TEARDROP TECHNIQUE - SOAP CHALLENGE MAY 2016

This month's Amy Warden's soap challenge was about the teardrop technique. This technique was first introduced by an incredibly talented Taiwan soaper known in Facebook as 'sweetly sweetly sweetly' and made more widely known by my fellow country man and equally talented, Sergio Masala. His videos are a pleasure to watch, always perfectly matching his creations to a piece of music that has either inspired them, or has come to his mind upon seeing the result of his art.

I really should call this entry "Tears of Joy and Despair", and here is why.

I usually leave the challenge to the last minute. I just can't help it, I'm made like that. This means I normally don't have more than one go at it due to lack of time, and this month was no different. This is my one and only try before the deadline. I wasn't able to participate the last couple of months and I really, really wanted to do it this time, so I had to concentrate and try to get it right. 

My recipe has a high amount of trace speeding hard oils, so I decided to hand stir this batch and use a non speeding essential oil blend of lavender, rosemary and several citrus oils for scent.  This was one of those rare times when I felt I was quite in control of the process. I could almost hear Amy whispering in my ear the whole time "...pour slowly..., pour slowly..." ;-)

After I finished I felt I would get a more or less satisfying result, especially considering it was my first go at this technique. Mostly, I was proud of myself for having been patient enough during stirring and pouring. Those would be my tears of joy. 

But,........ that's when I ran out of the very little patience I have :-(

It was only Thursday morning Australia time, so I could have waited a bit longer before unmoulding, right? Well, no. I just couldn't keep my hands to myself, could I? So this is what happened:

Both ends of the log!!! And these, as you will all understand, are my tears of despair. 

I will certainly play with this technique again and try to get the tear drop more "suspended" by pouring more base soap at the bottom and/or let it set up for longer before pouring the teardrop part.

Still, I managed to save six decent bars out of the lot, and the four sadly torn remaining ones will be put to good use in the family shower in a few weeks from today.

Good luck everyone! 

CIRCLING TAIWAN SWIRL

One more month, one more soap challenge. This time is a modified version of the Taiwan swirl. After completing the Taiwan swirl, the pattern becomes wavy by circling the skewer around the mould and, when you cut horizontally, the two bars at each end (if you're lucky...) put side by side mirrorwise will resemble a lotus flower.

One of the many things I like about the monthly challenges is that I often take the oportunity to try other things that are often put off. This month, besides the technique, which was also a first for me, I did another two new things: 1) I hand stirred for the first time (talk about being stick blender dependent...) and 2) I tried a vegan alternative to tussah silk.  

The first one I consider a success. Even after 3 years soaping I will still be haunted by "insufficient stirring" horror stories while with the blender in hand, so I have the tendency to do those extra 2 seconds that can potentially ruin a good swirl. I think I have got better lately, but still. So, since this techique required a very thin trace, I decided this was the moment to take the advice of other experienced soapers, like Kenna Cote and hand stir this one. I'm very happy with the result, but I guess that's only because it was a 1 kg. batch (about 2 Lb.), you will not find me hand stirring a 5 kg. batch, sorry :-(  But I will definitelly hand stir small batches from now on. You learn so much about the behaviour of soap this way and you're so much more in control of the consistency you need for whatever technique you're implementing.

I could probably have stirred a bit more because the batter was on the 'a bit too thin' side, but that did not have any consequences of poor saponification, or even delayed unmoulding. It actually had the very best final texture I remember in a long time. Absolutelly zero bubles and smoth as a baby's bum. The problem was more the batter seeping through neighbouring compartments and the elastic bands not being enough to hold the dividers down. Although this could rather be a problem of my DIY dividers... 

The great thing about this mould is tha the side reinforcements give you excellent guidance to place all three dividers

Minimum amount I could purchase. Grrrr...

The second new thing I tried didn't leave me as happy. I LOVE tussah silk in soap and I use it every time I am not using an alternative liquid. But that single ingredient makes most of my current soaps non vegan. So I have been thinking about an alternative for a while. I thought bamboo tops or banana tops could do the trick. The area where I now live is famed for their bananas (although the industry has now given way to other more profitable crops) and banana tops is said to have "silk like properties", so I decided to try it in this small batch. Initially it seemed to work fine, some of it disolved just like silk does the first moments you put it in the lye water, but after half an hour it was clear it was not going to substantially disolve any further. Certainly not it the time that it takes for the lye water to cool and I was not in the mood for waiting until the next day to see what happened to it, so I filtered it when it was time to mix it with the oils. I will have to wait until the soap is ready to use before I can tell if the minute amount that disolved made any difference to the soap or not. My guess is it hasn't. We'll see.  

The fibers in lye water after half an hour, only slightly more
disolved, despite my persistent stirring of it

Banana tops just stirred into the lye water

As for the soap, I wished it would have turned a bit more wavy, but I stopped circling around the mould because one of the ends was running out of the third colour and it was important that the end had all three colours for a better effect. 

