Advanced Soap Ball Designs

 Ringed and Concentric Circle Ball Embeds

We covered the basics in the post 'Three Ways to Make Soap Ball Embeds from Scrap Soap'. I ended the post with a bit of a tutorial on making soap balls with previously made soap, using the Warm Grated Method using a microwave oven. In this post, we're talking about using fresh soap.

So in this post, I want to share with you the Ringed and Concentic Circle soap balls technique I created and have been using since Autumn 2012. These two techniques are not fast, or as easy as the previous techniques written about, but they do create a stunning soaps.

Ringed Balls

'Icy Snowballs' was my first Ringed Ball soap, back in 2012. I think I may have come up with this technique for embeds, as I saw nobody out there online doing this at that time. I knew a couple of other soapers had made concentric circle embeds using canes, but I saw nobody using this technique. This is something I figured out myself, but I suppose there's always a chance someone else out there had thought of doing the same thing.

''Icy Snowballs' cold process soap (2012)*

I learned a lot making this soap. There were lessons about Glycerine Rivers, (which I happen to like in this soap), the pitfalls of using oatmeal in bright white soap and sadly, I experienced my first downright bleeding obvious attempt at wholesale design imitation theft.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? My arse! (ahem). I was really peeved. I mean, I knew who had done it, (they had recently sent me a friend request on Facebook, via a soapmakers Facebook group) and had commented and liked my picture of this this soap in that group. Not only was the colourway exactly the same, but the concentric balls too. This is such a unique design, there was no way it was a flook. I felt really hurt actually and there was no crediting me either. Aaaanyway, it's inevitable really, you put a good design out there are people are going to be 'inspired' (again, ahem). It really did make me stop and think wow, some people are just so brazen! On a plus, hers wasn't that great to be frank, so ha! (Bitter? Moi? Yeah, just a bit). Enough said. I wont go into it here, but there's a history with 'Icy Snowballs designs being copied, it happened again in 2016 by a soaper of high regard no less! But we will bank that for another day and another post!

So, where was I? (Sighs and takes a big glug of tea to calm down), oh yes. Ringed Balls.
 

When I first started soapmaking, I didn't use micas, I rarely use them today, mostly just the metallics. I favour mixing my own colours from oxides, clays, botanicals and some lab colours. I'd used cocoa to create pencil lines in a couple of soaps and had wondered if that could be replicated with colour in some way. Great minds think alike and after a search online, I saw a couple of soapers doing just that, but using micas, not only for pencil lines, but coating embeds too. I felt the mica effect was so slight as to be almost unnoticeable sometimes, so I decided to try to approach this ringed effect using coloured soap instead, with a view to creating thicker more pronounced lines.

The Design One aspect of soapmaking I really enjoy, is having an idea for a design and fragrance blend completely from the ether and designing/creating them from scratch. I'd planned to use a ringed ball effect for a while, but didn't want to simply use the effect without making it work along with the overall design, fragrance AND name. It was coming up to Christmas and as I was making balls for my Oh Christmas Tree soap, white snowballs made sense. To reference coldness, the only hues which make sense are on the cool side of the spectrum, so I went with a teal blue coloured ring and some craggy marbled white/teal ones too. (I also coated them in silver mica, just to see if it would add anything, but it was pretty much lost in the design). I wanted them to be floating in a swirling pastel coloured base, so went for a four colour in the pot swirl, which sort of looks like snow thawing on a landscape...

'Icy Snowballs' cold process soap (2013)*

The Name It was the design which prompted the name 'Icy Snowballs'. Remember those rock hard snowballs that naughty kids used to make and throw? With chunks of hard icy snow inside? Yeah, those. The craggy marbled balls referenced those and the rings simply referred to the cold.

The Fragrance I knew I wanted peppermint essential oil, evoking the chill of winter, but I also wanted something to reference the cosiness of being wrapped up warm and an earthy herbal note, referencing the outdoors. I came up with a very pleasing combination of soft notes of amber, vanilla, and powdery earthy oakmoss, green herbal notes, a bit of citrus with a menthol peppermint zing.

The Process After I'd come up with my overall design, formulated my fragrance / essential oil blend and name for this soap, I began to plan. Obviously, with any soap containing embeds, you're going to be making two (or more) separate batches of soap. Rolling soap balls takes a lot of time, especially in larger batches. These ones, take a lot more time.

Firstly, you need to make the soap to be used for the balls. For Ringed or Concentric Circle balls, ideally, you need to use fresh soft soap. I made two batches, one white, one teal. Two days later, I started to make the balls. I wont go into the craggy marbled balls process here, (another time).

The first element (the inside) is self evident. Simply pinch pieces off your soap and roll into balls. The tricksy part is coating the balls. You want to tear pieces off the other soap you made, roll it out and wrap each ball with it, like a little coat, then roll theball in your hands to make it fuse together. It's tricky, as the soap balls are quite soft and easy to dent and sometimes the 'coats' dont want to stick to the inner soap balls. It does take a while to perfect, but the effect is well worth it.

Concentric Circles

Did you ever eat Gobstoppers as a child? Aah those hard boiled sweet spheres that stopped yer blethering. Do you remember the huge hot cinnamon flavoured ones which had mullticoloured layers throughout? You couldn't help but take it out of your mouth from time to time and stare at the patterns created as you wore it down. No? Well I must be showing my age then! I loved those things! Sometimes I'd smash them to see the concentric rings inside. Ah, thems were the days...

'Icy Snowballs' cold process soap (2015)

Tree rings, droplet ripples in water, bracket fungi, geological formations and even inside a certain beetroot, (Beta vulgaris 'Chioggia'), concentric circles are all over the natural world. They're an incredibly pleasing pattern and one which I really enjoy using in my soap designs.

The Process It's exactly the same as with Ringed balls, but with more layers. With my third version of 'Icy Snowballs', (above), I did away with the In the Pot Swirled base and focused my time on the embeds. These were made with three separate batches of soap; two shades of blue and a white, coloured with ultramarine oxide and titanium dioxide.

*apologies for the low photo quality and the humongous logo stamps. These were created some time ago..!