A sorry week for soap making

Wow. I got one good soap from a week of soap making. I hope people are in the mood to accept some less-than perfect soaps in a month or two; I have to get rid of everything eventually.

I was trying drop swirls and swirling. I am not at all good at drop swirls. In the end, I tried making a soap I saw that I loved and sometimes trying to reproduce something teaches you more than winging it without the model. Such was the case for me with this. I made 4-5 other soaps but none had the right drops and certainly none of them turned out well except for my copycat version. I am thankful to the person who made the soap I first saw. They used only paprika to get their base color, so I sued paprika-infused oil, paprika, a bit of red brick oxide and a discoloring FO. I got some water difference effects in the white and black, which I really like.

This is all I got for a whole week of soaping!

Living in the land of mediocrity 

Yes, that's where I've been, working my ass off to get the pattern I want and cutting to find that I'm am utterly utterly off base. Without knowing what I wanted, the soap looks fine for the most part, but the soapmaker's private hell is that knowledge of what was to be, but isn't. Honest to Pete, I'm ready to try voodoo to cure me.

I forgot to alternate the gold and the yellow and remembered on the last pour. Come on! Christmas soaps are okay although the second one is over-swirled and not as expected. Tried a swirl a la Petra and that turned out okay but of course is not nearly as good as hers. I did manage to get a thick sparkly gold mica swirl that went through the bar which was satisfying, I admit.

I am working on our current challenge which seems simple; drop swirl and then run a skewer through to swirl, no hangers allowed. I am a dunce at drop swirls. I will never assume that something that seems easy is at all easy. I simply cannot get anything to come out! My drops aren't going through the soap, of if they are, I'm swirling them into oblivion. If anyone knows why the drops always curve toward the center, please let me know. I don't think I can make any more trash so I may be done. I hate being so incompetent but I also hate drowning in bars of flops and I think my hatred of even more excess soap than I already have is outweighing my drive to nail a stupid drop and skewer, which we are affectionately calling a drop and swear- far more accurate. I'm showing you the best of them. The worst are, well, far worse.

I spent many hours trying to get my video together for the December Challenge I'm hosting for our forum. I did manage to get a soap I am very happy with but again, it was completely unexpected and did not go according to vision. Luckily for me, it came out better than my vision; how often does that happen?! The pink was made for the challenge (sooooo pink. The batter didn't look close to that pink.) and I love the 3D effect. I made the blue and white later and although I didn't get the depth effect, I like the bars. Made with two colors and all the variation is due to water difference. The challenge is based on Auntie Clara's blog posts about water discount in design, which is pretty amazing. I do love Auntie Clara.