I made a small bit of blue and white striped soap, using the stacking, reducing, stacking and reducing again, like in polymer clay. I loved the effect so I decided to try building a soap using it. I have a few other bits I made; one is black and white and looks okay and the other looks a lot like bacon. I have to figure out how I want to place those in a bar so I don't have pics of those. I had a wide variety of colors so I built a four bar block, trying to get fine but distinct lines of color. In some places, I just did not get much definition because of my attempts to shift the colors from one piece to the other . I think doing these types of stripes shows best with high contrast colors but it was effective even with similar colors, just with less distinction. By the time you layer, reduce, stack etc. you can get extremely fine lines of color and lots of them. It took a long time to do all the layers because reducing it is somewhat time-consuming but in terms of finding new ways to get a specific effect, it was worth it.
Because I hand built the block, the exterior isn't straight nor are my corners great but I love how the outside of the block looks. I wish I could get that look throughout. The lines inside are even and straight, which is supposed to happen with proper reducing but I would like to be able to achieve the more organic look of the outside all through the bar. From my other experience, that likely means trying to reduce it with uneven softness in the colors and manhandling the dough more. On the agenda for the weekend is making more dough.
I see that I will need to pull out my DSL camera to get a better and closer picture of the lines. Cell phone just doesn't do the trick.
I got my camera out and took these to show the fine lines you can get. Each of these pieces is only about 3/4 of an inch thick. This could make for an excellent woodgrain soap, if you wanted to put the time into it.
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