Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall

♪All you have to do is call, and I’ll be there, yes I will, you've got a friend ♫.

Okay now that I've got that song stuck in your head as well as mine, I'm happy.

Maja of Diva Soap said my soaps last week looked like the seasons, except I was missing spring.

So, I tried to do a spring like soap with leftovers I had. Leftovers I find, aren't like what you have for leftovers in CP soaps. Mine aren't chunks, they're the stuff I scrape off the bottom of the measuring cup or mould. If it's big enough pieces, sometimes they curl nicely, most times they're only good for re-melting.

Making the "spring" soap was more like playing in The Three Bears' house.

The first one was too dark, not like the emergence of spring.

I really have to work on my colour layering so I don't have to turn it sideways to see the layers.

The next one was too abstract.

What is that? A fish and a flower? No seriously, what is that? You're serious? What drugs were you on? None? Wow.

This one is most spring-like, but it doesn't match the other three soaps from last week. I'm going to have to try something different.

Kind of reminds me of a butterfly. A la the Simpson's 3 eyed fish type butterfly but still.

And for good measure, because I had soap left and was still trying to work on matching up pieces

From this angle, looks like someone (or something) committed starfishcide, so here's a better angle.

So here they are, the four seasons soap. Or Vivaldi as I like to call them. ;)

Happy spring everyone. It may not feel like it everywhere, but it's official. Have a great week.

Change of subject (line)

I thought this post was going to have to come under the subject line of "craft fail" but it turned out better than I expected.

We all know of Pasito a Pasito, right? I think I have most of his soaps pinned on my Pinterest page and his soaps have been an inspiration from early on. This time, I used his ideas (but not his hard work of carving out pieces) to create some new soaps. Have I mentioned how much I like my guest soap mold? I like being able to make something new without having to invest a lot of soap into it.

Part of the purpose of this soap was to use up some of the leftover soap I have laying around. If I weren't such my mother's daughter, I'd toss it because it comes from that kit from the craft-store-that-shall-not-be-named. However, my mother was frugal and has passed that along to me (If she'd only passed along some of her other great traits rather than her short fingers and height, I'd be so happy. But I digress).

I used a leaf cookie cutter to get the pattern and learned very quickly to press the soap into the cutter, and not the other way around. I could continue with pressing the cutter into the soap if I really wanted a permanent leaf mark in my palm. I lined up the cut piece over top the full square piece so that I could cut out the identical section from the whole square.

Part of the orange piece was used in last week's rainbow project.

Then, to use up some more of the soap, I did it in reverse as well.  But since I also had some (or lots) of blue left from pouring the first soap, I cut out another piece from the square and poured some of the blue into that. Hence why there's blue leaking through to the other side.

But there's still more soap to be used up! So let's make a third pattern. 

What you can't tell from that picture, which I keep forgetting about when I try and make 3-D patterns, is that you can't see it from a 2-D picture. So what I'd like to show is this.

No, I'm not just trying to show you the mess I made, rather that one of the leaf cutouts is actually not a full to the bottom piece. I should've poured the light blue to not quite the top, let it solidify, then add that  second cut out and poured clear on top of everything. That would've made it nicer looking but that's something for me to remember for next time.

Who or where do you turn to for inspiration when making your soaps?

Have a great week.

It's a Pot of Soap

Well, no it's not but if some company can call their chocolates a Pot of Gold, I can come a little closer to the truth with my advertising.  And this time, I'm early for a theme, but only because lucky for me, St. Patrick's Day is on a Monday this year). I thought, what can I do for this theme? Otion had already done a St. Pat's Day soap with the green and gold so I didn't want to do that. I considered doing a rainbow, you know the whole arc thing, but slapped myself a few times upside the head (figuratively of course, otherwise people give you strange looks) and realized that was way too ambitious, for me anyway.

So instead, I came up with a little guest mold rainbow.

This was as much as my ADD brain could handle. I actually attempted to measure out the exact same amount for each layer. But when you do something this small, it's hard to pour out the exact same amount each time. 

The soap starts to harden as soon as it starts being poured out of the measuring cup, and so some of the soap didn't make it all the way to the edges.

You can also tell ROY didn't play so well together, but G did a good job of making itself stand out from the crowd, as did B, but IV kinda blended together.

It's hard to tell, but those are supposed to be coins on top of the rainbow. I should maybe have tried to make an imprint of a coin on them, but didn't come up with that idea until after the fact. Or better yet, put a few Canadian pennies in the soap since they're no longer being used anyway.

So happy early St. Patrick's Day? Are you drinking any green beer? Eating any corned beef and cabbage? Finding any leprechauns? (That would probably be after one too many green beers.) Whatever you do for St. Patrick's Day, I hope it's a good one.

One More Thing off the To Do List

As opposed to the bucket list. But that's mostly because I have to do lists in my head, on scraps of paper, on my phone, but nothing for a bucket list.

The light box finally got made! Now I just have to contend with shadows that I make with the lights rather than having the excuse that the natural lighting is working against me. (Who me paranoid?)

We looked at how people made their homemade light boxes (with cardboard box and tissue paper) but we decided to make ours out of foam core and a light nylon fabric. It didn't take very long to make it, the part that took the longest was finding lamps that would work for our needs. Now I can finally start taking pictures that aren't dependent on natural light.

Extra fabric in case we want less light coming through the box.

Waiting for someone to bring a soap. Oh wait, I don't have people for that, I am the people who bring the soaps.

Testing out the location of the lights.

Look ma, no shadows! Well very little compared to before.

New Toys

I have whined and complained about not having moulds that allow me to try out new designs, so enough whining already. I bought myself a guest soap mould and a mini loaf mould from WSP.

Of course, as soon as I do that, I draw a blank on what I want to make. That's what I love about Pinterest, so many good ideas, so many things to drool over. Of course most of the soaps on Pinterest are CP soaps with all those gorgeous swirls and fluffy tops, stuff that you can't do with MP soaps, or at least I can't.

I thought I'd try and do the marbling at least, and this was the result.  I kinda botched the second layer (from what I had in mind) by spraying the first layer with rubbing alcohol so it'd adhere, but then it spread the colour dots in ways I didn't want them to spread. But putting on a third layer covered it up, so it's all good.

Reminds me of a Rorschach test. What do you see?

Or maybe it's more like a kid's finger painting project.

Next I decided that I'm tired of winter and snow and so I'd do a summer theme. (I know, I have nothing to complain about on the west coast, but hey, we're not Winnipeg, we don't comprehend snow here). Nothing says summer like palm trees, beach balls and sun right? And an exotic fruit smoothie scent finishes off the summer scene.

Have a great week and for those of you dealing with way more snow than we are, my sympathies.