You may already have the song in your head. Here it is, courtesy of Simon and Garfunkel. But even if they’re not your speed, the Feelin’ Groovy colors will be. They’re bright and fun and funky, and almost anything you do with them is going to be a good time. These colors together make something of a ‘go big or go home’ kind of soap. There are seven of them, and each shade is beautiful alone, but since every color of the rainbow is here, I decided to embrace them all. Let’s soap.
Feelin’ Colorful
I admit I don’t always go wild with colors. Purple Persuasion is a bit of an outlier, but generally, I just go for one or two, maybe an accent color to add visual interest. I get weirdly excited about a simple, clean, white soap. But when I received this set, I sat them on the table and looked at them in a row, and decided to just go for it. I mixed a full batch of my usual recipe. As ever, use your own recipe if you like, but use one that makes a fairly light colored soap so you can enjoy these colors.
Seven Groovy Shades
Here’s the micas before they’re mixed. From the top, left to right: Cheshire Cat – a deep, bright, true purple; Queen of Hearts – intense reddish pink; Klein Blue – a true, royal blue; Electric Orange – almost neon golden orange; Proud Peacock – a peacock teal shade; Love & Sunshine – cheerful yellow; Enchantment – bright, springy green.
Feelin’ Fragrant
Of course, you don’t have to fragrance your soap. But mine goes into gifts, and my crowd loves a good fragrance. I wanted something bright and strong, and I thought sweet and citrusy would make a great addition to these colors. Also, I didn’t want to deal with acceleration or discoloration, since I wanted to mix it in before I blended it in the individual cups. In my experience, this is a gamble, and you can always divide the oil into the cups of colored soap, if you are so inclined. But I really wanted to do it that way, as much to see if I could as anything else. So, I wanted very well-behaved fragrances. I played a bit in the fragrance drawer, and found Awaken Fragrance Oil. If you want to blend your own colorful soap without worries, there are four ‘Perfect Performers’ sets. Awaken is in ‘Perfect Performers 3’. I blended it with Avalon Fragrance Oil, which is one of my favorite Perfect Performers. (It’s in #1) I blended the fragrances in the full batch, then divided the soap among the seven colors.
Feelin’ Swirly
With the fragrance of honey and citrus in the air, I blended each cup with my mini mixer. To be honest, I think I would have been better off just mixing the fragrances into each individual cup as I normally would have done. But these fragrances behave well, so you do have time to go either way. Having blended thoroughly, I poured a single long row of each color, one on top of the other, into the mold. I poured them from a decent height, so they would mix a little without getting muddy. Then I slipped a swirling tool into the bottom of the mold and brought it up one time in a vaguely figure 8 pattern. By this time, the batter had thickened some, and I wasn’t terribly worried about unwanted color blending.
For the top, I took advantage of the multiple colors that were already on the top of the loaf. I considered glitter. You could glitter, but there’s already a lot going on here.
It is crazy hot here. I ordinarily leave my soap in the fridge about 12 hours. I gave this one quite a bit longer. These colors would be beautiful if gelled, but the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures and humidity here make it difficult to make a soap predictably either fully gelled or entirely not gelled. So this soap got an extra long stay in the soap fridge, and a longer cure time. No gel phase for you, soap.
I’ve Come To Watch Your Flowers Growin’
So many colors. There are no flowers in shades this bright, but there should be. The fragrance is fresh and clean and these colors are gorgeous together. As I said, I’m not normally into bright and splashy colors, but these are perfect together, and they have a great theme song. La, la, la, la, la, la, la….feelin’ groovy!
Happy Soaping!
Erin