Since it was meant to resemble a lotus flower, I scented it with a lovely flowery blend of rose geranium, lavandin and petitgrain essential oils.

Cute little mantra hearts made with the leftover soap batter. I measured the three parts pretty carefully, so I guess I wasn't as careful when pouring each section, with the dividers moving and some soap seeping into neighbouring sections...

For the colours I used ultramarine blue and titanium dioxide for the blue, burlesque mica from 'U-make it up' for the dark pink and titanium dioxide for the white. 

Best of luck to everyone! I can't wait to see what you guys have created :)

Anna

IMPRESSION MAT SOAP CHALLENGE - THREE WISE MEN SOAP

This month's challenge was about using impression mats to texture your soap. The mats could be store bought, like the ones used to decorate cakes, or made with silicone. I lacked the time to make my own or the money to buy the ready made ones, so I used some tiny ones that I already had from another of my crafty areas of interest: polymer clay.

I initially thought of a really tiny one I have that fitted perfectly across one of the cavities of the half cylinder silicone mould. 

 

But I thought making 120 gr. of soap was not right, so I decided to make moulds for another couple of those mini impression mats.   

   

For all three of them I used the dry mica painting method:

Next time I will try to the other method, that is making the soap in two stages, first filling the concave areas of the impression mat with thick traced soap, and then placing that at the bottom of the mould and filling it up with the rest of the soap. The results of this method can be astounding, but I'm afraid I will have to exercise a lot more patience than I normally have, because I tend to ruin a lot of soap by unmoulding too early :-(  and I suspect you need to wait quite a bit to avoid leaving half the soap behind in the mat.... or maybe try to bypass the waiting by adding a fair bit of salt ;-) We'll see.

Anyway, here are the results of my attemps. The first one is very much in the Christmas spirit, scented with a blend of frankincense and myhrr essential oils and a bit of sweet orange to brighten it up (I'm not a huge fan of myhrr and like to tone it down). Coloured with activated charcoal and having the mat dry painted with gold mica, for me it just embodies the gifts presented to baby Jesus by the Three Wise Men.

The next one was coloured with lovely pink ultramarine, but I made the rookie mistake of including orange x10 in the blend, which of course turned the soap batter orange :P . But the next day it had morphed to a quite lovely salmon colour, so I'm fine with that, plus I think it's a good match for the antique silver mica I used on the mat.

And the third one is a more colourful one. I don't think it is a particularly good looking soap, but I'm happy because it meant I made peace with indigo. It is not the blue jeans blue I've always tried to achieve with indigo and failed miserably because the soap either turned an ugly dark grey or stained when used. This time I used indigo that I had been infusing in light olive oil for weeks. I knew it would not be the dark blue I've seen in other soaps and loved, but I quite like this hue and I already have a couple of projects in my mind where I will be using it. Btw, the line in the middle is not a mica line, but a very fine soap line made with leftover soap from the first one coloured with activated charcoal.

    

I feel the photos do not do justice to the Three Wise Men soap, but I have decided it will be my entry for this month's challenge because it's my personal favourite out of the three.*** 

So... It's a good thing I got up early this Sunday morning! Oh, the joys of time difference. 6:20 am my local time and I wake up to an email from Amy that my soap entry does not comply with the guidelines because it hasn't been made in a log or slab mold. With about half an hour left all I can do is hope for the tiny molds I made for the other impression mats, even though small, to be considered as such. So I change my entry to my salmon coloured soap, which I honestly have not thought of a name for yet. This is as much as I can do at the moment. Good luck everyone!

Thanks everyone! Every month I learn so much from you and I never cease to be amazed by all the talent out there.

Cheers!

Anna 

OCTOBER 2015 SOAP CHALLENGE - ALTERNATIVE LIQUIDS

It's been a very long time since I last participated in one of Amy Warden's soap challenges. The last few months have been kind of crazy. First acting as a de facto single mum of 4 for almost a year, then a transcontinental move to be reunited again with husband and father, and then settling down and starting a life all over again. So I guess soaping became less of a priority.

But I'm SO HAPPY to be back again.  

I now live in an area where the main produce are bananas and blueberries, and they go really nicely with coconut milk, so that would have been my firt option. But I don't know why I had in my head that we had to use a liquid that we had never used before. I must have missunderstood, but because of this I automatically ruled out just about all the animal and vegetable milks, as well as yogurt, beer, coffee, teas and aloe vera juice. (Yes, I love alternative liquids in my soaps). Don't have a juicer at the moment and didn't want to buy commercial vegetable juice, so I had to find something else.

