Making Ombré soap

To watch the video of the making, scroll all the way down for the link.I decided to try my hand at making ombré soap seduced by the idea of less containers to wash after making soap.  The post-cleaning part is my least favorite part of soap making, and I think this is a feeling shared by many.So, the first thing I did, was of course to google how to make ombré cold process soap.  I found a few videos and blogs.  Some of them involved using more than one color.  Like using teal, and then darker shades of blue.  Or using yellow and then orange.  Since my goal was to use just one container, I wanted just to have one color, with different shades or tints of it.  (A shade is one you add black to a color, and a tint when you add white)Most of the pictures and videos had of these gradient colored look had defined layers for each depth of color, in these, the layers were at medium trace.  I wanted a more blended look though.  I found a good video of this, but it involved a very liquid soap mix and a circular pattern.  So, these were my goals:1- To have a soap batter that was neither too thin nor too thick.2- To only use blue in the gradient layers (I wanted a brown to simulate sand, I got white instead though.3- To achieve darker shades by adding black or orange.Why orange you may ask?Because usually when you add black to a color, it goes dark really fast.  But if you add its complimentary color, it goes dark more gradually.  Here is a sample chart I found online:Orange is the complimentary color to blue (its opposite in a color wheel).  However, I did not have orange mica, but I had copper mica and I usually get a peachy color with it in cold process, so I used that instead.  Something that aided in blending the color was using a horizontal rod to push the layers together, with a slight touch.  (this was a clamp that I had wrapped with clear tape, in case it was not stainless steel.)  Initially my goal was to create a wave effect, but the soap batter was too thin for that, so this was a happy accident.The process:

• I started from light to dark.  My first layer had a hint of titanium dioxide and a little bit of blue
• Each layer was fairly thin, about a quarter of an inch
• With each layer, I added a bit more of blue mica, and eventually copper mica too
• In the last layers, I added black charcoal too
• Every couple of layers, I would dip the clamp horizontal rod very slightly (just to touch the last layer into the one underneath.

If you want to watch the process, here it is:https://youtu.be/IctUFk0rfrM