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.

Do you journal?

I've been reading a couple of books lately that says that to inspire creative ideas and help people find themselves, it's important to keep a journal. To me, that is the hardest thing to do, well next to doing math. In university, I took a lot of English courses, but only because like I said, math and science were not my forte and so English made for a good elective. Verbosity is not my strong suit, 2000 word essays were the bane of my existence. I could say what I wanted to say in 500 words or less, so I spent more time counting the number of words I'd written (do "a" and "the" count in an essay?) than actually trying to write the essay itself.

Which leads me to the title, do you journal? And if you do, do you do it on a daily basis? Has it helped you to unleash your creative juices?

It's all in the details

You know that saying about "success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration? I have a variation on that: Detailing is 15% inspiration, 80% cleaning up the bits of soap that don't belong and 5% cursing and muttering under my breath. It's so rewarding when it does come together as it should though, I love to see the colours pop and make the soaps come to life.

Today I actually had a bit of revelation while colouring the dots and fins on the fish - if I keep the soap heated up to the proper temperature, it makes it alot easier to work with and less likely to harden up in they syringe. I know, it's almost a duh statement, but getting it to that point of the right consistency is much harder than it sounds, at least for a newbie. Like everything else, it takes practice to get it right, but when I figure out the magic formula of timing, heating and perfect amount of soap to use, I'm sure I'll send much less time cursing and cleaning.

In the meanwhile, these are three examples of the soaps that require detailing that I'm working on for the upcoming shows. Apologies for the not great picture.