A gift

One of our teachers is retiring at the end of this year. I'm happy for her because she will have time to go relax and enjoy life, but it will be sad for all the up and coming students who will not get to learn music under her tutelage. From what I've seen, she's a great teacher and the stuff she teaches the primary kids are so much fun, while the intermediate students learn to read music and play instruments.

As a farewell to her, I've made a music themed soap. I would love to have had a musical note or something, but the closest eraser I had to that was a guitar. The colours are our school colours, and I scented it with sun ripened cherries by WSP because, well it's just about cherry season.

Have a great week!

Mmm, donuts!

I've always made my donuts (soap donuts that is) in the same manner:  pour a thin layer of clear on the bottom, sprinkle some jojoba seeds, then pour in the rest of the bakery brown soap. Pour the other half of the donut, let both sides solidify, then curse when they won't stick together properly.

After seeing how some others make their donuts I tried to emulate it. I still cursed the two sides for not sticking properly, but by glazing the top and letting it run down the side, I think it helps to hold it together a bit better. Plus, I added more colouring this time, which I think makes it look much better. Scented with WSP's Grandma's Griddle FO, it smells like a real donut. Also, this time I used real sprinkles and I think that adds to the real-ness of the donut.

Hope you have a lovely, donut filled week!

Another experiment using the wrong bases

But this time, I'm quite happy with the results. Those soapers who've been using suspension bases create the most beautiful designs, and while this isn't the same, it's not bad.

I used my usual guest (or in my case, experiment) sized loaf mould, and even though I thought I had divided the amount of soap correctly, I forgot to factor in the fact that not all the soap comes out of the container...ever. So these turned out smaller than I was expecting, but they still look cool. And you remember the flowers from a couple of weeks ago, right?

I took the advice of some other MP soapers and used leftover coroplast as my dividers. Next time, I'll have to remember to wrap them in plastic wrap, otherwise soap seeps into the crevices. The soap set up a little quicker than I wanted, partly because I'm still learning how to use Stephenson's bases properly, partly because when you heat the soap too many times, it tends to harden a little quicker each time. So I didn't get to make the swirls as nice as I wanted, but I think it still came out pretty cool looking.

Have a great week everyone!

Packaging

We'll now take a break from our regularly scheduled program to bring you some packaging ideas.

Last week, I was admiring the packaging of soaps done by the very sweet and talented Madame Propre. She had her beautiful soaps wrapped in cellophane with ribbon, all done so nice and neat, they looked perfect. I told her how much I liked them and she suggested ali express.

Then I remembered, hey, my sister gave me a bunch of swatches to make into bags, why don't I use up those first? So here are some of the bags I've made so far.

I'm still working on the best way to close the bags. The straight ribbon tie is fine, but I'm not great at tying bows, as you can tell. The side ribbon, I'm not sure if it's going to work or not, and it really should be pulled into the middle, not the side. The one that doesn't look like it is closed has snaps on it, and the last one, would use up my random collection of buttons, but is a bit more time consuming. Any ideas?

How do you like to wrap things up, so to speak? Have a great week!