Tale of a Mermaid

I've been honored to be invited to participate in Brambleberry's Soap the Rainbow series.  What is Soap the Rainbow?  Basically each invited soap maker has an assigned color from the rainbow, each week the soap maker will make a soap project based on the assigned color.  For details see the link: Soap the Rainbow Series & Contest

Guess what my color is for this week?  BLUE!!!

So fitting for the hot hot summer!

Here are a few of my inspirations:

Coffee Table Made by Christopher Duff of Duff London

Glass Sculpture Made by Ben Young

Glass Sculpture made by Paul DeSomma and Marsha Blaker

Ocean Counterpoint made by Stone Ridge Glass

Besides the ocean theme (the obvious choice) for the blues, I want to add a little romantic element into the scheme,  what can be more perfect than mermaid, seashell and pearl?  I have an image in my head that involves a mermaid's tail flopping on top of the rising waves chasing after the precious pearl washed up to the white sand beach.  I don't want to buy a ready made mold to make the mermaid's tails, I prefer a more organic look, so I decided to find a way to pipe them using a cake decorating tip.  You can use any tip that is used to pipe rose petal, it's quit easy.

Everything went smoothly, the soap was made, video was recorded, then the day after I realized the video file was never saved!  What a nightmare...

I had to make another "emergency" batch to record again the night before this tutorial is due!  Unfortunately I only have limited mermaid tails left, but you can see the entire process.

Last but not least here are some salon shots of the original batch of Tale of Mermaid soap:

Shooting Star

The actual time spent in making soap is pretty short, but that's not to say each batch doesn't take a long time to produce.  Why?!  Because I spend most of my time designing in my head.  This is a short story about the making of my Shooting Star soap. 

 It started with me thinking about my holiday season soap making.  I don't usually re-make soap from the past, if I can, I prefer reinventing the wheel.  Last year the same fragrance soap was made with rainbow colored soap bits embedded in t a white base.  The colors of rainbow always catch people's attention.  And the idea of rainbow led me to the image of shooting star.  The actually star is made ahead of time with transparent melt & pour soap base to embed into the soap log to look like a star on top of a ray of rainbow.

 Well, this is a perfect case of what I see in my head is totally not what happened in the reality...  See my diagram below:

Oh well, there's always the next time!

Color Inspiration - Misbehaving

Misbehaving is a funny name for a fragrance I used to make this fun soap.  Disclaimer, I didn't make up the name!  It is from the supplier I purchased from.  I kind of like it for the reason that it did not behave while I was soaping it, so I decided to keep the name.

The scent strikes me as fun, fruity, zesty with a punch, definitely a party drink type smell.  I then went online in search of a color scheme to fit this fragrance.  The second I saw the photo on the right I knew it is THE one.
In my mind I was not expecting this fragrance to speed trace at all, fruity fragrance oils don't usually misbehave!  Well, I guess this one got her name for a good reason!  I couldn't make even layers, I was sweating to just get all the batter into the mold without bubbles.  This one is definitely having some spoiled princess moment!

Nevertheless, it came out gorgeous except some discoloration from white to beige, no big deal.  Hope you like this one!

Location Location Location

Last holiday season I signed up for the biggest craft show I've ever been to.  I don't sell in craft shows often, at most maybe one during the holiday season, most of the time I just list my products on Etsy.  First time doing big craft show (over 200 vendors) was nerve racking.  I had no idea how much product to bring and what price point to set in order to off set the costs.  In talking to my family about this my sister in law brain stormed a few ideas with me.  This was one of them, to make soap related to location.

I live in San Francisco Bay area, California, one of the most interesting and diverse cities in the world, not only in geography but also in culture. Speaking of San Francisco one cannot forget to mention the first gay neighborhoods in the United States, it's commonly called The Castro district. It has been one of the most lively and prominent symbols of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. You would know you just enter the zone the minute you see rainbow flags everywhere.  And that, is my inspiration for my I love SF soap.

Making this soap is not as easy as I thought.  There's a lot of waste of soap as I use a cookie cutter shaped like a map of USA to cut off a larger piece of pre-made soap.  I then hand carved out each heart or star shape approximately over where SF is on the USA map, spray some water and embedded the pre-made tiny heart or star soap into the void.  Till today I still have 1/2 of the left over scraps.  I will need to find a way to use them up.  But I have to say, they are so cute!

