Entry Thread for the June 2021 SMF Challenge - Garden Inspired

[szaza]

This is the Entry thread for the June 2021 SMF Soap Challenge - Garden Inspired. Please post your entry photos in this thread. Please remember not to post your entry photos anywhere else until after the challenge is finished. You can not use any photos that you have shared elsewhere already. Your entry may include information about the soap itself, the oils, colours, fragrances etc used, inspiration for design, etc. But please keep comments, compliments, and questions about anyone else's entry in the Challenge announcement thread. This Entry thread is only for posting entries. Thank you

After the closing date on June 26 at 11:59pm GMT the winning entry will be chosen using Survey Monkey. Voting will be open from April 27-29, 2021 and the winner will be announced on June 30, 2021. There is no prize attached to this challenge.

Remember to tell us about your garden inspired ingredient!

Good luck!

 

[The_Phoenix]

As soon as I read through this challenge, I had my vision. When I think of gardens, what comes to mind are the summers growing up on 2 acres of land in Upstate New York in a town called East Aurora (the birthplace of Fisher Price Toys). We grew everything: corn, potatoes, peas, rhubarb, onions, garlic, cabbage, pumpkin, watermelon. Raspberries grew wild at the back of our property and we had numerous fruit trees. Our summers were hot, humid, and we got plenty of rain.

My grandparents, whose house we went to every Sunday for dinner, also had a robust garden, albeit on a smaller plot of land in the suburbs. My grandmother loved gardening and in a small shady spot she maintained a patch of Lily of the valley flowers. These delicate flowers were a delight. To think that these bell-shaped flowers could emit such a lovely, strong, and memorable fragrance was a wonder to me. Not since my childhood have I had the opportunity to enjoy these flowers in a garden. When my grandmother passed away, my grandfather moved across the state to live with my uncle and his family. I often wonder what happened to her special patch of Lily of the valley.

Now that I live in southern California, our summers are hot, dry, and the clay-heavy soil is not amenable to large gardens of produce. Land is at a premium, so any garden I could install would be quite a bit smaller than the gardens we cultivated in New York.

I married the two inspirations (the gardens of produce and my grandmother's patch of Lily of the valley) to create my challenge soap. I used watermelon juice in my soap batter to fulfill the garden-inspired ingredient. To do so, I blended watermelon and strained the pulp. Then I froze the juice and used it for part of my liquid (with the remainder being AVJ). Once the soap set and cut, I piped the leaves, stems, and delicate Lily of the valley bulbs. All components are fragranced with BB's Lily of the valley. It smells just like the flowers of my childhood.

This soap gave me great joy to make.

 

[MarnieSoapien]

We live in an apartment with an enclosed balcony where we grow some veggies, a couple of succulents and a few flowers. The garden is my hubby and youngest son's territory. All of the plants we have growing on our balcony are organic. So for me, gardening is about simplicity and not adding additional chemicals.

The neighbor directly below us has a beautiful flower garden full of pansies. I used her flower garden as my inspiration.

I was trying to think of a way to replicate pansies. I recently bought a cylinder mold and a pull through tool and thought that would be the best way to get the results I was hoping for.

To fulfill the special rules for this challenge, I used green and yellow clay and activated charcoal for my colorants. I wanted to be as natural as possible and used a blend of Orange, Tea Tree and Lavender EOs.

I was beyond excited when I cut my soap to see a beautiful daisy and 2 pansies! Thank you for this challenge!

 

[Jersey Girl]

I haven’t been making much soap at all the last month or so as my flower and vegetable gardens as well as the warm weather draw me outdoors most of the day this time of year. Lots of planting, weeding, dead heading, feeding and just admiring going on. I chose this gorgeous Lantana as my inspiration. The colors are so incredibly vibrant and

beautiful to me. This was a one and done for me even though I experienced some ricing ( lots of hard oils in my recipe). It is my favorite design technique...a hanger swirl. Scented with Apple Mango Tango from FB. Garden inspired ingredient is cucumber purée that came from my garden last summer and I have frozen in cubes.

