The Entry Thread is officially open. Can't wait to see what y'all have created! 
ENTRY THREAD for SMF August 2023 Challenge: SHAPES!
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It’s almost Fall here, so I made a soap to celebrate for our Shapes challenge! You pick what my embed is - apple or pumpkin - they both say Fall to me.
I don’t have a mold for the shape I wanted, so I improvised and made one with stuff around the house. For the main embed, I split a paper towel tube in half to be the mold. I taped a drinking straw to the underside of the freezer paper to make the indent you see on the top, and placed it in the tube to be the liner. Once the soap was poured in, I taped the tube together loosely to help the soap set up in the shape I wanted. I did a bit of shaving it down after it was set up a few days later. For the stem, I poured a small amount of batter into a mold and shaved it down a bit once it was set up a few days later.
I made the main embed with mostly red, with a bit of orange and yellow to make it look more like the peel of an apple. The stem is colored with cappuccino mica.
For the surrounding soap, I used TD in the base and did an ITPS with evergreen and yellow.
This soap is scented with a blend of NS Avalon and Apple, and smells fantastic.
I don’t have a mold for the shape I wanted, so I improvised and made one with stuff around the house. For the main embed, I split a paper towel tube in half to be the mold. I taped a drinking straw to the underside of the freezer paper to make the indent you see on the top, and placed it in the tube to be the liner. Once the soap was poured in, I taped the tube together loosely to help the soap set up in the shape I wanted. I did a bit of shaving it down after it was set up a few days later. For the stem, I poured a small amount of batter into a mold and shaved it down a bit once it was set up a few days later.
I made the main embed with mostly red, with a bit of orange and yellow to make it look more like the peel of an apple. The stem is colored with cappuccino mica.
For the surrounding soap, I used TD in the base and did an ITPS with evergreen and yellow.
This soap is scented with a blend of NS Avalon and Apple, and smells fantastic.
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I used my loaf mold to make a small swirled soap that I cut into strips. It was leftover soap from making various embeds like the pumpkins and leaves on top of this soap. I layered them in the soap. I used NG Pumpkin Crunch Cake fo. I put sweet potato puree (baby food) and goats milk. I piped green leaves and vines to make the top look like a pumpkin patch.
I guess my seasons are ahead of everyone else’s. I think this technique is a reverse feather swirl. I made the base about 30 minutes earlier than the rest and brought it to a pretty thick trace so I could texture the top of the base and I covered it. The rest of the batter was prepared and a small amount split and colored brown for the trunk of the tree. A bigger portion was split off and colored green for the tree. For the sky I added TD and blue along with a couple hand fulls of finely chopped white soap for snow. All is scented with balsam fragrance oil from a somewhat local soap shop. This was my second feather swirl of any sort and it was really fun. For the swirl tool I used a piece of vinyl coated electrical wire. It was a bit stiff and difficult to use. I have already bought a gear tie to make more swirls. 
I will post about the first in the announcement thread as it was made for the challenge but I wasn’t happy with it.
I will post about the first in the announcement thread as it was made for the challenge but I wasn’t happy with it.
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Hi everybody, here is my entry.
simple shapes, made with tubing of different diameters.
Filled the Voids with TD and glow in the dark mica. I poured to thin a trace. Took a long time
to set. Put a circle on a cut line. So, you can see they go thru the bars.
Used "Witching Hour" from Nature's Garden. To "red hot" cinnamon for me. But it behaved well.
No acceleration, no ricing, too early to tell about discoloration.
my partitions didn't hold. So, these are manly size for sure. Learned quite a bit, this month.
Make better partitions. Use a solid tool, not tapered. To pull colors. Had a lot of fun!!
Thanks!
simple shapes, made with tubing of different diameters.
Filled the Voids with TD and glow in the dark mica. I poured to thin a trace. Took a long time
to set. Put a circle on a cut line. So, you can see they go thru the bars.
Used "Witching Hour" from Nature's Garden. To "red hot" cinnamon for me. But it behaved well.
No acceleration, no ricing, too early to tell about discoloration.
my partitions didn't hold. So, these are manly size for sure. Learned quite a bit, this month.
Make better partitions. Use a solid tool, not tapered. To pull colors. Had a lot of fun!!
Thanks!
Hi everyone!
