When life gives you lemons

Say to heck with it, and go meet your girlfriends for a coffee instead!

Just kidding, you make the best of it because you're a responsible adult and running away from problems doesn't help anything, right? Right? Okay, you've gone for coffee, I get it.

So my swirl turned out not to be a swirl, except in the middle where the toilet paper roll sat. Maybe I was supposed to pull it up and let the soap flow through. Oh well. It is still useful for slicing to give out as samples, or to make into something else.

Cutting it thin means it does that curl thing, not quite the full curls, but that almost naturally wavy look that I want my hair to do. But I digress.

I think I need to work on placement of the curls, but this was a good start I think.

What's your favourite thing to do when life gives you lemons? I'd still like to make limoncello out of my lemons, but that would involve time and money.

Have a great week!

First time for everything

One of the biggest time waster ways to get your creative juices flowing is to go on Pinterest. At least that's where I think I watched a video on how to create a swirl soap. The lady in the video called it TP swirl because she used a toilet paper roll. I think I'm going to call it the poor person funnel soap, sounds a bit better, don't you think?

As per usual, I watched the video and let some time lapse before I made the actual soap, so was doing it from memory. Seeing how I'm not an elephant, my memory usually betrays me, and I think it did this time as well.

It started off really pretty

And even after 3 (or is it 4?) pours, it was still going well.

At some point, was I supposed to start lifting the roll up? I couldn't remember (not an elephant right? But elephants don't have opposable thumbs, so advantage, me).

By the time most of the soap had been poured, it still looked pretty good

But upon drying, it lacked something.

Darn soap, why do you have to dry and look less pretty?

The bottom however, looks fantastic.

Scented with CC's Morning Rain and Strawberry Smoothie

I still didn't like the top, so I melted some more soap, put in some glitter (because glitter makes everything better) and added another layer to smooth out the top.

Needs more glitter but looks better than it did.

Next week, I'll show how it looks cut.

Have a great week!

Looking for balance

Not in my life, I mean who doesn't love chaos in their lives? :P No, I thought I'd try and make a stylized yin yang style soap, but still allowed me artistic license. (Okay just a warning, this is a long post, so grab your beverage of choice, I'd suggest something alcoholic this time, and sit back).

It took me four tries to get to this one, but like anything else, practice makes perfect, or at least let's one try and get things into 3D what is in one's head.

Attempt #1
I had poured the two circular moulds and cut them in half. Unfortunately, it didn't cut evenly and so the sides didn't fit together well.

If I could've left the dots of colour as they were, it'd have been cool.

Can't tell from this photo, but those are fuchsia and blue colour drops.

But the moment you add melted soap, the whole thing disperses

Hubby liked this one the most but since it wasn't what I was going for, I didn't like it.

which is nice, but not the look I was going for.

I could've sworn I cleaned the moulds!

Attempt #2

Using the other half of the circles to again create the base (and again, who didn't clean that mould?)

This time, I created the little "dots", but because I didn't have a small enough mould or cutout, I used squares instead. And because I'm going off on a tangent, I did them in other colours.

Clear layer is obviously not that clear, but it was good for experimenting.

Attempt #3

Didn't even make it out of the mould, so no picture.

Attempt #4

It finally worked, more or less. This time, I filled the mould completely with one colour, let it set, then cut it in half. I put it back in the mould and poured in the second colour. This also made it easier to ensure the two sides were filled to the same height. Meanwhile, I made the dots using my contact lens holders. Once the main part was firm enough, I put the dots in and filled it to the top with clear.

You all seem to make amazingly beautiful soaps. How do you manage not to have a gazillion failed attempts? If you have failed once or twice (because I like to think you have to make me feel better) how many re-attempts have you made to get what you want?

Have a great week!

A Puzzle

Embedding is a hit and miss endeavour for me, kinda like cooking. Some days, it's great, other days, I really should quit while I'm ahead. But that would involve learning my lesson, which I never do.

I really like the puzzle mould, but it seems lonely on its own. I could package it with 3 or 5 other pieces to make an even set, but the ones I had made in the past, the colours ran together and looked bizarre. This time, I decided to embed a puzzle piece instead. It used to be that the symbol for autism was a puzzle piece (since I made this, I found through Google that it's been changed), so I put an "A" on the puzzle piece to signify autism.

However, since autism is not wanting a puzzle to be the symbol, let's just consider this "A" for awesome. We are all a piece of a large puzzle (some people are more puzzling than others) and we're all quite awesome and amazing in our own way.

In the meanwhile, I keep working on embedding.

Scented with chai FO.

What's on your list of skills to perfect? Have a great week.

Oh, and next week I will do my giveaway, so if you haven't already done so, please leave me a comment on this post or last week's, just so I know you're alive.

Baby shower

I got an email the other day, which surprised the heck out of me. I'd have been even more surprised if it was Publisher's Clearing House saying they were stopping by with a cheque for a million dollars, but the chances of that happening are less than being hit by an asteroid while sitting here typing out this post.

No, the email was from someone who wanted to order some soaps for a baby shower. She wanted them by August 9 and asked if I could make them in time. But of course I said, praying to the internet gods that Canada Post would play nice. By my estimation, it would.

She wanted the ABC soaps, and I had some made already, so I only had to make 6 more (7 in the end because I either miscounted or one grew feet and walked off). I didn't ask the gender of the baby and tried to go for gender neutral colours. Okay the pink isn't gender neutral, but it was a nice complement to the other two colours.

Scented with Exotic Fruit Smoothie, yum!

One of the ones that was already made.

Have a great week everyone!