 

[dibbles]

It is summer here and since my hubby loves to garden, I had lots of choices for this challenge. After musing over several ideas, I decided to use the more European interpretation of the word garden as outdoor space - at least that is what I think is a correct usage. We would refer to it as a yard in the Midwest USA. We live on a wooded lot, and have a lot of ferns growing in the woods. I love to watch the fiddleheads as they emerge in early spring and grow into lush green plants. I picked a few fronds and dried them, and then ground them into a fine powder which was mixed into uncolored soap batter and used for the base. I chose to use the Secret Feather technique to represent the fronds. Testing of a small end piece and the soap doesn't feel scratchy and, for now, the speckles are still green. This soap is scented with Lemon Eucalyptus essential oil.

 

[MrsZ]

I had a very hard time deciding which garden to draw inspiration from. Pretty much all my life my parents have had a garden. I've also seen beautiful gardens in a few different countries.

But each time I think of gardens, I think of pollinators. We rely on pollinators such as bees and other insects more than many people realize. We had 30 beehives when I was growing up, and observing the honeybees was always amazing to me. It still is. Many people in my area see bees and automatically kill them because they can sting, but don't stop to think of all the produce they enjoy because of the bees and other pollinators.

So, here is my Honeybee inspired soap. My garden ingredient is local, raw honey from my parents hives. I felt it was fitting because the honey is made from nectar from both wildflowers, and cultivated, or garden crops.

It is a 40% lard soap, scented with Nurture Soap's Bergamot and Honey FO. It was also my first attempt at using Micas. I chose a simple hanger swirl because the result reminds me of honeybees' fuzzy stripes.

 

[amd]

My garden soap is sunflower cupcakes. We have a lovely weathered fence around our backyard, and every year I think that I am going to plant sunflowers along it... This is the closest I'm getting this year!

Scented with WSP Sunflower.
I used calendula tea for the lye solution, and also infused a bit of annatto for the yellow. I had hoped that with a light yellow mica and the annatto I would get a nice contrast to the gold, but the colors wound up close to the same.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

Spoiler: Retracted entry, for entertainment only

FAIL
But I'll submit it anyway. More soaps don't meet the creator's expectations than are called a full success. In the spirit to embrace the failure, here is my miserable if-a-few-things-would-have-behaved-a-bit-more-friendly-it-even-could-look-somewhat-decent sunflower metaphor:

Neither of these tiny nuisances came out of the mould anywhere to my desire… and oh well, the colour scheme doesn't exactly fit my conceptions either.
The sun discs are most faithfully colourised with something found in every garden – soil! For the petals, clever me used safflower petals (infused oil – didn't catch colour at all; aqueous infusion – bright yellow, but became reddish brown during HP cook). I surpassed myself and topped the brown blobs with some of the oil-soaked (still bright red) safflower petals, before I poured in the “yellow petal” batter, you can see the holes it left, and how the nearby soap indeed turned into a somewhat brilliant yellow.
The worst failure however is the “back”, for which my sunflower kernel purée once again let me down. Still the fir green from my most successful attempt in mind, I thought that blending it with a happy safflower yellow would give a decent green – hrm, you see yourself how “green” this came out.
Not gluten-free, as announced, was the sodium lactate. I neutralised some (clandestinely store-bought) rye sourdough extract with NaOH, filtered out the bran, and added it near the end of HP cook. This is a somewhat garden-related ingredient too, because I had planted some rye in the garden a few years ago, which came out pretty decent for non-farmer me, until the mice found out and did the harvest for me . Seriously, it's impressive to watch a mouse climb a rye stalk and snack some grains off the ear!

It was a very spontaneous deed, but on the other hand, I had plans for this for a long time already, that's why I had bought these silicone moulds. Now that I've seen soaps from this mould at a dozen places, I can't see it any more, and I'll probably use them rather for cakes/biscuits.

ETA: The challenge host reminded me that usage of individual moulds as a main design element is excluded by the rules. We agreed that I thus retract this entry from the competition. I'll leave it here for “historic reasons”, but it won't be included in the poll.

 

[violets2217]

I really enjoyed everything about this challenge, but found it one of the most difficult yet (even more so than the lollipop swirl)! This one depended more on my creativity, than my skill… Even though I don’t have a garden, this became my inspiration:


I finally decided to use my mess of aloe for something useful. I really dislike harvesting aloe, it can be quite dangerous. I cut some of my most squishy leaves and removed the gell and used it as water replacement Blended with a wee bit of water). The skin of the leaves I dehydrated and ground in my spice grinder & used it as part of the colorant along with red & green vibrance (Nurture Soap) and kaolin clay. The homemade aloe powder, although darker than my usual store bought powder..somehow got lost in the bars of soap. You can sorta see it in some of the red of the petals. I fragranced with a Nature’s Garden FO called Watercress and Aloe. Kinda nice, light and airy!