Where Is My Glycerin River?!

What is glycerin river?  In most cases it happens when you use water dispersible titanium dioxide to color your soap batter white and then the soap gelled.  Can't imagine it?  Here's a picture to show you:

Most of us trying very hard to avoid it.  One of the trick is not to gel the soap.  Another trick is not to use water dispersible titanium dioxide, instead, use oil dispersible version.  If you don't like these 2 options, heavily discount your water when you make lye solution would work too.

But, what if I want glycerin river?!  Should be easy, right?!  Not in this case!

I had this grant design idea to mimic the cracking of Arctic ice like this picture:

I soaped normally, didn't discount water, added descent amount of water dispersible titanium dioxide, even put it in the preheated oven to force gel.  So, where is my glycerin river when I intentionally tried to make it?!

The only difference is I also used transparent melt and pour soap to swirl the bottom blue portion for water effect.  Could it be the melt & pour?  Melt & pour soap does contain lots of glycerin that why it tends to sweat in humid area.  Could that be the reason I'm not getting the glycerin river I wanted?!  There got to be a reasonable logic to this right?

You Tube Live Event - Making Blood Moon Soap

Not bad for my first YouTube Live Event!  Consider it was Easter Sunday night, still managed to have 17 viewers.  It's hard talking to myself the whole time.  I usually soap pretty quiet and take my time "playing" with my soap.  I was so conscious about giving the right amount of information at the same time trying not to soap faster to not bore viewers.  Well, the hardest part is over, you will be the judge of how I did.  Any constructive criticism welcome, please comment here or on my Facebook page.

If it is well received I would really consider doing this with a regular schedule, what do you all think?

YouTube Live Soaping Event

I recently discovered YouTube has a live event you can activate, suddenly light bulb popped up in my head!  I've tried Google hangout and Skype live soaping interactive sessions with not much of success mainly because it consumes too much internet band width from all parties participating.  That was last year, there went my genius idea down the drain.  Broadcasting soaping live is a compromise, I don't get to interact with anyone, it's like a one man show. It is not my ideal preference but I'm giving it a try.

Please come watch me soap live on YouTube for the first time at 7:00 pm (Pacific Standard Time, I live in California USA) this Sunday, April 20th (yes it's Easter night) if you have time!

 Bookmark the link: Live Blood Moon Soap Making Event

Inspired by the recent lunar eclipse event.

Soaping Design Revolution

You have read this before from me that I seldom repeat my design, even if it's the same fragrance.  But there are a couple I do every year that I consider worth keeping and repeat.  However, the big concept might have stayed the same, it's the small detail changes that make each batch unique.  This is a story about how Mojito Soap evolved over the years.

Original inspiration back in July 2012 is a photo of a beach resort I got online:

 This is the very first Mojito Soap combining 3 different techniques: soap embed with outline, pencil line, and M&P soap on top of CP:

This design was a big hit, even got some soapers copying through out the years.  The video of making is uploaded on my Youtube channel, just search for Shieh Design Studio if you are interested.  This design requires a lot of planning and preparation, definitely not a mess produce effective design.  Then the next 2 generation:

I feel like it is losing it's fame, time for a little reinventing!  I went back to my original Mojito and really feel like I need to bring back some of the elements.  I like the irregular rocks from the first generation rather than those later round balls.  But instead of remaking the exact duplicate of first generation I want something else to catch people's attention again.  Thanks to all that responded on my Facebook page and gave me some inspirations!  I'm rather excited about this new Mojito Soap, still made with coconut water and essential oil blend (instead of artificial fragrance), but a fresh look!

How can it call itself Mojito if there's no lime slices and mint leaves?!  That's obvious, isn't it?

With a simple and free modification to my log mold I created this glass shape soap, how do you like it?

Using Cookie Cutters for Soap Embeds

Simple soap embeds can be added inside the soap or on top of the soap, they can make an ordinary soap look interesting and instantly catch shoppers' attention.  There are a lot of embed molds in the market, molds that meant to be used for making chocolate, ice cube, even cake fondant can be used to make soap embeds.  However, some intricate silicone molds can be very pricey!  Here is a simple way to make fruit wedges without having to search for embed molds, like these tiny imitation of coconut wedges.

