Snow on Mauna Kea, My Second Great Cakes Soap Challenge February 19, 2016 11:52 11 Comments
At the beginning of this month, I was a bit nervous for February's soap challenge. As I read the email with the guidelines and watched the demonstration videos I knew that I would spend a good amount of time figuring out what I was going to do. The theme was winter wonderland and the guidelines were to create a soap that had an element of snow, that it must be made primarily of cold process soap and but if you wanted you could add small embellishments not made of soap if you wanted. There were two different categories to choose from to enter in, all natural category or synthetic category. I knew for sure that I would enter the all natural category. I started looking for molds to give me inspiration. I went on Ebay browsing and found two silicone molds of snowflakes that I thought would be perfect. When the finally arrived at my home I was shocked to see the size difference from what I thought I had purchased.
The orange snowflake mold I thought would be much smaller. Geez, this was so much bigger and the pink mold I thought would at least twice the size of this tiny little thing. Ugh, now what was I going to do? I tested the tiny pink mold with melt and pour and was not impressed. I became ever more frustrated, so I spent a few more days trying to figure this puzzle out. I knew that if I used the tiny pink mold the soap would have to be really high in solid fats to get the soap hard enough for me to be able to unmold the snowflakes and hold their shape. My mind kept rolling all of this around. The only soaps that I knew that would get really hard really fast are sea salt soaps. I was willing to give it a shot, and if it worked I would have to make multiple mini batches of sea salt soap with this horrible tiny mold. I resized my original sea salt soap recipe and went to work. I wanted to use different colors of salt beside plain white sea salt so on the hunt again and found pink Himalayan sea salt and Hawaiian black lava sea salt to go with the white. First, I made a mini batch, split it in half and used the plain sea salt in one and the pink sea salt in the other using the "huge" orange snowflake mold.
Here they are, cute but as you can see I didn't stop there. Boy, I'm telling you my brain can get me into some kinds of messes! Yes, I did go there. I started carving those snowflakes out, at first with just a knife.
Once they became too hard I had to trade in my knife for a Dremel tool. Holy cow! What have I gotten myself into?
There were sea salt soap powder and chunks everywhere. I did have a couple of them break so now I was short a few. This was a couple of days worth of work and my little Dremel tool kept overheating. It's funny, the vision in my head looked nothing like this. With those snowflakes finished it was now time to start with that OTHER mold.
I made three batches of these torturous tiny things. One batch with the plain white sea salt and two more with the pink Himalayan salt. That was about all I could stand. They drove me crazy and as you can see they still broke and I had to trim them with a knife as well. Now you see what I mean about getting myself into messes.
If anyone is reading this I'm sure you are confused about what my actual plan is for this winter wonderland soap, so close your eyes and imagine that you are on vacation in Hawaii and your tour guide takes you to go skiing on Mauna Kea. You see snow, you see lava rock and because you have a great imagination you see those wonderful snowflakes that have all the detail in them. That was my vision and here's what happened.
Yes, I am sticking with the sea salt soap recipe still for the base of my soap and the essential oils that I used were ylang-ylang and sweet orange. Once my soap batter was at thin trace I added the essential oils then split the batch in half. The first half got the Hawaiian black lava sea salt and some activated charcoal. The second half was the plain white sea salt and white kaolin clay. Holy moly, this accelerated so fast, so once everything was mixed in I started plopping the soap in my silicone mold as fast as I could. After that, I started putting in the large snowflakes as fast as I could and then the little tiny ones. Arghh! My soap looks like ****. I apologize that there are no pictures of my accelerated soap disaster but I would have had to sprout another head and four more arms.
I was able to cut them 15 minutes later and get them out of the mold. Totally crazy!
I am not too happy this how this turned out, but it smells really good. Here are the two best out of the whole batch. Friday I will take a few photos that will hopefully show more detail and yes I am going to be a sport and still enter my soap disaster.
Here is the picture of my entry that I will upload for the soap challenge. Did I have fun? Well, yes and no. Making soap is always fun to me, but I was hoping for better results. February's soap challenge was definitely a challenge.
Comments
Monica Felix on February 23, 2016 14:18
What a beautiful idea … your soap it´s amazing.. so creative.. so new.. great! :o)
love it! congratulations Lisa
Sara on February 22, 2016 07:56
I love the effort you put into the details. It really does look like volcanic rock. I think it is a great concept!!
Debi Olsen on February 20, 2016 13:55
I really love all the different textures and color variations you achieved with your soap. It really turned out fantastic!
I can totally commiserate with you on trying to keep up with your own brain!! Trying to replicate the designs my brain comes up with is proving to be quite challenging! I must have made at least 15 batches of “sugar glass” for my soap just to get it right. That doesn’t count all the gelatin glass batches I made before I gave up on that concept!
Lisa on February 19, 2016 15:25
Thanks everyone for your kind words.
:) Lisa
Karen on February 19, 2016 14:24
Beautiful job.
Karen on February 19, 2016 14:24
Beautiful job.
Amy Warden on February 19, 2016 13:38
I totally admire all the thought processes that you shared and went through to create your soap! This is exactly what the challenges are all about – thinking outside the box, making something you would never think to create on your own, and seeing it through even when you feel all hope is lost! Because in the end, you still have a beautiful and completely unique soap!! The salt soap idea was a good one! The detail on the mini snowflakes, while a pain in the butt, turned out amazing. Really great job!! (I hope your dremel tool is still functioning!)
Janelle on February 19, 2016 13:35
So glad you still entered… these are amazing!
April on February 19, 2016 13:26
The very first thing I thought of when I saw your picture was volcanic lava rock and how it must look just like that in Hawaii (I’ve never been, but I’ve seen pictures). I am super impressed with your tenacity to carve out those snowflakes! Your soaps look like they could be a part of the beach. Pretty and rustic at the same time. <3
Omneya on February 19, 2016 12:35
Hun* not gun …sorry lol
Omneya on February 19, 2016 12:34
I feel your pain gun, but in the end it looks beautiful <3