The Dandelion Zebra Swirl is an original design from Vinvela Ebony from Dandelion SeiFee. What an inspiring, creative soapmaker!
(http://seifee.blogspot.co.at/).
Cathy McGinnis of Soaping 101 has a You Tube video on this particular design that I found to be helpful as well.
This swirl needs no special equipment other than a thin divider. The base color is partially poured into the mold then the divider is set into the center of the mold. Using alternate colors each are poured carefully along the one side of the divider and then the divider is pulled out. The remaining base is added to the mold. Any leftover colors are used on the top of the mold to create an interesting swirl or pattern.
Below are my first attempts from earlier this summer. The first is "Just Peachy" with a subtle peach scented fragrance oil. The second soap is scented with a lavender and cedarwood essential oil combination. It is not strong, but very light. had a contest for naming this soap. The winning name was Cedar Stripes.
My first attempt was a blend of orange, lemon and lime citrus essential oils with some new samples of neon pigments (Laser Lemon and Citrus Blast) plus a bit of chromium green oxide. I was glad I added some titanium dioxide to the base as it started darkening right away, most likely from the essential oils. I thought I had enough base in the bottom of the mold to move the pattern further up towards the center... hmm not enough!
Since I still had lots of time before the entries were due .... I gave it another whirl!
I had two fragrance oils I wanted to try for making "man friendly" soaps. The first one was London for Men and the other was Twilight in the Woods.
I went to work on a plan for these two fragrance oils using olive, palm, coconut, and rice bran oils with a little shea butter and castor oil in the recipe. For the Twilight fragrance I decided to go with a moss green, an ultramarine blue and some activated charcoal. And I got so busy that I forgot about taking photos till it was in the mold again! I should have got one while it was still wet - so, so pretty!