Dancing Funnel Technique

Whew! It’s been forever since I posted a blog entry! It’s about time. This month’s Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge Club technique was the Dancing Funnel by guest teacher Tatsiana Serko. I LOVE her soap! This lady rocks. She and Amy co-taught the tutorial and it was very informative. There are two category options this month, all natural and synthetic. I opted for the all-natural. I made two soap batches:

Indigo Dancing Funnel Soap

I was brainstorming ways to make my soap different and eye-catching while still staying in the guidelines, and thought maybe I could do an ombré effect on the inside colors. I was picturing water and how the light hits it, causing slight variations in the blue. I thought I could add some additional texture to the blue by adding finely ground oats. Luckily for me, indigo powder creates a lovely blue and is all natural! It can also bleed a bit, which would be great for a gradient look. Unluckily for me, in the contest, there are no variations in color allowed for the inside color. Well, I went ahead and made this batch before I understood that rule, so, while it is not permissible as a contest entry, it was a great practice batch. Here’s how it turned out:

And here is the “making of” video:

Juniper & Cedar Wood Dancing Swirl Soap

I liked the look of that soap, especially the variations in the inside color, but I really needed to make a soap that followed the rules. So, I got out all my natural colorants to see if any ideas came to mind. I finally settled on these colorants:

1. Activated charcoal mixed with a smidge of red clay and some ground acai berry for the background color
2. Rhassoul clay for a creamy color
3. Sea clay for a greenish color
4. Purple Brazilian clay for (you guessed it) purple
5. Red Brazilian clay for (surprise) red

I also wanted to add some cranberry seeds to the soap for two reasons. 1) I keep getting requests for exfoliating soap, and 2) cranberry seeds turn black and look really cool in soap.

This one was a lot of fun to make. I was already comfortable with the technique, thanks to my practice batch, and the only thing that was new was deciding where to put the colors. I finally decided on a random approach. I made around 20 dark dots, then filled in 5 each for the four other colors. Sometimes I had fewer than 20 dots, and I had to rotate in the colors to even things out.

You’ll notice in the video that a lot of the cranberry seeds floated to the top of my soap. I guess the soap was too liquid to hold them in place. Some of them stayed put, though, resulting in some interesting black dots in the soap. There was also some oil left on the top of the soap after 24 hours, so I planed off the top layer. Here’s the video:

And a few pics:

 

This technique is so cool! I love the way it turns out and it is not very difficult compared to some of the Soap Challenge Club techniques I’ve tried. I especially like how the sides of the bars look. I will be using this one again and again. My husband says it reminds him of cucumbers. (Of course, now I’m planning a cucumber batch, with a gradient of light to medium green for the inside color. I’m still working out how to get the look of the seeds . . . ) Thanks Amy and Tatsiana!

Complete ingredient list for Juniper and Cedar soap:

lard, water, olive oil, coconut oil, lye, activated charcoal, red Brazilian clay, purple Brazilian clay, sea clay, rhassoul clay, acai berry powder, cranberry seeds, essential oil blend (juniper berry essential oil, cedar wood essential oil, patchouli essential oil)

Trying out the Clyde Slide (September Soap Challenge Club)

This month’s Soap Challenge Club technique was the Clyde Slide. Well, I had to participate in this one because it has such a cool rhymey name. 🙂 I have been a little busier than usual with the new school year and sports and music and home school and . . . well, my normal hectic life. So, as a result, I only did two soaps in this technique: Berries and Bird of Paradise.

I was looking over my recent soap pics and I think I may be in danger of being in a color rut!! Oh no! Basically, my soaps tend to be blue/purple or pink/orange. HMMM. Well, okay, those are my favorite color combos, but maybe I need to branch out. After all this deep color thinking, I have decided to (gasp) add green into one of the soaps this month. (I KNOW!!) So, yes, green is a bit out of my comfort zone for soaping, but I paired it with purple and pink, which are very much IN my comfort zone, so it’s not too scary. 🙂 Here’s how the experimenting went:

