The Prep:

Your first step is to choose a tray or slab mold and then calculate your recipe. This technique doesn’t require a lot of advanced skills, but it can be time consuming. Keep this in mind when formulating your recipe; the recipe we used contained 60% liquid oils and the full water amount. Choose a fragrance or essential oil that will allow you plenty of time to work, and include sodium lactate to make unmolding easier!

Both the dancing funnel technique and faux funnel can be made with two or more colors. You will need a separate squeeze bottle for each color, so make sure you have enough on hand before you choose your colors! Both coordinating and contrasting colors can look great; it just depends on the final design you want. Remember to use colors that you know will hold up in cold process soap and won’t thicken the trace too quickly. Also decide if you want to use equal amounts of each color so you can calculate and then divide the soap batter accordingly. Our design used three colors with equal parts of Crafter’s Choice NuTone Yellow and Crafter’s Choice Lime Green Mojito Mica with a smaller amount of Crafter’s Choice Matte Black Oxide.

We waited to mix our soap batter until everything was at room temperature. We only blended until the batter reached emulsification and then measured the batter into each premixed color. We blended again for a few short bursts to fully incorporate the fragrance and color and then began filling the squeeze bottles


The Design:

Choosing one outline color and a solid inside color makes a true dancing funnel. In our design, we layered multiple inside colors, similar to a faux funnel technique. Whatever you choose to do, begin the design by placing small dots of batter in your outline color on the bottom of the mold. Then, follow by placing a dot of your inside color on top of that. Continue either with your next color, or by layering more dots of the outline color. This is where the time comes in! Keep filling dot by dot until you run out of soap batter or it is too thick to pour. When the soap is finished you will not only have a beautiful design on top, but layers of interest through every bar!