Soap Challenge - Week 3

Mica Swirl was this week's challenge from Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks and I was surprised at just how much trouble I had with this one!  I thought "Snap! How hard can this be?"

Have I ever told you what happens when I say that?  Well Murphy joined this party and it took 3 tries before I got this one done for heaven's sake and I'm not all that happy with this one even. 

So let's start at the very beginning shall we?  On the right you can see my first attempt. This one is Black Raspberry Vanilla which usually plays nice.  But by the time I was doing the mica swirl it was getting thick.  How annoying!  Then I put too much swirl on so the drama doesn't exist except in my annoyance.

The second one, well you don't get to see a picture of it because nothing went right on that one.  Total fail!  I haven't had one of those in donkey's years (they live longer than horses, dogs, or cats),  Did I mention that Murphy had come calling?  Ah well that was when I soldiered on to make the one you see about.  It's scent is Green Irish Tweed, once of my personal favourites and it also is know for playing nice.  Well not when Murphy comes to play....   In all fairness the swirl worked out just perfect but again, it started getting thick when it came time to do my top swirl.  I even had the mica swirl sitting there ready to go, but I thick where I messed up was being too fussy about getting all of the batter used.

So lesson learned.  The mica swirl is going to take me a bit longer to perfect.  Here are the cut pictures for your enjoyment.

Black Raspberry Vanilla

Green Irish Tweed Type

Amy thank you for hosting these challenges - you are helping me grow in my design area and I am grateful for that.

If you would like to see more pictures of other results take a look here.

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We will be taking a break and it will be two weeks before the next, and final challenge. Until next time enjoy your days.

The Elemental Swirl - Challenge #2

I would really like to thank Amy Warden of  Great Cakes Soapworks for being generous enough with her time to create these challenges once again this year.  It is fun to try new techniques I may not otherwise have tried.

This week is the Elemental Swirl.  What's interesting about this one is that you are combining two techniques, both of which I've done in the past.  I also learned that I need to let my soap set up a bit more before doing the ITP (in the pot) swirl in order to avoid 'mud'.  All righty then - now comes some decisions.

First I needed to decide what elements I wanted represented in this soap.  So very many options.  Finally I decided to make this personal and a friend directed me to a quiz which determines your Element and I came up as Air, so that would be my top layer.  So what should my second be?  Since I am a Sagittarius which is a Fire sign that became my second element.  Next was trying to decide what scent was going to represent both elements.  Hmmm well there was a dilemma.  I needed something that was going to behave to allow me time to work and spices are not known to play nice.  Okay so the spices were ruled out, or were they?  What if I added them to the other scents I wanted, maybe it would behave then?  Air was easier for me as I always think of air as fresh, bright and carrying the scent of flowers on its breeze.  Here is what I came up with:

• Lavender
• Rosemary
• Spearmint
• Black Pepper (for heat)
• Menthol (cold heat) - just a titch of this one
• Lilac fragrant oil

I am now ready to go.  For the fire portion I chose Bordeaux & Romantic Rose micas with FD&C Red #40.  Air received Dark Blue (morphed to a greeny tone) & Cornflower Blue micas plus Ultramarine Blue.  I used cocoa powder for the dark line, but I didn't use quite enough...

Now for the reveal......

In the log is the wet soap.

Another in the log shot.

Here you can see what it looks like prior to cutting showing the two layers - kinda.

All cut and ready to go onto the curing rack....

Amy this was a lot of fun and I look forward to our next challenge.  Thank you so much for letting me be a part of this.  For those of you that missed the link above to go to Amy's Blog please, click HERE.

For those of you who would like to purchase one of these bars they will be ready at the end of the month.