Blowing Soap Into Suds
You can make
yourself a sort-of foam bath in the shower or tub this way with things you
probably have in the bathroom already. You'll need:
-
a washcloth,
preferably with a dense weave and no holes
-
water of
comfortable temperature
-
soap or
alternative (see below)
-
practice
Get the
washcloth thoroughly wet and evenly soapy. Experience will teach you the
proper ratio of soap to wetness. Form a pouch with the cloth one of the
following two ways so that it can completely cover your
mouth:
Method #1: Hold the cloth in your
non-dominant hand with thumb spread wide, and push with your dominant
hand to form a pouch in the space between the thumb and forefinger of your
non-dominant hand. Then press the thumb and forefinger of your
non-dominant hand around your jaw while its other fingers grasp the cloth tight
under your chin, and your dominant hand grabs the remaining upper corner and
pushes it to your cheek.
Method #2: Drape the cloth between
thumb and forefingers of both hands. Press these to your cheeks,
pinching/bunching as necessary, while the remainder of the cloth hangs
down/in front.
With a large
washcloth, the effect is something like a feed bag. The point is to have
the cloth completely occlude to your face so no air can escape your mouth
without going thru the cloth. Method #1 keeps more of the soapy cloth away
from your nose and eyes.
Inhale
and apply the cloth as above. With the cloth in place, do not inhale
further. (Try not to cough, hiccup, or laugh, either, especially
if using real soap (see below). Real soap on the back of the throat
can hurt for hours!) Now blow thru your mouth. When out of
breath, remove the cloth and inhale again. (You can try inhaling
thru your nose with the cloth in place if using method #1, but real soap
up your nose burns too.) Re-wet and re-soap the cloth as
needed.
Two
factors influence the density of the foam produced by this method
(assuming the cloth is wet & soapy to the max) -- the weave of the
cloth, and the type of soap or other foaming agent. If the cloth is
not densely woven but is large enough, doubling it by folding it over
neatly and blowing thru 2 layers will make a denser foam.
The
densest foam is produced by using real soap, which usually comes in
bars/cakes. (Most liquid "soaps" these days contain no actual
soap.) Other foaming products -- shampoo, liquid "soaps",
shower/bath gels, body washes, hand dishwashing ("washing-up" to the
British) detergents -- make a looser foam of larger bubbles. The
tradeoff is irritancy. Having real soap pressed against your chin
and around your lips can make your skin sore after a while. You may
want to protect your skin there with a silicone barrier cream before doing
this. The other detergents mentioned above, even most of those for
washing dishes and utensils by hand, are milder than real soap in this
use.
Among soaps,
the best to use for this are the most lathery -- i.e. those made with from
most tropical oil (coconut, palm kernel/seed, or babassu) and the least
tallow, olive, or palm oil. That'd make Kirk's Coco Castile the strongest,
followed by Rainbow Research, then Camay, then a few that are probably about
equal -- the new Dial, Coast, Lux, Lifebuoy, Shield -- then
Ivory Soap, then many others. At the opposite
extreme would be Pure & Natural and finally Neutrogena. Unfortunately
the sudsiest are also the most irritating.
A
pretty good compromise are Olay and the discontinued Ivory
Moisture Care bars. These almost-soapless detergent cakes
don't make quite the density of lather that real soap does, but they do
have a creamy quality (enhanced by paraffin wax) that compensates
somewhat. You can blow all you want and probably never get sore
around the mouth. Almost the same (even though containing a lot of soap)
are Lever's Dove and Caress bars, at least in the USA version.&nsbp; The suds
of all these last fairly long even on top of hard water, and leave no
ring. However, the Olay bars do tend to leave a coat of wax on the
surface where the soap dish drains.
If
your water's soft (or you use Olay, Dove, or Caress) and you work at it, you
can cover your bath water with bubbles this way. Even if your water's
not so soft, you can at least pile the suds on yourself or your kids, where
they'll last until the water hits them. And you can do it in the shower,
too.
I
discovered this method as a teenager in the shower. It was a
modification of a method my sister and I used to use in the bathtub, where
we'd trap air under the soapy washcloth and either squeeze it out or drag
it under.
Am I worried that dissemination of this technique will reduce demand
for my invention? Not really; most grownups I've tried to teach this to
don't want to do the work required, let alone teach it to their
kids. However, I'm hoping to sell this trick to photographers for
glamor shots and soap commercials.