Aurora

This soap does not look like what I had envisioned.  I was going for a dark blue base with streaks of black, green and purple.  When I added my fragrance oil, the saponification process rapidly increased and before I had a chance to pour my colors into the mold, they were thicker than pudding.  Rather than “pour”, I had to “plop” my colors into the mold.  Rather than “swirl”, I had to “blend”.  However, I’m relatively pleased with the final result.  The green still “pops” a bit, though the contrasts are not what I had hoped for.  And the white powder on the top?  That’s a bad case of soda ash.  I’ve read it’s caused by high levels of humidity and we’ve had our fair share of that here in the St. Louis area, but I’m at a loss as to how to prevent it.  I’ve read placing wax paper on top of the soap will help prevent it, but that sometimes ruins the appearance of my soaps.  My husband suggested that I wait a while before covering my soap so that condensation doesn’t form with the soap is still hot, so I’m going to try that next time.  It smells wonderful, though!  I used Sleigh Ride fragrance oil, which smells like peppermint and snow (to me).  We’ll see what a month on the curing rack does for it.