Tall & Skinny Shimmy In Our 6" T&S Soap Mold

To celebrate the release of our new 6″ Tall & Skinny one-pound mold, I wanted to make a fun soap! This design, the Tall & Skinny Shimmy, was featured in the April 2020 Soap Challenge Club.

The Tall & Skinny Shimmy is made with 7 different colors (or 7 shades of the same color). I chose to use 4 colors, repeating 3 of the colors twice, to make up my 7 different colors. The design is accomplished by elevating one side of a Tall & Skinny soap mold, then pouring the soap down the wall of the lower side. You rotate the soap mold after each pour so each subsequent pour is made down the opposite side of the mold from the previous pour. That creates the design. (More details in the instruction section.)

What You’ll Need

These are the oils and additives I used to make this soap. You could try any combination of oils; just make sure you choose oils that will make a very fluid batter.

Basic Soaping Instructions

Before getting started, please prepare to soap safely! Long sleeves, gloves, eye protection, and close-toed shoes are a must. If you have never made cold process soap before, we’re glad you’re here! Please check out this blog post, which is the first in a series on beginning soapmaking.

Weigh all the oils into a microwave-safe container; set aside.

Weigh the fragrance oil into a small glass container; set aside.

Weigh the lye.

Weigh the liquid you will be using.

Slowly add the lye to the liquid, stirring. Do this in a well-ventilated area. It will give off toxic fumes that you do not want to inhale. Once the lye is completely dissolved, set the mixture aside to cool.

Pop the oils into the microwave to melt, using 30-second increments. Once they are completely liquid, set them aside to cool.

Here is your break to clean up your work space, set out the mold you will use, visit the rest room. Once the oils and the lye mixture are within 10 degrees of each other and have cooled to about 90ºF, you’re ready to make this soap.

Carefully pour the lye mixture into the oils, taking care not to splash. Stir with your spoon, then pulse the stick blender a few times just to emulsify the soap batter. With this design, it’s very important you don’t overdo the stick blending; you need a very fluid batter.

Tall & Skinny Shimmy Instructions

7 cups of soap colored and ready to pour.

This pour must be done with a fluid batter, so make sure you don’t overdo the stick blending. You’ll also want to let the oils and lye mixture cool to about 90ºF.

Divide your emulsified batter into 7 containers, and color each container as desired. You could use 7 different colors, 7 shades of the same color, or alternate between a few colors as I did. Add fragrance and hand stir.

It helps a lot to use disposable paper cups to make it easy to pour the soap. Whatever containers you use, be sure you can pour a thin stream of soap from them.

After coloring and fragrancing your soap batter, prepare to pour. Line up your cups of soap in the order which you plan to pour them. Place a block or something under the long side of the mold to tilt it, then pour the first cup of soap down the wall of the lower side of the mold. Now rotate the mold around so the next pour will be on the opposite side. Pour the next cup down the wall of the lower side of the mold. It will displace some of the soap from the first pour. Continue in this manner, rotating the mold after each cup of soap is poured. You may have to decrease the tilt of the mold for your last pour depending on how near the soap batter has gotten to the top of the mold.

The pour is done along the long side of the mold.

I did a simple back and forth swirl on the top of the soap.

After my 7 colors were in the mold, I took a chopstick and swirled just the top of the soap. I then covered the mold with plastic wrap and placed it in the oven, which was preheated to 170ºF, and I left it there undisturbed for about 8 hours. (Usually I’d leave it 24 hours, but I needed to use my oven to cook dinner.)

After soap has hardened, unmold it and cut into six 1” bars of soap. These bars are not very large (less than 4 ounces each), but they fit perfectly in the hand.

Finished soaps.

And another shot.

Notes

While my shimmy isn’t perfect, it’s still a pretty neat soap! (By mistake, I poured the red on the blue without rotating the mold first.)

I was a little concerned it would be hard to get the soap out of the mold, but it wasn’t.

Putting the soap in the oven preheated to 170ºF ensured it wouldn’t stall, which is a common issue when using smaller molds. It worked perfectly, and I was able to unmold the soap after 24 hours.

Give this little mold a try; I think you’ll like it!