Learning to Make Soap: Part 8

How not to video your soap making

This week I thought I would show you my first attempt at videoing my soap making and share how it didn't quite go to plan! At all! I love watching soap making videos so I thought it would be fun to make my own and hopefully other people would like it too. I was making a new soap recipe and decided to try out a swirl technique called an 'in the pot swirl'. Those of you who subscribe to my newsletter would have seen a sneak peak of how this soap turned out in this week's email.

So I set up my soaping area, got all my ingredients weighed out and set up the phone stand so that I could record my soap making. I played around with the angles and where it was set up to try to get what I though was the best view of where I was going to make my soap. So I started recording and set to making my soap. As I was concentrating on my soap making I wasn't really checking the view all the way through - I mean I had checked a few frames and waved my arms around pretending to blend my soap and it had all looked pretty good so I just got on with making my soap.

For this soap the most interesting part was going to be the in the pot swirl, the pour and the soap top. And from a soap making point of view all of these parts went to plan. I was really pleased with how the soap turned out, especially the swirl on the top. So as soon as I'd finished making the soap and cleared up all my soap making kit, I started to watch the video. So far so good, you can see all of the first steps and then we were getting to the interesting bits - you can clearly see me pouring the green soap batter into the plain soap batter at four points ready to do the in to pot swirl and then.... what, no! my arm completely blocks the view of the actual swirl! Ok, not a complete disaster and we still have the pour and the swirled soap top to see. Thankfully you can see the pour into the mould but then when we got to doing the design on the soap top - here I tried a version of a Taiwan swirl (circling Taiwan swirl) and again... no!! my arm is in the way for the entire thing! I mean you get tantalising glimpses of what I am doing, but you can't really see anything. I really do not think I could have positioned my hand and arm more perfectly to block the soap from view if I had tried! It is kind of funny (I think initially I found it that slightly hysterical kind of funny) but a little bit gutting as the whole point of the recording was really to get the bits that my arm is completely in the way of.

Despite all of this I have edited the video into a short clip for you to enjoy (that was another test of my patience - using a new bit of software that I did not find at all intuitive). I can guarantee you are not going to learn anything (other then how not to video soap making) or really see anything other than my arm in the way, but it is kind of ridiculous and funny!

So what have I learnt from this - to ask for help with setting up the camera stand and to remember I am left handed so if I set the camera up to the left there will be a chance my arm will get in the way!! I know that might sound obvious but I often do things using my right hand - even in the lab I used to do certain things left handed and certain things right handed!! But it seems that soap pouring and all kinds of swirls is definitely a left handed thing! Anyway I hope you enjoy watching this silly video. As well as making my video for the blog I have managed to salvage some parts of it for social media - not quite as much as I had hoped, and definitely without the 2 most interesting bits, but it wasn't a complete disaster and it has given me a bit of a laugh at my own absurdity!

Hopefully I will be able to produce slightly more professional videos from now on and this will be the last time you see my arm instead of the swirl

until next week - take care xx

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I am Kelly Townsend and this is the Small Kindness Blog. I am a scientist, a bee lover, a rewilding obsessive, and I want to spread Small Kindnesses through the medium of soap. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for your daily dose of kindness (as well as to see how the soap making is going!)