Archive
This month it is my turn to run the SMF soap challenge. I chose the topic of mosaic soaps as I haven’t seen it done for a while and I like the versatility of the technique. I can’t wait to see what all the soapers who choose to participate will come up with! I absolutely love seeing all the creativity and talent from the soapers we have on the forum.
Here is the mosaic soap I made for the demonstration of the technique.
You can find the video tutorial along with lots of other tutorial videos for the other challenges that have been organised previously here –
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9bN3rFKI_AyHN1ses6bpfQ
Once the challenge is over at the end of the month, I will add a link to the entries and the winner. Feel free to pop over to the forum, we are a friendly bunch and if you participate on the threads for a while then you will be able to enter the competitions.
This month, the challenge on www.soapmakingforum.com was a tough one for me. Were given several images of birds to look at and asked to choose one that stood out to us. Then using colours from the photo, we had to take a feature or a feeling or something about the picture that struck us and translate it into our soap design.
I chose the image of the bird shown below
The bird picture I have used is the one that most appealed to me. I love the colours of the birds feathers combined with the green background of the leaves. The colours I chose for my soap were a green from the background of the image and a couple of shades of blue from the feathers combined with the black and white which are also colours from the feathers.
I love the way the birds feathers are splayed open and the image gives a feeling of complete freedom. I have tried to reflect the lines of the long wing feathers in my soap design. I made it in a square soap mould, by placing dividers into the corners and filling with the different shades of color, then I filled the rest of the mould with the green and used a skewer to create the lines. My soap is scented with a mixture of pine and cedarwood essential oils with a touch of juniper as I felt it went well with the overall look and feel of the soap.
Here is the finished design, I hope you like it!
SMF Soap Challenges
I help to organise a monthly challenge on www.soapmakingforum.com. I ran the August challenge which tackled inverted stamping.
You can find the challenge thread and read about everyone’s experiences along the way here
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=55467
and you can find the thread with all the lovely entries here
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=55760
There is also an SMF challenge youtube channel with tutorial videos for all the challenges, including my inverted stamping one, along with other tutorials by SMF members that you may find useful.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9bN3rFKI_AyHN1ses6bpfQ
As long as you have been a member of the forum for a short period and have posted 50 times, then you can participate in the challenge. Come over and find us on SMF, we are a friendly bunch and always willing to accept new members into the fold.
Discolouring Fragrance Challenge
This month was a discolouring fragrance challenge run by GalaxyMLP, the basic rules of the challenge were to use a fragrance that discolours and incorporate that into your soap design. You also had to choose a colour scheme for a famous brand or sports team and incorporate that into your design too.
Below is the original challenge thread if you would like to read the full challenge criteria and see people’s discussion of their experiences of the challenge
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?t=56017
Here is the entry thread
http://www.soapmakingforum.com/showthread.php?p=547174
And here is my entry.
I chose to use Wimbledon as my theme as I love the combination of purple, green and white.
I used a basic slow moving recipe at a 5% superfat of –
25% Palm
25% Coconut
25% Sunflower
25% Olive
The discolouring fragrance I used was porridge oats from gracefruit which I used at 3%. The description says it discolours to a dark tan.
I wanted to try a sort of different butterfly swirl with this challenge. I tilted the mould slightly to one side, then filled it with 1/4 of the discoloured batter, then I alternately poured the white purple and green until the mould was half full. I then used a hanger in a circular motion to create the bottom half of the butterfly. Then I poured in some more discoloured batter and drop swirled the colours in on top to create the top wing of the butterfly.
Here is the soap when it was first cut
And here is my final entry after 3 weeks of discolouration
I hope you like it. If you are interested in the challenges please pop over to www.soapmakingforum.com and see what is going on this month.