Just a quick post to let you guys know that my pour/pull through soap making video is now up on my YouTube channel. I’m including it here (below), as well. This soap was my entry for the May 2019 Soap Challenge Club. I’m so honored that it actually won the Regular Category grand prize! Thank you so much for stopping by and watching the video! :)
For the May Soap Challenge Club, we learned a soap making technique that’s based on an acrylic paint pouring method. This method of painting involves pouring fluid acrylic soap through some kind of object with multiple holes, like a sink strainer or colander. The beautiful designs these acrylic artists achieve are just incredible. I lost an entire afternoon just watching their YouTube videos. :)
Our guest instructor this month was Joanne Watkins of Nature’s Potion Handmade Soaps. In addition to being an amazing soap maker, Joanne is also an acrylic painting artist. She showed us how to accomplish this technique with soap by either pouring it through an object or pulling an object through the soap. We had two ways to enter the challenge: use an existing object with holes for the regular category or create your own object for the advanced. This was such a fun technique to try and yields such cool designs in the soap. :) Continue reading
I finally finished editing my coffee glycerin river soap video. These soaps were two of my attempts at the 2019 Soap Challenge Club (intentional glycerin rivers). If you’re interested, I have another post here that includes my entire process, recipe, and all of the fails. I hope you enjoy the video! :)
The February Soap Challenge Club involved creating intentional glycerin rivers in a batch of soap. Auntie Clara was our guest instructor this month. She’s written several posts explaining the science behind these rivers and has tackled several myths about them, as well. Auntie Clara also explains how you can create (or avoid) them in your own soaps. Besides describing the awesome science behind these rivers, Auntie Clara has created some of the most beautiful soaps with glycerin river swirls.
For the challenge, we had a choice of entering the regular category (glycerin rivers throughout the bar) or the advanced category (glycerin rivers in only part of the bar). Since I’ve had accidental glycerin rivers occur in parts of my soaps over the years, I thought I’d give the advanced category a try. I had no idea my previous accidental glycerin rivers would be so difficult to replicate. Let’s just say my overly confident attitude led to plenty of fails. If you’d like to see how I finally came up with a soap to enter and also see my fails, just keep reading. I filmed my process but haven’t yet had time to edit. I’ll hopefully be posting the video next week. :) Continue reading
After making a batch of 100% coconut oil soap, I decided to try another single oil soap just for fun. I picked shea butter, mainly because I really like it. However, being considered a hard oil, I wasn’t sure how this soap would behave while mixing or how it would perform as soap. I was a bit surprised by both. I made a short video of my process including a lather test. :) Continue reading