• Berries

I have been experimenting lately with using a fragrance that accelerates as a design element. For this soap, I used Grapefruit Bellini in the purple layer at the bottom. I added the fragrance, poured it, and then waited a few minutes for it to set up. Then I used a knife to make a design in it. I was going for a wave, because I thought it would look cool with a Clyde Slide on top of it. Since I used my regular slow-moving recipe, the rest of the batter was nice and thin for the swirl layer. I used Black Raspberry Vanilla and Sweet Orange Chili Pepper to scent that part. The result is a very berry-ish scent, with just a bit of  grapefruit to cut through the sweetness. I like it! My favorite part of this loaf is the bars that have a guitar-looking swirl. SOOO Cool! Here’s the video:

• Bird of Paradise

And here, folks, is the soap we’ve all been waiting for. It has GREEN. Not a lot, of course. Baby steps. For this soap, I used my regular slow moving recipe and Acai Berry scent. I thought the batter was a little too thin for the Berries Soap, so I used the no heat added method of mixing the soap (add hot lye water to solid oils to melt them instead of pre-melting). This results in a slightly thicker batter (for my recipe, which contains lard). I think this was effective, since the feathered markings are more distinct on this batch.

I chose the name after cutting. Somehow it just reminds me of those lovely flowers. I love the graceful, free flowing feel of this technique. A big thanks to Clyde of Vibrant Soaps for sharing his technique and to Amy Warden of Great Cakes Soapworks for choosing it as the theme this month! Here’s the video:

And here are a few more photos of these two soap batches:

Mantra Marbles Soap Challenge

• Columbine Honey

This month’s challenge club technique was Mantra Marbles! It is a beautiful effect, and I was very excited to try it. In the tutorial video, Amy recommends using a slow moving soap recipe to best achieve the swirls. Unfortunately, I did not have enough confidence in my ability to improvise leak proof dividers for my slab mold, so I went with a medium tracing recipe, hoping the different colors would stay put. Then, it kind of turned into a fast tracing recipe once I added the scent. Ugh! The video is a bit comical as I try to do an intricate pattern with soap the consistency of mashed potatoes. 🙂 I used micas for colorant and did a gold mica swirl in the top. Here’s how it turned out:

And here is the video of me making it:

• Grace

So, I kind of like how that one turned out, but it is not what I was hoping to enter for this contest, so I tried again. This time I used a new fragrance that smells a bit like Philosophy’s Amazing Grace. I called it “Grace”. I really like blues/purples/and teals, so I went with micas in those hues. Then, I mixed some glitter with a bit of olive oil to make something like a mica swirl on the top, but with glitter. I really like how much the glitter shows up in the final product.

I used my favorite slow tracing recipe, but was foiled again by the fragrance, which caused accelleration! I KNOW better than to try out a new scent when I need the batter to stay thin. Oh well. I used a spoon handle for the swirling to really pull the colors through. Here’s the cut soap:

 

And here’s the video:

• Refresh Detox III

Next, I needed to make some more of my Refresh Detox soap, because I was all out. I decided to use different clays as the colorants and essential oils for the scent, so it would be a completely natural soap. I used bentonite, kaolin, rose, sea, and rhassoul clays. I also added some honey for luxurious bubbles. The batter behaved perfectly, and I love the clear mantra pattern that showed up in the final product:

 

And here is the video:

• Ruby Red

Well, I couldn’t stop experimenting with this technique, so I went ahead and made one more batch. This time I used a fragrance blend I like to call “Ruby Red.” It needed bright happy colors, so I went with pinks, oranges, and reds. I was planning to do another mica/glitter line in this batch, but somehow I forgot. Once again, the batter behaved perfectly and I was able to do the combing technique on the multi colored portion. This one turned out to be my favorite both because of the scent and because of the colors. Here it is cut:

And here is the video:

This was an awesome challenge! I sure do love trying out new techniques. Thank you, Amy Warden, for hosting the challenge! I can’t wait to see all the entries.

 

My Ebru Soap Challenge Journey

These are the four soaps I made for this months Great Cakes Soapworks Soap Challenge. Looking at the photos, I find it really difficult to choose a favorite. It’s almost like choosing a favorite child (impossible) 🙂

Anyway, to get started, I watched Amy Warden’s tutorial. The challenge was to make a Turkish Ebru Marbling inspired soap. Then I spent literally hours looking at images of ebru art. It is amazing what can be done with paint and water. Soap, even very slow moving recipes, is still more viscous than water, which inhibits the free movement and spreading out of the colors. That is a very important design consideration for soap.

