My fire/lava side looks rather garish this morning, I am forced to admit. Perhaps a bit too much mica but I am hoping it will calm a touch with some heat.

I flipped it, so my ugly layer is inside; my apologies to whomever uses this soap because your last impression of it will be the use of my crappy color combo. Maybe they will like it for all I know because we are, of course, our own worst critics. I poured my water side and seriously, I must take a moment to curse soap and all it stands for. I waited and waited with my colors FOREVER until they just started to trace and then without notice or warning, my dark blue went to glop while I was pouring. It started coming out in chunks but there was nothing to be done but keep pouring. Hating to waste any batter, I pushed the last blob out in the corner and it looks pretty, well, blobby and uninteresting. It takes away from the overall effect but that will be cut onto a single bar, so I mustn't forget that I can essentially hide my shame.

My first layer was poured several days ago, my fire layer yesterday and water today, so it is currently in the oven at 170 for an hour to get the layers to adhere to the oldest one. Perhaps heat will get my fire to cool a bit.

Good lord, I haven't made any soap for months and months, not since my last post. I lost my mojo and had no desire whatever to make a single batch. I made a layer underneath this one that I hate because I chose the wrong colors so I reverted back to form and went for fire colors, some of my favorites. I was hoping for a lava look but was not thoughtful about my pour, at all, because I haven't made any soap for months and months and apparently no longer know how to think through the process of getting from A to B, but I always love fire, so this will do. I will try water as the next layer and see where I go.

I'm on bust number three or four for the cloud soap. I am in the middle of using this black and white bar I made and I can see the pattern in there for clouds if it were done in white and blue, but I am not capturing it quite right.

This one isn't too bad. I can see it looking pretty cloud-like but it's not what I want. I am using new FO's, one of which traced fast yesterday but not today, and looked slightly tan in one soap and dreadfully grossly neutral in another. I changed it up but was really looking forward to some new scents. That, however, will not be happening with this project. Sigh. Pardon the crappy lighting.

I am having terrible difficulty getting the real colors captured. This is pretty close but....

Next on the agenda is going back and trying a technique to get a cumulus cloud soap.

I couldn't resist one more variation on a theme with these colors. Not the best picture but once it's nicer outside, I'll try to get some decent ones. A gradient wall pour of 37 different colors. Each color was weighed out so it would be proportionately different but it doesn't feel as stepped as I thought it would. I must have mis-measured on one or two colors because two look a bit out of place, but I
can live with it. Next time, I won't top it off as I don't like the end of the tail going up. Live and learn.

Well, it took 42 cups of soap to get this, but it came out better than I anticipated. The batter was just at emulsion and when pouring it in, I couldn't tell at all if the colors had stayed distinct. The top was somewhat blended so for all I knew, I had an odd-ball tie-dye in there. I didn't use much water which makes the soap stay softer longer but once it hardens, it can break while cutting, so I cut early and got a little bit of road rash on the bars. It'll clean up well though. Now I have to find another color combo I like to try some other patterns. 

I loved the colors I got in this soap but I can't capture it outside. It looks about as intense as it did wet, but I just can't get it nor can I edit for it because the software is suddenly not working.

I sometimes forget how much fun it can be to do patterns in a slab.