I made the simplest possible entry for this challenge: triangles! I really wasn’t expecting it to work because I have never succeeded in making patterns, but since it did work out, even if it’s as basic as it can be, I’m super happy it looked like I wanted it to so I’m joining the challenge
The white is a CP base of sunflower, coconut, Shea, cocoa and castor, no need for TD. The yellow is an olive oil and coconut un-colored base. The blue and red is the same as the yellow, but with castor oil (one of my many experiments), colored with ultramarine and madder root.
The embeds were part of my experiment to see what effect castor oil had. I also used the soap to make this other shape:
I don’t think it qualifies for this challenge because it was more a product of carving and smooshing pieces together rather than embeds in a mold. But I ended up with a lot of triangles! They’re all about 1/3 of a log, so I could mix and match them as I pleased.
I’m also really happy with the sunflower white base. It was slow to trace, so I had plenty of control over it, it hardened over night so it was perfect to cut after only 18 h, and it really came out a stark white. It’s also got citric acid and salt to help counteract DOS as determined by one of my previous experiments. Fingers crossed the soap keeps until well after Christmas!
I made the simplest possible entry for this challenge: triangles! I really wasn’t expecting it to work because I have never succeeded in making patterns, but since it did work out, even if it’s as basic as it can be, I’m super happy it looked like I wanted it to so I’m joining the challenge
The white is a CP base of sunflower, coconut, Shea, cocoa and castor, no need for TD. The yellow is an olive oil and coconut un-colored base. The blue and red is the same as the yellow, but with castor oil (one of my many experiments), colored with ultramarine and madder root.
The embeds were part of my experiment to see what effect castor oil had. I also used the soap to make this other shape:
I don’t think it qualifies for this challenge because it was more a product of carving and smooshing pieces together rather than embeds in a mold. But I ended up with a lot of triangles! They’re all about 1/3 of a log, so I could mix and match them as I pleased.
I’m also really happy with the sunflower white base. It was slow to trace, so I had plenty of control over it, it hardened over night so it was perfect to cut after only 18 h, and it really came out a stark white. It’s also got citric acid and salt to help counteract DOS as determined by one of my previous experiments. Fingers crossed the soap keeps until well after Christmas!
Hopefully you can tell what the shapes are but just in case... the top pink thing is a water lily, beside it sticking out of the water is a frog. There is a tadpole in front of the frog and the frog kicked one of the fish so he's headed up.
There are air bubbles made from clear melt and pour and the tadpoles tail has clear m&p around it too.
This morning, just so I had something to do 
I made a contraption so I could cut the soaps straight. It's not pretty but it works great with the cheese cutter wire.
I have a gazebo to put together and floors to vacuum and a huge mess to clean up now that I've had my fun!
I made a contraption so I could cut the soaps straight. It's not pretty but it works great with the cheese cutter wire.
I have a gazebo to put together and floors to vacuum and a huge mess to clean up now that I've had my fun!
The main inspiration for this soap was the fragrance name - Nurture's Seventh Heaven, which is described as citrusy with some frankincense. This new-to-me FO is not super strong, but I like it and it behaved well. I had a heavenly crescent moon embed on hand that I made earlier this month, wanted to try mixing a muted sky-ish blue using blue ultramarine, TD and charcoal and also wanted to play around a bit to determine how spooning versus pouring, pouring height and trace would play out in the layering. I'm especially happy with the blue because I struggle to get that color using mica.
Hi everybody For my theme I chose to make a Northern constellation -The Big Dipper that can be seen all year around where I live in the North and the shapes I chose are stars. I also chose to do a ITPS technique I've been wanting to try it's my first time trying it and it turned out exactly the way I wanted it so I'm really happy about that. It's a Colloidal Oatmeal, Charcoal soap scented with Pink Grapefruit F/O from Candora and it smells amazing. For my colors I used TD for my embed shapes and for the ITPS I used Charcoal to make a dark grey and then poured Pretty in Pink Mica soap and Soft Violet Purple Mica soap in the Charcoal Pot. My colors come from Suds n Scents. This soap was pretty difficult to make. I had to make my self a stencil to guide my embeds I hope you like it.
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In June a friend and I took a walk in the woods near my house. We saw a fallen birch tree and were lucky to collect large slabs of bark from it for craft projects. That walk was the inspiration for Birchwood Forest soap.
This picture below provided guidance for the design colors, all micas from Nurture.