I was determined to somehow link this challenge with the community where I live now, and that's when I remembered an awsome local small business than makes some mean ginger beer. They even have a blueberry flavored one, but unfortunately they were out when I went last week, so I had to settle for Grumpy's Double Shot Chilli ginger beer.  

Belonging to the same family as turmeric and cardamom, ginger has been widely used in cooking and medicine for thousands of years, especially in Asia. I lived in China for many years and that's where I learned my go to remedy at the early signs of a cold: crash some fresh ginger root and make an infusion. It has never failed me. You should try it!

The list of health benefits asociated with ginger is really long, so I will only name a couple with links to articles that mention a few more.

Ginger is a known anti-emetic, meaning it prevents vomiting, and it can help aleviate nausea caused by morning sickness or motion sickness. Also, thanks to its compound gingerol, ginger has been found to have anti-inflamatory properties, which in turn bring pain relief. 

But, can you get all those great benefits from ginger beer also? Well, apparently, some commercial ginger beers don't even contain any real ginger but ginger flavouring. Of course, that is not the case of Grumpy's, which is made by steeping real ginger. So my guess is you could reap some of the health benefits of ginger by drinking this awsome beverage. But most of those health benefits are asociated with taking ginger internally. And we're not going to eat the soap we made with it.   

However.... this beer is brewed for weeks, and the carbonated effect is obtained by adding yeast. And yeast has been known to have multiple skin benefits. Double win. 

Also, when used on the skin, ginger can stimulate circulation and soothe burns. So we could asume that the ginger contained in the beer is being applied on the skin when we use this soap. Still, at the level of concentration we're talking about here, I think it is safer to just consider this ingredient for its label appeal.

But to enhance all the above properties, I scented the soap with ginger essential oil in a blend with pink grapefruit and bergamot. Since ginger is also a reputed aphrodisiac, I decided to add some ylang ylang as well to create a synergy. It smells a-mazing, kind of like ginger beer, really. 

As for the process, first I let the beer go flat, but I didn't boil it because it's a non-alcoholic beer. I probably could have added the lye straight, but I chose to froze the beer first, as I do with any other liquid that is not just plain distilled water. I feel that avoiding the high temperatures better preserves the qualities, but then again, I'm sure saponification and a high ph does destroy a lot... so all I'm doing is minimizing the damage, I think. 

Another challenge within the challenge for me was the natural colourants. I have experimented with some, and actually have a  limited collection of them, but they are not my thing yet. Me and indigo are definitely not friends. And I hate the way spirulina turns brown with time. I was out of clays so, ... what to do? Well, might as well try some hot paprika, to continue with the chilli theme of the beer. Not the same thing, but close enough cousins. I really like the peachy orange colour and I decided to add the powder straight to the soap batter because I think the speckles add a certain rustic look that match nicelly with an all-natural soap. For the design I went for a simple two colour dandelion zebra swirl, a technique that is no stranger to this soap challenge.

And that's it. Thank you all so much for stopping by. 

To my fellow members of the Club, thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise. You are all trully inspiring. 

Anna 

JUNE 2014 SOAP CHALLENGE - HANGER SWIRL .... (At least I made some soap :P)

Yeah, I've been participating in the challenges for the last three months, and every subsequent month I've been making my soap closer and closer to the deadline :(

The end of the school year is always super busy when you have 4 school aged kids in very different grades, with all their end of the year activities, curricular and not. But this year has been even worse for me because I've been a "de facto" single mum 24/7 for the last 2 months with my husband having gone abroad to work. The last soap I made was actually for the last Amy Warden's challenge so, this time, more than trying a new technique, the aim (and challenge! for me) was to actually MAKE SOME SOAP!!

And I did. Really, the results of it are not what they would have been had I planned it better, made it with more time, etc... but I just wanted to be forced to find some time do what I love: making soap. And I did it!!! 

At least I did that much. And the design is not what I dreamt of initially, but the formula is. It turned out the perfect texture, even visually (not properly appreciated in the picture). Also super sudsy and yet very mild. I can forsee that even before it's cure time is over. So... I love my soap. I loved making it, even though I did it in a haste, I loved cutting it, smelling it, taking a picture of it.... it's my soap <3  

And so this month I have to be thankful because the challenge pushed me to.... make soap ;) 

Oils of olive, coconut (*bio), palm (*bio), shea butter (* bio), first pressed argan oil, palm kernel, sunflower and a tiny bit of beeswax. 
Scented with basil, lavender, mint, spearmint, rosemary and ylang ylang essential oils.
Coloured with green oxide, BB's electric bubble gum and gold mica.

Thank you all for sharing your beautiful soaps!!! And see you again next month :) !!!

SOAP CHALLENGE - GLYCERIN SWIRL

I have done several mica oil swirls in the past with a very satisfaying result, but I had never tried a glycerin swirl, and Amy Warden's soap challenges are all about trying new and challenging techniques, right? Well, this one really became a challenge for me.

