definitely has its perks).

Here's the soap in the mold (I won't be showing the cut soap until the challenge is over or unless I like my next attempt better).

It looks kind of muddy, doesn't it? I was a little worried at first but, trust me, it doesn't look to bad at all. I purposely made a full batch (my usual 1000 grams) and had enough left over to fill my guest soap mold. One thing I must say, I'm really happy with the way the colours came out. The blues are coloured with Ultramarine Blue and a bit of Activated Charcoal and the green is coloured with Olive Mica. The soap is scented with Candora's Caribbean Escape (Sweet Melon, Raspberry Nectar, Italian Lemon, Creamy Coconut, and Raw Sugarcane), which reminds me of SUMMER!

The fragrance oil does have 3% Vanilla content so it may discolour a bit. I added Titanium Dioxide to keep the discolouration to a minimum but I expect it will still darken to a light beige.

It felt good to make soap again; it almost brings a bit of normalcy to my week. 

Stay safe and..... wash your hands. Need soap? We have soap!