Seifen im Glueck: Tall and Skinny Shimmy

Since 13. March 2020, we stay at home to avoid getting in contact with the Corona virus. Kindergarden and schools are closed so my kids are at home and I have to homeschool my older son. We are really very busy all day long, however, there is some time for soapmaking when the kids are sleeping :-)

Everybody who has kids knows that it's really important to have a tissue box on the table since horrible things can happen when kids sneeze while eating. When they inhale suspiciously I quickly - like a frog catching a fly - grab a tissue und cover the face of one of my sons before the disaster happens. Last month we had this really beautiful tissue box on our table. I was watching it with my soapmaking-eye (this comes in action very often; it sees things from a soapmaking perspective: how I could make soap in/of/from something). I considered to use this pattern for the Clam Shell technique but didn't have time for another attempt; I kept the empty box as am inspiration.

When I started practicing for this month challenge, I knew what I wanted to try: using the pattern of the tissue box for the Tall and Skinny Shimmy design. Nevertheless, I had to practice first and master the technique. I started with the pattern that was shown in a beautiful soap from Tatiana Serko in the tutorial.

My fist attempt was not that bad. I used titanium dioxide in the soap but did only mix by hand (and not with the sick blender). The reason was, that it was a tip for the technique to soap as liquid as possible. The titanium dioxide supported the batter not to be too liquid but didn't mix in very well. If you have a very detailed look on the soap you can see some white sparkles.

My next tries were way too liquid without using titanium dioxide and only mixing by hand. I used a whisk that turns around when you push it. That worked quite well, however, I should have waited a bit for the batter to thicken from no trace to light trace. When the batter is to liquid, the soap drowns into the soap you poured before and does not show the shimmy pattern. I did this twice :-(

I don't know how many different soaps I made with this technique the last two weeks - maybe six or seven? Finally, I made a soap which I was really pleased with. The shimmy looks perfect and I love the colors.

Also, I made the attempt I was dreaming of when I first saw the tissue box. This was an attempt for the advanced category where three pours were expected. For the "leaves" I used an in-the-pot swirl with greens. That was one pour. I started with a black pour (hoping for a well-defined shimmy line), then the in-the-pot swirl followed by a white pour. I wanted the black and white show a cosmic design so I added black and white to the in-the-pot swirl as well as first and last pour.

I took me a while to fill seven cups with the white, black and greens. I measured the pours into the cup to get almost equal portions of colors in every cup. Therefore, I had to do some math prior to mixing the colors.

I made a video showing the pouring and cutting of the soap that you can find here: https://youtu.be/jWvyAOJtGHU

Finally, I ended up with two different soaps I really like: The leaves pattern for the advanced category (21 overall pours) and the 7-color shimmy for the regular category and couldn't decide which one to enter for the soap challenge. Nevertheless, since I was dreaming of the leaves pattern for a while and it really turned out as I wanted it to turn out this was my choice, supported by lots of kind comments on Instagram for this picture. Thanks’ to everybody helping me decide!

Also, a big thank you to Amy hosing the Challenge and Tatiana Serko for showing the technique! Please stay safe and healthy everybody! Take care, Diane