Guardians of Treasure

This month I've been playing with a few different "soap dough" designs, as this is the technique for the February Soap Challenge Club, hosted by Amy Warden.  Lisa Cunningham of I Dream In Soap is the guest instructor this month.

Soap Dough is something I've been attempting to master for years, being inspired by many polymer clay artists along the way.  I've had many failed attempts, and a few that were more successful in the past couple of years.  Soap does not behave like clay!  This technique is very time consuming, so I've only attempted a time or two a year.  I am getting better, and soon, I may be able to complete a project in less time - if I can keep my designs simple enough lol!  These are some bars from last year that were fairly successful.

For this challenge, we are required to make our own soap dough from scratch, and create an embed that goes the length of the mold, cut so the image is on the face of the bar.  Beginners can do a simple one color, one shape embed.  Experienced soapers need to make a complex shape, consisting of at least two colors and two separate shapes.  Here are the example soaps that Lisa made for our tutorial. 

Beginner Example

Experienced Example

There are so many ideas that can be explored using this technique!  Clay artists are great inspiration, and as far as soap goes, I personally just love the creations found at Sorcery Soap, by Bee Iyata.  I've been following her for years, and she sells premade soap dough if you are interested in going that route, as well as books with various recipes for making your own.  Lisa at I Dream In Soap sells soap dough tools including extruders and discs.  I also have found another wonderful resource at Jennifer's Soaps, also selling discs and extruders.  Both Lisa (idreaminsoap) and Jennifer (thesoapartist) have terrific videos on youtube to guide you along your soapmaking journey - I'm sure there are many others out there too!

For my soaps this month, I used my Signature Olive Oil recipe.  Some of the colors I had already made, and several were made specifically for this challenge.  Here's my color palette, colored with rose clay, indigo, charcoal, cocoa powder and annatto seed - and a green I decided to use that was  leftover from a Christmas project.  The soap dough was left unscented.

I've been wanting to make gnome soaps for quite some time, and this challenge has propelled me to do it!  I found this cute illustration on pinterest that is serving as my inspiration.

To create this image, I mostly utilized my extruder with various shaped discs.  I did not need to make any of my own or buy anything I didn't already have.  The beard I had to "freehand" shape.  I decided to do one gnome holding a heart, and another a shamrock.

Here are some process pictures.

Feet :)

After the gnomes were constructed, I needed to embed them into a loaf of soap.  I decided to try using Jennifer Soap's method of a 7 layer gradient - gotta check out her koala bear soap video, so cute!!!  And, I scented with our classic Woodland Path, a combination of mint, eucalyptus and fir.

My gradient attempt went from pink to blue.  I've never mixed the rose clay with the indigo before, so I wasn't sure how it would turn out.  As I was mixing the soap batter, the colors did seem a bit muddied and gray, but the indigo takes some time to "bloom" so to speak.   The gradient from pink to blue should have purple in the middle, which I normally obtain with alkanet root, so....we will see tomorrow when I cut.

It was also very difficult to do layers with the embed taking up so much space in the mold, hard to get a spatula near the previous layer for even, non penetrating layers.  So, again, I'm not sure how the gradient will turn out.

I got so caught up in the gradient step that I did not take proper pictures.  Here are the last two blue layers.

Cut off ends that didn't make it into the loaf

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Morning cut time!

All night, I was really concerned about the gradient and whether or not I'd have air pockets in my gnomes. 
This is the time to pull back the curtain!

Top Before Unwrapping

Promising Gradient...

Slab cut into two loaves, on side to show gradient

And...the moment of truth...

Oh!  They are so cute!!!  And, out of the 20+ bars, I only had to fill two little air pockets!

There are a few flaws (two piece shamrocks don't line up perfectly for example), that I will accept, but overall I really love these guys!  The gradient turned out lovely, and yes, there is a bit of purple in there!  Could be a better contrast between background and gnome? 

I'll have to perfect this with more gnome soaps, don't you think?