Soap Piping tips: How we piped our cold process succulent & cactus themed soap embeds

Today we are treating you to a midweek bonus video!
This coming Friday, we will be uploading a succulent themed soap video. We will be using lots of piped, cold process soap embeds in this design and thought we would take a little time today to show you exactly how we made all of the embeds.
We are using a selection of different piping tips to create the different cacti and succulents and we will let you know which specific piping tips we used for each design.
The cacti are all coloured naturally and the colourants we used to create these shades were Purple Brazilian clay (for the Rose succulents), Indigo dye and Annatto extract. To create the different shade of green, we simply mixed different ratios of Indigo and Annatto together - more Annatto for a yellower green and more Indigo for a bluer green.
Piping the embeds was a lot of fun but also quite time sensitive. We used our regular soap recipe to create the embeds and then left it to firm up until it was firm enough to hold the piped design but not so firm that it wouldn't pipe! We did find that the addition of clay in the Rose succulent caused the batter to firm up much more quickly and this did create some problems with piping. For this reason, we would recommend only using clays in piping if there is no other good colour option or if you are only doing a small amount of piping.
If you enjoy our videos and soap making tutorials please do give us a like and subscribe :-)
We will be uploading new videos every Friday and possibly the odd midweek bonus video here and there!
You can also follow us and find our soaps here:
www.sussexsoap.co.uk
sussexhandmadesoap
sussex_handmade_soap
If you do head over to our website, we offer our KZbin friends 20% off purchases if you enter code "youtube20" at checkout :-)

[@kathysanchez5945]

Great job! Love your hair color!!!

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you Kathy! Yes, the hair was a bit of a spur of the moment decision but I am happy with how it turned out!

[@denanowlin8451]

What a wonderful job! Very creative and talented.

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you Dena :-)

[@ChampagneProperty]

They looked fine to me, looking forward to your next video xx

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you Amanda! Yes, I am excited to put up this weeks video. It has honestly become my favourite one so far! I think I even prefer it to the Christmas tree one we did! xx

[@marcelsoaps]

I love soap piping! thanks for sharing it :) you make me want to make another succulent soap!

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you Marcel. I have just watched your succulent video. You made such a lovely succulent soap, you should definitely do another! :-)

[@cristinaflores8920]

I loved it! I hope I can try soap piping in the near future

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Go for it Cristina! It takes a bit of getting used to (the hardest part is knowing when the consistency is right) but once you have the hang of it it is great fun to play with and experiment!

[@GR-hy3tf]

Wow, how did you get the batter thick enough and do you start with the piping at a high temperature? I tried it once absint went straight through the piping.. Amazing again. Xx

[@thebadpoet]

I love this! I just bought some piping tips to experiment with, but much simpler than yours! I have an odd question. I’d love to buy some of your soaps, I live in the US though. Would it be better to wait until lockdown/stay at home/ etc orders are less stringent between countries? Or are you still able to ship internationally without major fuss at the moment?

[@TheSussexHandmadeSoapCompany]

Thank you and good luck with your own piping! We are still able to post to the US without any major problems at the moment (orders we are receiving are still being dispatched by us on time). There are some postal delays due to covid etc but so far everything that we have sent out has arrived. The longest delay we have been made aware of was 2 weeks but that one made it to its destination in the end! With that in mind, my advice would be that if you are happy to wait for delivery a little longer than normal then ordering now should be no problem but do allow extra days for them to arrive. Of course, if you would rather wait until lockdown and stay at home orders are eased a little then we totally understand! :-)

[@thebadpoet]

Thanks so much! I just watched the succulent soap video and it’s so gorgeous I think I’ll wait till that one is available. I don’t mind waiting for such amazing looking soaps!