My pull through’s are definitely a work in progress! But so exciting and mysterious.

As I’m typing this my neighbor brought me some fresh herbs from his garden… lemongrass, basil, rosemary and mint.. I actually thought of scraping this post and infusing some oil with rosemary and mint. Definitely gonna try it. But I’m sticking with this entry. Good luck everyone and thanks @szaza for making me use my brain and turning up the creative juices!

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Here's my garden-inspired soap made with soap dough overlays on other bars of soap. The light blue and peach doughs are colored with botanical infused oils (indigo and paprika). I'm pretty happy with the outcome for a first ever soup dough adventure.



eta: My blue & white "Willow" china was the initial inspiration for this soap. The pattern has two birds flying over a lovely garden that is full of flowering trees. I love everything blue and white and got excited about the idea of making a soap "cane" in the spirit of the pattern, with the pinks and reds of my zinnias as accents. Then I learned from reading posts in the Sorcery Soap FB group that making intricate polymer clay-like canes from soap dough is tricky at best. I was able to make a simple cane but then it distorted a bit when I tried to reduce it to a narrower width. I think the trick will be to make smaller canes and stick with simple patterns. Water worked fine to attach the thin slices of the cane to the base soap. The rectangular companion soap gave me an opportunity to try a few other things, but the detail work was challenging because I forgot to bring my magnifying glasses with me to California. If I had fully read the instructions before making the soap dough, I would have used indigo for the dark blue as well as the light blue dough. Playing with soap dough was fun and I'm looking forward to figuring out what else I can do with it.

Thank you @szaza for a great challenge.

 

[bookreader451]

I am an avid gardener and I thought about a slab with my lilies, Russian icing tip roses, butterflies and delphinium, but the secret ingredient had me stumped. Then I had an epiphany, TOMATOES! I grow at least 20 varieties each year, I can salsa, whole tomatoes, freeze purée! They are my summer chore and my winter treat. So I used organic tomato paste as my additive and made gazpacho!
The other pictures are just some garden shots ‘cause I love my flowers

 

[Vicki C]

I have a fairly big vegetable garden which I have increasingly been giving over to annual and perennial flowers. Next to the garden I have a purple Martin house which has never housed purple martins but in the 30 years I have lived here has very occasionally housed tree swallows. This is one of those lucky years, and I’ve been delighted by their swooping around and liquidy sounding song.
For my garden inspired ingredients I dug some sheep sorrel (Rumex acetocella) out of my blueberry bed, dried and chopped the roots, and made an infusion in avocado oil. I also have comfrey growing in the dooryard of my soap studio and I made an infusion of dried comfrey. Lastly, my kind neighbors let me dig up some (invasive) smooth bedstraw (Gallium mollugo), which is a species of madder, from their hayfield. I dried the roots and made a tea which I used for lye water. The yellow sunflowers are made with the comfrey infused oil, the pink in the pink and blue flowers was made with sheep sorrel and bedstraw. It is scented with lavender EO.

Here is the smooth bedstraw, and freshly washed roots after I got home.

Sheep sorrel and dried roots of same.

Comfrey with happy bumblebee…


and purple Martin house. I think the swallows have fledged but maybe there will be another brood. Hope so.

Great challenge! Shout out to @Mobjack Bay for her research on madder and best extraction methods. Very helpful.

 

[linne1gi]

I have been using Silk in my soaps for many years now. I started with Tussah Silk and about 5 years ago I switched to Mulberry Silk. For this challenge, I used corn silk because of the garden theme. I added the corn silk to my hot lye and let that cool off while I prepared my oils/butters. Then I strained the lye solution so as not to have pieces of corn silk in my soap! I made hand rolled flowers from soap dough and piped white “flowers” amongst the soap dough flowers. To continue the garden theme, I used a mixture of Winter Garden and Sea Blossom Fragrance.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

Flowering Peach Tree
After numerous attempts & dropping my big soap' I only had enough M&P for two bars. For my Base' Tree' & Flower leaf's I used organic lavender, rosemary, roses from last season. every flower peddle' tree trunk & bumblebee are hand made' the leaves are pipped, all interior design is cp soap, The clear finish is M&P w/ peach FO.

