April 2020 Soap Challenge

This month's challenge was the tall skinny shimmy. It was fun and relulted in some very pretty if not perfect soaps. I made 6 attempts total. As I write this, my 6th attempt is still not ready to unmold and cut. I thought I would be done with 5 batches but my 21 year old daughter talked me into one more batch. I agreed if she chose the colors. It went into the oven at 2:00 am this morning. I'm pretty sure this last one will be the best but entries are due so I will have to choose from what I have.

Family favorite but batter too thick and

colors are not well mixed.

Batter too thick but it was an interesting idea

First attempt. I love the colors but only

bar has any shimmy

Fifth attempt, all bars shimmy but the

pour is sloppy in places

Second attempt. One bar has a good
shimmy but not consistant throughout.

I will come back and insert my sixth attempt later if I don't ruin it by cutting it too soon.










Here is the mold I used for most of my attempts. I really like this mold. I got it from one of our past sponsors, Winding Creek Soap and Supply, for the brush embroidery challenge. I had to modify it with inserts to make it skinny enough to work for this technique.

Here are some pictures from my various attempts:

 

 


For my sixth and unfinished attempt, I used a popsicle box for a mold and let my daughter choose the colors. The colors were inspired by the ocean and coral.

 

Here is the 6th attmpt. Cut a little too soon.

Popsicle box mold bows out quite a lot on

the sides so I end up wasting a lot of soap

trimming the edges straight. I really like these 

colors!

All batches were hand stired while watching episodes of Perry Mason. I am really curious about that strange art piece on his wall. I think I want that in my kitchen.

I definitely had fun with this technique and I think I am getting the hang of it better. I can't wait to see how that last batch came out! I have decided to submit my purple shimmy. I like it because it has a skinny look that I like and the shimmy is consistant through out the whole loaf.  

March 2020 Soap Challenge

Well I feel defeated! This has been the hardest soap challenge for me since I started last July. I just can't seem to get this technique to work for me. I made  a lot of soap If the batter got too thick on me, I just reverted to a quick in the mold swirl so I at least had something I could use. Even when I thought I had the right consistancy, it still just didn't seem to work for me. On the batches where I actually got some clamshells, I used the recipe with lard. I only had lard on hand because a kid in my 4-H group gave me some he had leftover from making tamales. I am running out of some ingredients which is also limiting me. I don't like using lard because of the vegetarians in my family.

I am entering my second attempt. I was trying to capture the colors in an abalone shell. I used Abalone and Sea as the fragrance.

 
Here is a selection of some of the soaps I made this month while trying to learn this technique. I actually like them but they aren't good examples of the clamshell technique. They are just pretty soaps.

This one was an attempt at the advanced category.

Here is a bunch of them put together:

All of my pictures are a bit dark. It has been on and off rainy and overcast and I really have a hard time with lighting. I use my phone for pictures and it isn't the best at getting the colors correct either.

Maybe I will try this again and have better luck next time.

February 2020 Soap Challenge

This month's challenge was to teach someone who has never made soap before how to make soap using either the drop swirl technique or a soap with three mica lines. My chosen student for this challenge is my husband of 29 years, Hans Gompper. My husband had never even watched me make soap before!  He was officialy invited by me to participate on December 25, 2019

         

He eagerly accepted the challenge although we misplaced this mold and ended up using a different one.




We faced several difficulties in this challenge. The first one being that for the entire month of February, we only shared one day where neither one of us was working. We both had president's day off so that was our big date. A second difficulty we faced was that I, the suposed teacher, had never made a drop swirl before and I have very limited experience with mica lines. But since teaching is my profession, it wasn't the first time I have faced having to (getting to?) teach something that I know very little about ("your credential says you can teach.... the new class starts on Monday").

The evening before our big day, we watched the tutorial and lots of youtube videos. I went over lye safety. We did all this while my husband made bread. Yes, he can cook too! We decided to try the drop swirl. My husband chose his colors and he had a very clear vision of how he wanted his soap to look.

On President's day he made his soap. Here are some pictures of the process.

Pouring water for practice

Looking over the oils

Scooping out oils

Weighing oils

Essential oils used 

The gloves are too small

Now it gets more serious:

Measuring the lye

Taking the temperature of the lye

Mixing the colors while lye
and oils cool

Adding the Lye to oils

Blending

Dividing the batter

Watching

Trying to get the perfect
consistancy

Obsessing on getting the
perfect trace

The fun part begins:

Light green base, first red added

Continuing to add colors, light
over dark. Red then white, dark
green then light green until full.

Done

Finishing up:

Top swirled and covered,
swirl a little messed up by lid.
My house is not level so the
molds are always a little
higher on on end.

Hot water bath since oven
not available because my
husband wanted to make a
lemon meringue pie next.
Mmm it was delicious!

Covered up for the night

The results:

Freshly cut

Planed and beveled

A close up of the swirl

More Pictures - My obsession with trying to get the perfect picture with my phone camera which doesn't always cooperate.:

The soap has Christmas colors and is scented with peppermint and spearmint and Christmas is our favorite holiday. My husband usually starts saying "Christmas is coming" a few days after christmas each year. When we first cut this soap, I thought it was very beautiful and thinking back to my first soap I think it came out pretty darn good!  My husband had a different reaction. He was very disapointed. For some reason it did not meet his expectations. He had a vision of what it should be and this was not it. He was almost going to make another batch on his own on his day off while I was at work but he thought better of it and decided he should wait. We ran out of time to try the mica lines but he definitely wants to make more soap. He is one of us now...