June SMF Challenge - Mosaic Soaps

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.

SMF May Challenge - Interpretation not Imitation

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!

Great Cakes Soapworks May Challenge - Droplet Swirl

This month's challenge was incredibly challenging for me. I had so many goes at this trying to nail it, I think I will have enough soap to wash with for fifty years! I finally achieved a droplet that I am happy enough with to enter so here it is!

I only poured a small amount of batter into the bottom of the mould before pouring in my droplet colours as I like the droplets which have a long thin stem.

My bars are scented with a blend of spearmint, lavender and rosemary essential oils hence the mica colours that were chosen.

The mica was purchased from http://www.u-makeitup.com/ and the colours used were purple passion, lime, dreamy aquamarine and some titanium dioxide and activated charcoal for the black.

I thought I would also post some of my other attempts in order to show you how challenging I found this challenge to be. Getting a droplet shape was not easy for me!

I loved the colour of these and all the layers within the droplet, In real life they look much brighter and more vibrant. I was gutted that the outline turned out wobbly. I think it was because I poured the sides with a squeeze bottle rather than a jug so the pressure forced the batter into the mould unevenly.

I was also disappointed that this attempt wasn't a better shape. I allowed the central batter to touch the sides which resulted in the teardop having a line underneath it.

There were also lots of other attempts, some with no droplet at all, others with triangular shaped patterns and one where I used an accelerating fragrance which set up on me so fast that all I got was tiger stripes across the middle of the bar.

And here as promised are my other six attempts!!! 

Thank you for another great challenge Amy :)