Back when Jess & I made Christmas Stripe soap, we also made this soap, which I’m calling Snowdrift soap. It smells of wintergreen and spearmint, and has a nice wintery, holiday feel without taking the traditional red/white/green + cinnamon route.
Blue oxides add the blue, and while I added some titanium dioxide for the white, it would appear I didn’t add quite enough. Oh well.
 Snowdrift Soap
40% olive oil (pomace) (USA / Canada)
30% refined coconut oil (USA / Canada)
10% unrefined shea butter (USA / Canada)
15% lard
5% castor oil (USA / Canada)30g essential oils of spearmint and wintergreen per 500g oils
1 tbsp white white kaolin clay (USA / Canada) per 500g oils
Blue oxide and water soluble Titanium dioxide
Follow my basic soap making instructions, adding the clay and essential oils at trace. You’ll want a medium trace so you can get distinct, yet still swirled, layers. Divide the soap in half. Colour one half white with titanium dioxide, and the other half blue with blue ultramarine (not too much of either, you’re going for more of a tint than a bright dye job). Alternate the colours in the mould, and then run a spoon or spatula through the soap, twirling to swirl. Sharply rap the mould on the counter to knock out any air bubbles.
Hi, Marie! This is a very nice scent combination! My sisters and I are getting together two weekends from now to have our first CP soaping experience, so I wanted a good base recipe that we could divide into smaller portions for different scenting. This one is a particularly great idea since I have a TON of wintergreen oil (but got scared of it once I read about how it builds up in the body from creams/balms). I figure in the soap it will be much less powerful, and will be easily washed away. Thanks for the idea!
Oooh, fun! Sisterly soap making for the win 🙂 Have fun!
P.S. Instead of Kaolin, I have bentonite clay. Do you think it will work as well here? Or should I run out for some Kaolin?
Well, for starters bentonite is a different colour, so you won’t get that white(err, yellow)/blue effect I got… it’ll be more brown/brownish blue. And, depending on the grind of your bentonite, you may also get some scrubby particulates. It will work, it’ll just be aesthetic differences (and perhaps some texture differences) 🙂
Hi, Marie! Thanks for the quick response! I’m fine with the textural differences! I am not really a fan of bentonite for masks, so I will eventually branch out and buy different clays, but for now, don’t want to make my initial expense (on top of lye and some of the equipment) to be bigger than it has to be.
Incidentally, I am still not 100% sure whether we’ll be using this recipe or your all-purpose one, but the wintergreen/mint combo is definitely making it on the list of soap ‘flavorings’ 🙂 Thanks!
Well, if you’re not worried, I’m not worried 🙂 I, too, find bentonite to be too heavy for face masks, so it generally ends up in scrubs, or at least diluted with lighter clays.
Have fun with your soap & let me know how it goes! You can post a photo on my Facebook page if you want 🙂
When I made this last week, the soap began to clump when I added the essential oils to the room temperature mixture of lye water and oils. The oxides changed colors, too (from green to brown). Ultimately, the soap turned out okay, but it’s not pretty! What happened? (Saffire Blue essential oils)
Hmm. The thing that raises my suspicions the most is your oxides changing colours… oxides don’t change colours. They’re super stable. I have never, ever had an oxide change colours on me during saponification. Can you link me to exactly what you used? “Clumping” is also worrying—was it like ricotta cheese? Or did your trace just accelerate? Are you an experienced soaper? Did you change anything? Have you had success with room temperature soaping before?