Ballerina Dots

This month's Soap Challenge theme is Polka Dots!  Such a fun design element...and great for spring!
Thank you Amy Warden!

The soaps made in the tutorial for this challenge are pictured below.

Tatiana Serko from Creative Soap by Steso was our guest teacher this month.  She is an amazing soap artist who always has something inspiring to look at!

She designed these soaps by creating a top and a bottom template out of clay and guiding straws through.  Then she poured soap batter around the straws.  Once the soap had set, those straws were pulled out and the batter for the dots were poured in.  Aren't these absolutely gorgeous?!  So stunning!

One of the Soap Challenge Support Team members, Lisa Cunningham from I Dream In Soap, used extruding as her method of obtaining the polka dots.  Her examples are here below.

These are also some beautiful soaps!

So, now for my attempt to create something just as beautiful! 

Google polka dot art, and WOW!  there are some really creative ways to express yourself in dots!!!  For this challenge, the design was to be symmetrical and use at least seven dots.  You need to have at least three bars of soap, weighing at least 3 oz. each.

I really liked all of the art that had dots around a silhouette shape.  So, this is the idea I went with.  I, of course, made it way to complicated to begin with, and it took me a long time to come up with the design.  I decided to try the extruded method.  This was for three reasons. 
1) Since last month's challenge - which I still have not posted about because it was a totally blind challenge - I have really wanted to revisit the soap dough idea.  This is something that has intrigued me for years, and I have not taken the time to really master it.  Lisa Cunningham posted a youtube video last May on how she makes hers, and that was brought to the surface again last month.  It has inspired me to really want to figure this technique out. 
2) I've been reading posts where people have really struggled getting those straws out. 
3)  I wanted to play with shapes, which would be harder to remove, as you couldn't twist them properly. 
So...extruded it is!

For my template, I decided to use my 3D printer.  Not sure that was my best decision ever...as I had a hard time transferring the size dots to the size of my extruded pieces.  This was mostly because I started with the wrong program initially for my design.  There are so many steps with creating the design and the subsequent transfer of file types, that I had difficulty controlling the exact size of the holes.  But, it is something I will play with more in the future to see if I can get the technique down.

The mold I used was a loaf mold, and I was able to get it three bars high.

This was my initial template.  Like I said, way to complicated!  I remade the templates, simplifying the design a bit, and that was still way too much.  So I improvised and only used some of the guides instead of attempting the whole design.  And, the heart in the center is just where I poured the soap batter :)

Below is the actual template I used...and I'm showing how I placed the extruded pieces into and through the templates.  Easier said than done, I'd have to say!  The flower extrusions were a bit larger than the holes in my template, so I had to kind of squeeze them to fit well enough to stay put.

I then sealed up the end and poured the contrasting soap batter through the hole I had made in the top. 
It got a bit messy :)

Here are pictures of the unmolding...

Cut and cleaned them up a bit, and wallah!  Beautiful little ballerina soaps!

I really enjoyed everything I learned this month!  THANK YOU! to Amy Warden, Tatiana Serko and especially to Lisa Cunningham!  I would not have had any success without Lisa's video on the soap dough :)

I will definitely be doing more of this technique, as polka dots are so tempting for the endless design opportunities!