June 2015 - Saponista's Artisan Soap

Ebru Art – June Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge

Here is my entry for this month’s Great Cakes Soapworks Challenge. This month’s theme was ‘Ebru Art’. This is a turkish style of water marbling where dyes are floated on the top of a water gel base and manipulated to create beautiful designs. The main guidelines were to make sure your design had some form of ebru inspiration and that you only used a single skewer or tool to create your design.

I had several attempts at this challenge and it was harder than I thought it would be. (I always seem to say that! My husband said ‘that’s why they are called challenges!’).

Most of the images of ebru art that I searched for were floral themed and I absolutely loved the roses that can be seen in the images below.

The roses below are by ebru artist Mukadder Kavas and can be purchased here

https://olsaolsa.com/en/traditional-arts/66-paper-marbling-ebru-rose.html

I didn’t just want to recreate an ebru design though. I wanted to put some of my own personality into the art so I chose to create ebru style roses with a ‘roses and castles’ twist.

I grew up in the Worcestershire countryside where there are many canals and I absolutely love the ‘roses and castles’ style of artwork that is traditionally used to decorate the boats. As the name suggests roses and castles are often depicted in the artwork and bright vibrant primary colours are always used to create the designs.

Below the example of ‘Roses and Castles’ art which I used to inspire my design.

I wanted to fragrance my soap with a rose scent to match with my theme, but the only rose fragrance I have is very tricky to work with. It rices badly, so I made the scented base soap first and added the unscented ebru layer afterwards.

The base soap recipe was made with oils I had on hand.

20% Coconut

25% Sunflower

25% Olive oil

30% Palm oil

I used up some paprika infused sunflower oil to make the base so it was and orange/peach colour.

The top layer was high in lard for a really slow trace.

50% Lard

20% Sunflower

30% Olive oil

I had to work really quickly to mix up all the colours so that I had plenty of time to make my design. They were powdered mineral pigments and oxides with added liquid colourant for extra vibrancy so I mixed them in a small amount of glycerine to make sure they would mix into the batter with ease and the colour would be smooth and not clumpy.

Colourants used

Blue – Ultramarine oxide

Green – Chromium Green Oxide mixed with green mica

Red – Red Iron Oxide mixed with red liquid colourant

Yellow – Yellow Iron Oxide mixed with yellow liquid colourant

White – Titanium Dioxide

Black – Activated Charcoal

I poured the black top layer and then used squeeze bottles to apply the coloured soap batter to the surface. I then used a skewer to create the designs and added some finishing touches with the squeeze bottles. I don’t have any pictures of the process as I had to work really quickly to get the design done while the batter was still really fluid.

I placed a lid onto the box after finishing the soap as I find that covering the soap really helps to prevent ash forming. That is why I use lined plastic boxes as moulds as the clip on lids fit tightly and there is no chance of ruining the surface of the soap.