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:

Inspiration Put Into Soap

I love traveling, the only drawback is that I can't soap!  But I sure get inspired and come back home eager to put my vision to work, in soap of course.

This is my 2nd time traveling to Japan.  The first time I visited it was at the end of summer season rolling into fall, weather was still hot and everything green.  This time we went in the harsh winter.  I love visiting temple, shrine, and castles, not just in Japan but all over the world.  I have a thing for ancient old architecture, it speaks great history and evolution to me.  Temple, shrine, and castles look very different in snowy winter, they are more 'quiet' and serene, as if time freezes at this specific moment.

Matsumoto castle

Zenko-ji (one of the oldest Buddhist temple in Japan)

Rokujizō (statues of the six Bodhisattvas, who gave up Buddhist enlightenment, in order to provide salvation to others. The Bodhisattvas are said to be able to commune with the six realms of hell, starvation, beasts, carnage, human beings and divine beings)

People tie their wishes to temple tree branches

Torii gate at Meiji Shrine (Imperial shrine in Tokyo)

Torii gate at Lake Ashi (see Mt. Fuji white snowy top at the back?)

Interesting fact about torii gate: it is meant to mark and divide the spiritual world from our world, it only exists in Shinto shrines.  Shinto shrines supposedly don't exist in our world, shrine ground exists on a place that overlaps the two worlds, a place where the holy spirits are most likely to hear your prayers.

Anyway, the snowy sky with cold air, the rich old aged wood in the buildings, the red door or torii gates, I want to put them all into this soap, ambitious isn't it?!

My husband walked by when I was cutting the soap and his words were: what are you making, evil soap?!  LOL

This soap is truly luxury, it has pearl and caffeine powder as that unusual additives.  Plus it's scented with 3 different kinds of fragrances: brown part is a mixture of exotic wood & spices; red part is Japanese cherry blossom; and powder blue is a fragrance called Fresh Snow.

Avocado Goodness

Yes, cleaning left over in the kitchen again, to soap that is!
I pureed half avocado with coconut water and froze into ice bars to melt my sodium hydroxide.  I always want to try soaping with fresh avocado to see what it brings to the table but avocado isn't exactly price friendly.  This left over came about only because I forgot about it in the refrigerator and it didn't look too appetizing after 2 days... so into the soap it went!

Inspired by this photo from Design Seeds:

What do you think?  Dead on?!

 

Full Moon Soap - Using Evaporated Goat Milk

There are people who swear by fresh goat milk soap.  Then I saw evaporated goat milk in a can in the supermarket, it says on the back, double strength!  Can't go wrong with double strength!  Got to try for sure!

I froze the milk into ice cubes and used it to melt my lye.  The difference in using this evaporated version from regular fresh goat milk is that my lye solution got really thick, almost like medium trace already even before mixing into the oil/butter!  And it started with yellow color.  Don't know how this is going to effect my final soap colors because I added titanium dioxide and colorants.

 This is what I bought from the store:

I think you can find it in any supermarket.

And, this is the soap, finished the night before full moon, cut the day of full moon!

This is inspired by a color scheme from Design-Seeds

What do you think?  Dead on?

Sea Glass Challenge

I made this soap in response to a soap challenge Majestic Mountain Sage posted on their blog: Sea Glass Inspired Soap Challenge  I'm afraid I went a bit too literally but I usually go with my gut feeling and this feels right!  Photos should be self explanatory, but just want to point out that the bottom is made with Dead Sea Mud to get that bottom of the ocean look and the sea glass portion is done by melt and pour glycerin soap.

Battling with Soap Gremlins

Guess how long these ugly (I guess to a point you can call them cute) trouble makers had been occupying my soaping kitchen?!  TOO LONG!!!  Ever since I got back from my trip to Bhutan they had been messing with me!  The best way to combat those creatures is by making more soap than they can handle, LOL and not give up of course.  Eventually they'll get bored and leave!  And they left!  Woohoo~  Or maybe this awesome soap is just too awesome they can't stand living under the same roof?!
This is Ourea (the spirit or God of mountains), he is the one who ultimately kicked soap gremlins out of my house, for that, I LOVE him!  He's made with 7 color layers and topped with a thick layer of white.  I used lab colors to make him and hopefully in couple weeks all layers will be bleeding into each other seamlessly.  I did add some blueberry seeds for some exfoliation power and the embed is honey glycerin melt & pour soap.
If you want to try to make ombre soap, here's my video tutorial: Making Ombre Layer Soap

I'm Slacking Because Of The Sunshine!

I admit, I've been missing in action on my blog which I post in average twice a week, sometimes more since I started.  I blame this on the sunshine!  We've been in crappy winter weather for so long!  It has been gorgeous for the past week or so with lots and lots of bright sunshine!  How can I stay indoor when the sun is calling for me outside?!  I'm glad I went out and enjoyed it while it lasted, I hear it's going to rain, AGAIN!

Despite all the slacking I still managed to make two batches of soap in totally different styles with the same new natural ingredient I'm trying out - coconut water.  The first batch had so much promise, it was done in peacock swirl, but ended up ashing and discoloring so badly.  I'm not going to show you how ugly it got, maybe next time when I finally accept the out come, LOL.  Live and learn, the 2nd batch came out perfect!  It's a mix of fragrance oils that smells spicy floral with hints of powdery honey!  I present you Selena, the goddess of moon!

Seriously, Is Summer Here Yet?!

I kept on making Spring and Summer related soaps but there's no sign of the harsh cold winter leaving!!!  The brief couple days of temperature hike is such a tease.  Anyway, my birthday is coming up and I gave myself a present of traveling to exotic country for a short vacation.  I will have no internet or phone available, which is great, so work won't be able to catch up with me.  All hell will have to be dealt with afterward!  This will be my last post before I go MIA (missing in action) for 2 weeks.  This batch is to respond to Great Cakes Soapworks milk soap challenge, I challenged myself to make 100% soy milk soap because I don't make much soap with 100% milk, my favorite milk soap method is 1/2 water to dissolve lye then 1/2 milk added at emulsified stage.

Half half method is great, it gives me more time to play with color and style.  Full milk method is more time consuming and typically gives you no time for fancy design.  After carefully thought through my game plan, I decided to use well behaved fragrance and prepared for simplified design.  With no surprise to me, the frozen soy milk still turned a little orange after melting it with lye.  Just to be on the safe side I also kept the milk lye low temperature by sitting it in an ice bath.  All that precaution paid off, the soap batter did not accelerate a bit.  But that's the problem, I over compensated, ^0^.  With no water discount, way well behaved fragrance oil,  and cool (almost cold) lye milk, soap batter stayed thin when I'm ready to pour into my mold.  I was going for the layering style and ended up with some kind of swirl... oh gosh I just have to laugh about it.  Let me tell you, the chance of going to plan B in my soaping world is 99%!  LOL  I should just have no plan A ever, waste of my time!  Anyhoo, I scented this batch with Bamboo Sugar Cane, it's a fresh summery blend of lemongrass, lime, musk and vanilla.  To stay with the theme, I sprinkled mica colored sugar grains on the top.  I can almost imagine myself sitting on a field with warm breeze brushing over my face and sipping a tall glass full of fresh sugar cane juice!