• Lav/Pep/Pat

I decided to start out with what is probably my all time favorite essential oil combination: lavender/peppermint/patchouli. I used my favorite slow moving cold process soap recipe, and this photo as the inspiration:

To see this amazing Ebru artist’s work, please visit: http://molempire.com/2011/08/01/painting-on-water-the-art-of-ebru/

I decided to use blues and greens, with black and white for accents. Yes, that is pretty much my go-to color palette. 🙂 Here are some photos of how it turned out:

  

And here is the video showing me making it:

• Fusion Ebru

Next, I wanted to try a different technique. I saw this amazing waterfall design online:

Visit this page at: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/113153009364516718/

I thought that I might be able to get soap to look something like this. Again, I used my favorite recipe, and this time a beautiful summery color palette of oranges and pinks. I used a bright, citrusy scent that is very well behaved, and I also added some red jojoba beads to spice things up. Here is how that one turned out:

    

And here is the video of me making it:

• Mint and Cedar

I still wasn’t satisfied. Yes, those soaps had turned out beautifully, but I wanted to push myself even more and try to make something . . . I don’t know . . . more turkish-y?? Anyway, with that in mind, I found a couple more inspiration photos:

To view this image on its original page, please visit: http://www.arkofcrafts.com/en/tulip-marbling-art-on-paper

To view more of this artist’s work, please visit: https://www.etsy.com/shop/StudioRobertWu?ref=s2-header-shopname

I see a lot of tan/beige swirly backgrounds like the tulip image above in ebru art. I wanted to combine that look with the feel of the second image. I love the dreamy, wavelike feel of that one. I also like its simplicity. So, for this batch, I used Amy’s recommended slow-moving recipe, and a blend of lavender, cedar, and spearmint essential oils. Here’s how it turned out:

And here’s the video of me making it:

While I do like how this one turned out, I don’t think I captured the simplicity I was going for. I think the problem is that I made too much of each color, and was reluctant to waste it, so I just went ahead and piled it all on.

• Minty Fresh

Determined to get it right, I decided to try one more batch, this time using much less of the accent colors. So, I decided to use my favorite recipe again, and this time I did another EO combo, this time mostly spearmint, with a hint of cedar and lavender. (I must be on a mint kick.)

Here’s how this one turned out:

And here’s the video of me making the soap:

So . . . how to choose. I love the last one. It looks very “ebru-ish” to me. But, I’m torn, because I also LOVE the blues/greens/black of the very first one. And then that bright orange and pink one just makes me happy. ARGH. I can’t decide. My husband and my mom both like the first one the best. My kids like various different ones the best. Hmmmmm. I guess I will decide when I join the link up. 🙂

One last pic, because I had to show off my new soaping goggles. 🙂

Making Mini Dessert Soaps!

For this month’s Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge Club, Amy Chose mini dessert soaps! (Just for reference, that is a dinner plate the soaps were photographed on.) The challenge included an excellent tutorial by guest teacher Cee Gorden. Since I got second place last month for my Forest Bark soap, my admission to the club this month was FREE! (Gotta love free!)

So, I talked to my husband and kiddos about what their favorite desserts were, just to get some ideas. They really like dessert! So, then I had to combine all the ideas with my mental images and then crunch the ideas into something I could actually achieve using soap. I loved the idea of making a tiny wedding cake, so I knew that would be one. Then I knew I needed a tart of some kind. The contest requires four mini desserts, so I was halfway there, and I figured the other ideas would come as I started on the first two.

Wedding Cake Soap

This soap uses little CP soaps that I made in measuring cups. The soap is a creamy white and smells tropical/fruity (Butt Naked from Nature’s Garden). Then I used Cee Gordon’s recipe for making fondant from melt and pour soap and started working on the fondant stripes to go around the cakes. This was very tricky!! If you watch my video, you will see me rolling that stuff out over and over again. Every time it stuck to something-either the mat, or the rolling pin, or my fondant mat. I kept adding more and more corn starch, and finally, it started behaving. Getting the pretty little pattern from my fondant mat onto the cake was definitely the hardest part of this challenge for me. The brown fondant is colored with cocoa powder, and the CP soap has coconut oil in it. (We needed to use at lease one food item in this challenge). Finally, I sculpted a little flower and leaves out of the fondant, and then added sugar pearls to decorate the middle layer. The little “cake mat” underneath is a coaster that I found at the dollar store. 🙂