1. Tree embeds: Winter White, Black Pearl and Magic Mushroom
2. Foreground shrubs: (swirled for illusion of texture) Alpine Green, Enchantment and Shamrock Gold EnviroGlitter
3. Near Background shrubs: (swirled for illusion of texture) Red Vibrance, Trial By Fire and Gold EnviroGlitter
4. Sky and tree leaves: Blue Vibrance and Green Vibrance
I started by making “birch bark” in a silicone TS mold by layering white batter with very thin, irregular drizzles of black and brown. I cut slabs using my new Hercules cutter, which allowed me to create 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch, and 1/2 inch slabs to represent tree trunks. I ended up with six slabs, but only used 4 in the design.
For the green layer and the red layer of shrubs, I swirled the batter so those layers would have texture. I added the Enviroglitters to emulate sunshine dancing on leaves. I tilted the the mold for the green layer and waited for it to get thick, then I tipped them all the other direction and poured the red layer and waited for it to get thick. Next, while the layers were still barely thickened, I inserted slabs for the birch tree trunks. I tilted them a little bit to make them look more natural. I poured blue at very thin trace, and then dropped very thin trace green from a height so it would penetrate the blue.
Soap was CPOPed in the oven with just the appliance light on. The next day, I removed the uneven top of the final soap to create rectangular bars.
In the interest of full disclosure, I originally tried to make the Birchwood Forest design with Cracklin Birch FO. Unfortunately, CB FO caused instant Soap-on-a-Stick. I didn’t have a chance to blend a single color into it. I did manage to pour it off into a small mold, so now I have some sample bars of crackling birch with no color and no design. I ended up making unscented soap for the final design, so now my mother can use it. Without FO, the soap behaved beautifully!
This picture below provided guidance for the design colors, all micas from Nurture.
1. Tree embeds: Winter White, Black Pearl and Magic Mushroom
2. Foreground shrubs: (swirled for illusion of texture) Alpine Green, Enchantment and Shamrock Gold EnviroGlitter
3. Near Background shrubs: (swirled for illusion of texture) Red Vibrance, Trial By Fire and Gold EnviroGlitter
4. Sky and tree leaves: Blue Vibrance and Green Vibrance
I started by making “birch bark” in a silicone TS mold by layering white batter with very thin, irregular drizzles of black and brown. I cut slabs using my new Hercules cutter, which allowed me to create 1/4 inch, 3/8 inch, and 1/2 inch slabs to represent tree trunks. I ended up with six slabs, but only used 4 in the design.
For the green layer and the red layer of shrubs, I swirled the batter so those layers would have texture. I added the Enviroglitters to emulate sunshine dancing on leaves. I tilted the the mold for the green layer and waited for it to get thick, then I tipped them all the other direction and poured the red layer and waited for it to get thick. Next, while the layers were still barely thickened, I inserted slabs for the birch tree trunks. I tilted them a little bit to make them look more natural. I poured blue at very thin trace, and then dropped very thin trace green from a height so it would penetrate the blue.
Soap was CPOPed in the oven with just the appliance light on. The next day, I removed the uneven top of the final soap to create rectangular bars.
In the interest of full disclosure, I originally tried to make the Birchwood Forest design with Cracklin Birch FO. Unfortunately, CB FO caused instant Soap-on-a-Stick. I didn’t have a chance to blend a single color into it. I did manage to pour it off into a small mold, so now I have some sample bars of crackling birch with no color and no design. I ended up making unscented soap for the final design, so now my mother can use it. Without FO, the soap behaved beautifully!
Ok, it's a few hours late, but the Entry Thread is now closed. EDIT: The voting link has been sent via PM to each of you who registered. Even if you didn't submit an entry, you are still eligible to vote.
Check your "conversations" (the envelope icon at the top of the page) to find the message with the voting link.
Good luck, everyone!
Check your "conversations" (the envelope icon at the top of the page) to find the message with the voting link.
Good luck, everyone!
Last edited:
All votes are in, so we will announce the winners early. And they are.... (drumroll please):
EDIT EDIT EDIT!!! Sorry for the mixup!!
Tied for First place @Cindy D. and @CLMP
Second place @ScentimentallyYours
Third place @Ford
Congratulations to the winners, and well done to all of you! This was an exceptionally close one, obviously because all of the entries were amazing. Thanks for making this such an interesting and fun challenge whether watching, hosting, or participating!
EDIT EDIT EDIT!!! Sorry for the mixup!!
Tied for First place @Cindy D. and @CLMP
Second place @ScentimentallyYours
Third place @Ford
Congratulations to the winners, and well done to all of you! This was an exceptionally close one, obviously because all of the entries were amazing. Thanks for making this such an interesting and fun challenge whether watching, hosting, or participating!
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