Serendipity and the Soapmaker

One recent batch of soap that was a lot of fun to make is "Rorschach on the Rocks".  Cold Process soaping has a way of toying with you as to who's directing the creativity.  The "rocks" are a two tone pink soap colored with Red Reef Clay and scented with Bitter Almond Essential Oil.  Bitter Almond is the natural Amaretto scent.  The cherry scent came on strong even though I used a very light hand with the essential oil.  It so happened that I had also made a batch of soap scented with natural Anise Essential Oil.  My son came in and said, "It smells like Cherry Twizzlers in here!"  So I decided when dealing with the too strong cherry scented soap, I'd blend it with an Anise soap to have a batch that smelled like the popular candy. 

The following day, I chopped up the cherry soap and decided to try to outline the pink chunks to stand out visually.  I did this by sprinkling powered activated charcoal over the pink chunks and shaking them in a plastic bag.  My plan was to have the Anise scented "pour over" have a black swirl in it.  But, as often happens with cold process soap, the texture of the liquid soap can begin to thicken before you have finished putting it where you intended to.  The black soap which was colored with black clay and activated charcoal, got thicker than I intended, sooner than I hoped.....so I poured the thin white soap over my pink cherry rocks and then blobbed the pudding thick black soap on top.  A visiting friend said, "That looks like an ink blot test."  "Rorschach on the Rocks" was born.  It doesn't look like I planned, but it does smell just like Cherry Twizzlers.