The devil is in the details

or in this case, it's in the lack of details. Mine, not the mould.

Gosh darn it's hard to fill in fine details when the lighting in your craft room is bad. I knew this before, but this time, the end result really shows what lack of lighting can do (or not do) when you're working with finicky details.

This mould has some beautiful detailing, as you can see, but I didn't clean them up as well as I should've. The result is that the patterning looks asymmetrical and not as perfect as could be. Also, in hindsight, I should've put the blue layer between the orange and yellow to allow them both to shine through.

At least it smells good, scented with Raspberry Kisses.

I then tried accenting other areas of the soap, but again, not as pleased with the end result as I wanted to be. I think I'll put this mould away for a little bit and come back to it another time. Perhaps by leaving it in my unconscious, I can pick out a colour palate I like.

Have a great week!

Happy accident

As you know, I'm trying to use up leftover bits and bobs of soap. I thought I had cleaned up my work space, but what I had done was tossed my cutting board of all the leftover shaved bits of soap on top of a cabinet. The joys of being old and forgetful. :P Since these bits weren't going to clean themselves up, I had to do something with them.

In the meanwhile, a friend had asked for some more soap, so I made him his 3 bars of soap, but had some leftover. It smells so good, scented with Litsea EO, I didn't want to just use it on anything. I thought I could pour one more small bar of soap, but there was only enough to cover just about half of the mould. Then I spied the scraps and threw them on top of the poured soap. Layering, it's something I need to practice anyway. I covered the scraps with clear and then took even more leftover soap, coloured it with some leftover bubblegum pink colouring and tossed it all on top.

I'm wanting to call it Anatomy Lesson because it kind of looks like guts and whatnot and the pink is almost flesh coloured, but that's probably not a good selling point is it? 

Andorian Dominoes anyone?

I have no idea if Andorians ever played dominoes, but anyone who knows me even slightly, knows that on occasion, I will make up sh*t. I figured it's better than posting selfies with incriminating evidence in the background.

Pinterest has been a great source of inspiration for soap making and I've been needing that. The soaps on my soap board are absolutely incredible and between that, and Silvia's suggestion for colour combinations, I decided to try something new.

My soap for the week is a combination of pseudo embedding and layering. I wanted something that would punch out an interesting shape so that the second layer could come through to create a contrast. My cookie cutters are all rather large and I thought I'd stick with a simple geometric shape for now. I tried using a BBQ lighter (I think it's now toast) and the lid of a pen, but they didn't have the sharp edge to cut out a proper hole. We have a bunch of straws laying around and so I used that instead. It seems to work alright, and I used the PJ Tool for cleaning up the edges.

Next time, I guess I should measure it out so the holes are more evenly spaced, but I do like the colours. The centre is scented with vanilla sandalwood from Brambleberry, and so the whole theme of this soap, I think, is quite masculine. The colour isn't quite indigo like you had mentioned Silvia, but not a bad complement of colour either I think. Kind of like Neopolitan having a manic day.

What's your favourite colour combinations? Do you waste hours on Pinterest like I do?

Double the layers, double the fun

It's summer here finally! We've been having some really gorgeous weather, a little hot for some of us west coasters, to which all you mid and east coasters will just scoff. But this is why we live on the we(s)t coast, for the mild weather.

This heatwave inspired the following soaps. I thought about how to incorporate summer into the soaps and after looking at other people's soaps for inspiration, I decided to try embedding in different layers. The soaps are scented with sun ripened cherry, because cherries are another sign of summer. Here are the results.

Maybe I should've put him on a lilypad.

What says summer to you?