Blueberry Tart

I finally settled on using blueberries for this tart, because I thought I would be able to do a good job on the color and shape of these. It took FOREVER to make these berries! The tart is tiny, and it doesn’t look like it would hold that many blueberries, but I felt like I was rolling out those little balls for a really long time. (Maybe it was the fact that my family was clamoring for dinner at the time?? “Mommy’s almost done, honey. Just a few more minutes . . .”). Then I started working on the crust. I added turmeric, cocoa powder, and mica to get the tannish color. Then I used my finger to rub some mica over the edges to give it the look of being cooked. Finally, I added some blue mica to clear M&P soap to get the saucy look that the blueberries needed. It looks so real!! I have had to explain that it is soap and therefore not edible to my 4 year old three times now.

White Chocolate Truffles

Every year, when my mom and I go Christmas shopping, we always seem to stop by a chocolate store and get truffles. I have always loved white chocolate, and that’s where the inspiration for these truffles came from. I used mini ice cube trays as my mold for these, and these are from the same CP soap batch as the wedding cakes. These were so much simpler than the first two desserts! I just melted some MP soap and added cocoa powder and brown sparkly mica and drizzled it over the top. Ta Dah!!

Creme Brulee Soap

Last, but not least is this decadent delight! It just so happened that one of the little CP soap cakes that I made in a measuring cup fit perfectly into a ramekin that I had in my kitchen. Immediately, I knew this was going to be creme brulee. I took one of the mini ice mold CP soap pieces and dipped it into red decorating sugar, then I made ONE MORE blueberry (I know!!!) and then took a leaf from my favorite tree in the back yard. Then I mixed some cocoa powder and mica with some organic sugar and sprinkled it on top of the cake and spritzed with water to make it look carmelized.

So, that is my dessert soap making journey! It was fun, but I rebelled the whole time because it was soap for art’s sake and not for actual body washing. My thrifty spirit was fighting me every step of the way! Eventually, I satisifed both my practical side and my artistic side by telling myself this: The wedding cake can be taken apart, and each layer used as soap. The creme brulee can be taken out of the ramekin and used. The truffles actually make fantastic travel soaps (no more public restroom soap for me, thank you!). And the blueberry tart? Well, that one is just for looks. Three outta four ain’t bad. 🙂

Spinning Swirl Soap Challenge – Forest Bark Soap

Whew! I have been busy making soap again! Once I heard about the spinning soap swirl, I had to give it a try. It is such a cool way to swirl soap, and so uncomplicated. And it just happens to be this month’s Great Cakes Soapwork Challenge. I made three batches for this challenge~because there are so many variables to explore with this technique.

For my first batch, I used an essential oil blend, and several shades of pink/mauve. I colored it with Brazilian red clay, and I also added bentonite clay because clays are such good detoxifyers, and I just like the silky feel of soap with clay in it. I blended my mixture to thin trace, mixed the colors, and started pouring away. Here is the video showing the making of this soap:

and, a couple of pictures of the finished soap:

I liked this one, and the smell is fantastic, but I was really hoping for skinnier stripes. So then, I decided to go for batch number 2 🙂

My son had been asking me to make a soap for him. He wanted some “manly” essential oils like fir, pine, cypress, and cedar. As I was looking at various online examples of spinning swirl soap, it occurred to that the unique way the colors swirl together resembles the bark pattern on trees. Well, then I looked at a bunch of photos of tree bark, (I bet you can see where this is going) and then I decided to create Forest Bark soap. I chose a color palette using the shades that kept popping up in the bark photos, and then I made sure to barely mix the soap at all (just to emulsification), so my batter would be very thin and my stripes would end up super skinny. I really can’t believe how much like tree bark it turned out!! (Maybe I should have done this for the landscape challenge last month, LOL).

So, without further ado, here is the video showing how I made Forest Bark Soap:

And then, because I happened to fall in love with the spinning swirl, I had to make just one more batch. This one is scented with lavender and lemongrass essential oils. I am loving the way lemongrass smells lately! I wanted to do some bright colors with the skinny swirls, just to see how it would look. I also decided to pour in six spots, instead of just four. Here are a few photos of how it turned out:

and here is the video:

It was really hard to decide which soap to enter into the contest. I am pretty happy with all of them. I finally decided that the uniqueness of the Forest Bark makes it my overall favorite. I would say this is one of my all time favorite ways to swirl soap. The possibilities are endless!