Soap Challenge #3 - Mica Swirled Tops

I am a little behind on my challenges...  I'm really enjoying doing them, but as this is a pretty busy time, I haven't had as much time to play with these new techniques as I wanted.  Having said that, I was a little apprehensive about doing mica swirled tops.  I've seen blog posts by Emily at Sheih Design Studio with her amazing and creative mica tops, and I was a little intimidated to try myself.

I looked at what cool micas I had that would be good for a swirl, found that I had a beautiful gold mica from Brambleberry and built a recipe around that mica.  I had some lemongrass essential oil and wanted to try a blend with spearmint EO, and the colors that made the most sense to me were yellow and green.  I had some spearmint leaves for some texture in the soap, and I felt good to go.

I colored the bottom half yellow, used a cocoa powder pencil line, and made the top green so that I could use the super pearly white and gold micas for the swirl top.  I didn't have any pipettes, but luckily, I had given my husband a molecular mixology set for Christmas which had pipettes, so I repurposed a couple (shhh, don't tell him...)

Here's what the wet soap mica swirls looked like:

I was so pleased with how these turned out!  They kind of look like a tapestry, honestly.  I stuck them in the oven overnight to gel, and the house smelled so good.  The blend was lemongrass, spearmint, and frankincense EOs, but it smells kind of like lemon cake to me right now.

Here's what the soaps look like when cured:

Still looking good!

Some of the beauty of the swirls was lost when the bars were cut, but I really love the colors. If I had a better close up, you could see the spearmint leaves as added texture inside the bar.  Unfortunately, the light wasn't great this morning for pics.

I'm definitely doing this technique again.  I want to try it with textured tops, too.  It was easier than I thought, and it makes these soaps look so polished and fancy!

The only thing I noticed when unmolding, though, is that the mica on top was starting to rub off on my hands...  Has anyone who has tried this technique noticed the same thing? Did I use too much mica?  

~Chrissy