With the same technique, I made this tiny melon wedges for my Melon Spritzer Soap.

This is actually very simple but do require patience.  All you need is a round mold and circle cookie cutters.  You can get a set of 3 circles for a few dollars in a typical kitchenware store.  I only use the 2 larger ones.

 To demonstrate making melon wedges, step one, put the largest ring in a round mold.  Mix up some melt & pour soap with green colorant then pour in between the space while holding down the ring with your fingers.

Let is cool down and unmold it to take off the largest cookie cutter ring.  Put the green soap back into the mold, and place the medium size ring in the center.  Mix up some melt & pour soap with orange colorant then pour between the green soap ring and the cookie cutter.

Let it cool down, remove it from the mold and take off the cookie cutter.  Use a knife to cut it into 6 wedges.

 The proportion between green and orange is just too equal, which is not realistic.  To make it more like the real melon wedge, take the largest cookie cutter and cut off the outer green as much as you want.

 This is what you end up with, 6 cute melon wedges and left over green peel.

You can apply this to coconut wedges or watermelon wedges and probably some more I can't think of.  Have fun!

Reinventing Old Technique

After 270 blog posts later, I find myself having a blogger's block, sort of like a writer's block.  Gosh, what else can I write?  My mission for this blog is alway to put out there in public something informative, never just about pretty pictures or what I have been doing lately.  I want my followers to learn something from reading each post I write.
You can always write to me any suggestion you have, I love to hear your ideas.  But please, please only after you've seen all my post and if you still can't find what you are looking for, I just might take up the challenge!

Now back to this post.  I was chatting with one of my online soapy friends one day and she told me to revisit my old posts and maybe just maybe I'll think differently towards an old idea or technique and reinvent myself.  This is about me reinventing, sort of.  There was a period of time when I was obsessed about combining melt and pour soap base and cold process soap.  I was interested in that contrast between solid (the cold process) and the transparent (melt & Pour).  Since then other techniques took my attentions away and I have not made one for a long time.  This one is called Wild Honey Soap.  I used the clear melt & pour soap base and colored it deep gold which is perfect to represent the wild flower honey.  Well, swirling in hot melt & pour soap is nothing new, so where is the reinventing part?

Do you see the honey comb crunch pieces on the soap top?  I used a sheet of bubble wrap as mold and poured melt & pour soap directly on the bubble side then peeled off into small pieces when it's completely solid.

 This soap is made with coconut water and of course local unrefined wildflower honey.  It's scented with a fragrance blend of sweet honey and wildflower.

2013 Soap Collage

Happy New Year everyone!

I made a photo collage of some soap projects I did in 2013, enjoy!

Party Favor - Mini Cupcake Soap

It's not unusual for people to plan a party and source the party favor a bit too late in the game because it's always thought to be the least important piece of the puzzle.  If you are a cold process soap maker you would understand when I say it takes time to have a custom made soap ready so plan ahead, like 2 months ahead!  Well, but what if it's too late already?  This is where melt and pour soap comes to rescue.  

What is melt and pour soap?  It used to be made with detergent and glycerin, can be transparent or opaque, made to be meltable to form whatever shape you want it to be.  Nowadays it can be made detergent free and just like cold process soap but with extra process of glycerin and high % alcohol (or propylene glycol) to turn it transparent and meltable.  Melt and pour soap can be done at home but sure not as cost effective and quality is not as good in my opinion.  Most of us source it from a supplier or directly from a manufacturer.  The advantage of using melt and pour soap is you don't need to wait for cure time like cold process soap.  And if you are not happy with your design you can always remelt it again.  Nevertheless, I still prefer cold process soap most of the time.  Cold process soap allows me to customize recipes and be more flexible with designs.  In my opinion, quality can be far more superior than melt and pour soap.

Yes, those cherries are soap, usable soap.  The only thing that's not soap is the stem.  I collected and dried these stems from real cherries thinking one day I would need them.  And I did!  I must be a psychic or something!  The only problem with making soap in the form of food is that it can easily be consumed as food if one does not read the label!