When I signed up and saw the videos, I instantly fell in love with the look of one of the example pictures Amy posted. It looked like a stone carving and that made me think of ancient celtic symbols, the first of which that came to mind was the triple spiral. Three was a magic number for celts, it is related to the solar cycle, the beginning and the end and the perpetual learning (and we are constantly learning with these challenges, right? -wink eye- )

Now, I don't claim to know for real, but some say the triskele or triskelion was a symbol related to pregnancy: each spiral represented a solar cycle of three months, and three times three made the aproximately nine months that a pregnancy lasts. And this is why this spiral is also called the spiral of life. Being a trained doula myself I chose this interpretation because it comes closer to the heart. 

And with this in mind I started planning. For this project I really wanted to take advantage of the "indentations" that the glycerin creates in the soap, but, oh, boy! Mica glycerin swirl.... NOT like mica oil swirl.

I completely ruined a 3lb batch because glycerin just does not behave the same. I wished I had known that before, but glycerin doesn't "stay put" like oil does, instead, glycerin has a tendency to gather together. So I made the basic design with the droper and, before I could come back to it with the skewer, all I had was a few scattered pools of mica and glycerin all over my slab mold. The soap was hardening and I had no choice but to swirl them in whatever pattern and give up on that one. I don't completely dislike the soap that came out of it, specially because of the lovely essential oil combination I used, but it is really not worth posting, I think.

Being the stubborned person I am, I had to try again. Only one day left, and running out of fixed oils, so I decided on a much smaller batch, just in case. 

With this second batch I experienced the same "uncontrolable nature" of the mica and glycerin mix if you want to make a precise pattern with it, but I stayed close to the mold, running the skewer intermittently in order to make the mix run the path I wanted it to. I did so several times until I thought the soap batter could not be disturbed any more.

I thought long and hard before submiting my entry this month but, like the saying goes... the important thing is to participate.

Oils used: olive, coconut (bio), palm (bio), shea butter (bio), palm kernel, castor and corn.

Scent: essential oils of geranium, juniper, lavender and clary sage.

Colorants: violet and forest green from Gracefruit, as well as gold and silver micas from a local provider that is no longer in business.

To Amy and all my fellow participants: love your soaps, love your talent, thank you for so much inspiration!

SOAP CHALLENGE - DROP SWIRL TECHNIQUE

Ok, so this entry will be in English, since it's part of a soap challenge organized by Amy Warden from Great Cakes Soapworks in de USA, and there are participants from all over the world.

This is the first time I participate, but I have been following the challenges for quite some time and have even tried a few at my own pace. This time I decided to sign up regardless I entered the challenge or not because it was getting ridiculous, wanting to take part every month but never finding the time to do it. I figured this would push me to actually DO IT. And it did.

I must say I have not experienced much technical dificulty with this one, apart form the fact I am cutting it a bit fine with time, but that's me, always (almost) late: signed up the day before the deadline, poured the soap on the 18th, just one day before the link-up opened, unmolded on the 20th -still too soft, not wise to cut it yet-, kept my fingers crossed that the nex day, with only 24 hours to finalize things, it would be a sunny day with good enough light to take a decent picture with my technology impaired old camera (and owner of), so I could actually post my entry on time. In the meantime, I was writing this post in the hope the soap would be worth entering the challenge (yes, I wrote most of this post BEFORE I even saw the final soap, at least I tried to be organized in that area :P).

The trace was, I thought at the time of pouring, the right consistency. And I had no time for a second go at it anyway, so this was it.

Turns out I was THRILLED when I cut the soap. I am very pleased with the results. But.... we had a foggy day in Barcelona on the 21st. Foggy in Barcelona?!?!?! We hardly ever get fog over here (sad face). So I tried my best, but the photos are not that great, unfortunately. 



This is actually a soap, with these very colours, that I have been wanting to make for a while. The primary school my kids attend has a very cool music programme in which every class starting 3rd grade forms a Big Band, with their name and everything. My oldest daughter's Big Band is the Big Band Blue, and here you can see the logo in their t-shirt.

So these are the colours that inspired my soap. Hope they convey the idea because I'm planning on giving them away to the other parents in the class as a small token of appreciation. My family and I will be relocating far, far away from here before the end of the year, leaving friends and family behind in Barcelona. This way they will remember us at least for as long as the soap lasts, hahaha!

Big Band Blue soap, coloured with black oxide, ultramarine blue with a tad of TD, a blend of bordeaux mica with electric bubble gum for the red, and TD for the white. 
Oils used are olive, organic coconut, sustainable palm, organic shea butter, castor and corn. 
Scented with a blend of lavender, peppermint and tea tree essential oils.

Had lots of fun and hope I can find the time to enter more challenges in the future. 

Thanks Amy and all the participants in these challenges for providing so much inspiration!