 

[peachymoon]

My entry was inspired by the Dama da Noite flower (“Lady of the Night” in Portuguese). This flower only blooms in the night and her bloom will be gone by the morning.

My aunt and uncle in Brazil have this flower in their backyards, amongst many other plants, so I wanted to pay homage to their green thumbs. My garden-inspired ingredient was the use of chamomile tea in the lye solution, as chamomile tea helps people with sleep and this flower only blooms while people are sleeping.

This was my first time carving and filling a design into a soap. I definitely underestimated how much the planer would shave off. Although it was a lengthy process, it was really fun to try something new and I’d make a few tweaks were I to try this technique again. This was scented with Apple from Nurture Soaps.

 

[glendam]

Earlier in Spring I got into growing moss, mainly as a way to rescue an orchid that was dying (she still died). The moss eventually died too, I must have black thumbs instead of green thumbs. Anyway, back then I had the idea of making a moss garden inspired soap, similar to the fairy gardens I had seen while browsing moss pictures. So I am very grateful to @szaza and this challenge as this was the push I needed to finally make it. The garden ingredient was grass, which I clipped, boiled, added the boiled water to lye solution, then stick blended the rest into it. I strained it as most of it just got stuck around the blades.
I tried a blend of rose, patchouli and satsuma orange for the fragrance, it accelerated which allowed me to do the piping and stick the embeds in the same soap session. Later I tried to add MP drops to simulate dew drops, but they are not reading as that...

 

[Tara_H]

Well, this has been a more challenging challenge than I expected when I declared my intent at the start of the month!

I'm not a huge fan of pink, but I'll always make an exception for cherry trees. The ones we have in our garden are not producing a lot yet, but I dream of a day when I'm retired and chilling out under clouds of fluffy blossom...

My special ingredient was the dock root which we dug up from our garden here, and which I've been infusing in various different way throughout the month. The last and most successful one also gave me fits as it went from brown to purple before settling on just the colour I needed!


After being grated, it came out in lovely curls.


The scent is rosemary, tea tree, litsea and bergamot, it's outdoorsy and wholesome, but also sophisticated.
The recipe is my gardener's soap, improved version.

And here's the cherry orchard

 

[VikingChick]

Ok, here’s my entry!

For years, I tried to grow vegetables. My dad used to farm hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans, and yet I can barely grow a tomato. It was a source of great entertainment for him. After many failures, and a move to a part of the country where gardening is completely different than anything I’ve ever known, I decided to turn my attention to herbs and medicinals. I don’t have a big enough space in this house to do much except grow stuff in pots (can’t tear up the yard since we do intend to sell this house at some point), so when this challenge was announced I took a tour though my yard and decided on aloe and comfrey.

Comfrey leaf is infused into the oils, and the water is replaced with aloe from one of my papa aloes whose time had come.




For the design I used a hanger technique in an attempt to emulate grass.....or, if you prefer, aloe leaves (this is an interpretive soap! ) The flowers on top are a tribute to my dream of someday having a piece of land that’s covered with wildflowers. It‘s scented with Cottongrass from NS and together with the dried flowers gives it a fresh, earthy scent.

 

[KimW]

My inspiration for this challenge was our little Mrs. Robin who nests under our deck every year and always has at least two clutches each season.

I used store bought eggs for my garden ingredient as it was agreed that stealing a robin's egg was not in good taste (that's some sarcasm there - I'd never take a Robin's eggs!).
Everything is soap dough with no "soap painting". The Robin is standing on her own without anything propping her up or securing her to the nest. The lighter soap dough in the nest, the outline of the baby's mouth, the outline of Momma Robin's eyes and her beak are made out of soap dough that was made with egg - especially for this challenge, and the FIRST time I'd ever used egg in soap. Lesson Learned: 15% CO recipe is perfect for having workable soap dough in about 4 hours. Special thanks to @DeeAnna for that assist!
Without further ado, I present Mrs. Robin...and her son (see what I did there?)

ETA: Oops! forgot the pic of our Mrs. Robin! Best I can do as she's not bothered when I have on my straw hat, but will always fly away if I lift my arms. Silly girl. And, a bit of glycerin was applied to the soap dough used for Mrs. Robin's eyes to make them shiny.

Video of working with the soap dough:

 

[szaza]

The Entry Thread is now closed and the voting link will be sent by pm once I get it set up