February 2017 SMF Soap Challenge- Ebru Soaps

[CaraBou]

Great soaps so far! You've set the bar! I better get moving; just got my mold this week and didn't realize the close date had snuck up so fast.

I've made just one batch and it threw up on itself. I've never had a soap separate like that before and I'm not exactly sure why. Well the soap wasn't enterable anyway (too random) but it was kind of pretty. It ended up saponifying ok so I'll plane it eventually to see if I can salvage something underneath.

 

[HowieRoll]

Howie, how about one of those soft romantic type filters? Or you can post a huge note: PLEASE DO NOT VIEW WITHOUT SQUINTING.

Haha - so, so funny!! And I like where you're going with that... hmmm...

My other option was to try to borrow a sleeping kitten to pose with the soap in the hopes people would say, "ohhhhh, look how cute that sleeping kitten is!" and not notice there was soap in the photo, too.

Thanks for the laugh!

ETA: CaraBou, your soap colors strike me in a (good) Mardi Gras kind of way and the swirls are so graceful. A shame it gave you trouble!

 

[earlene]

Without thinking, without even considering possible acceleration, I added an accelerating FO to my second batch. Needless to say, it didn't work for ebru.

I'll do a top lay on that soap which is in my shoebox slab. Since I already have fragrance, I'll just do to the top layer fragrance free and hopefully have some success.

 

[newbie]

Love your french curls, mx6!

Carabou, that is so sad!! However, I can still see the pattern underneath the oil layer so I'm thinking you may still save it. Love the colors and the swirl.

Howie, kittens and cats are a shoe-in! However, I'm sure your soap can hold its own.

 

[earlene]

I finally have one that I am satisfied with and will enter. Mine is not as beautiful as newbie's or mx6inpenn's entries, or even CaraBou's reject above, but after 3 attempts, I am happy with it. If I try again, maybe I might come up with something even nicer, but I think this will be it, at least for now.

I still have to upload my photos to my computer and then to photobucket.

 

[earlene]

These are my rejects. The first one on Feb. 10, I left the room and got distracted and when I returned my slow-moving batter had gone from emulsion to medium trace. So it's more like ebru-style and not really ebru because it just was not fluid enough. I used 3 different small molds and different color schemes, but all done from the same original batter.

I discovered that with thick batter, a nit comb does nothing more than drag the soap around. I never did try it again, because I concluded the teeth are just too close together.

This one would make good Chicago Bears soap.

The one I did on the 17th was so non-representative of ebru, I'm not even including it here, partly because it's ugly and partly because it won't fit in the 4 photos limit.

I kind of wish I had kept this design instead of the one I entered. I really liked the design, but I still had more batter to pour, and this one was really only to practice and make sure my batter was going to hold together. Maybe I'll do this again in the future for fun because it appeals to me more due to the more abstract look.

Again, this was practice working with the batter, but before pouring the rest for the final design.

As it happens, this might be underneath, although I doubt it. I poured more batter to cover it up and made the design I entered. In the process of pouring for the new design, I'm pretty sure this one was altered.

 

[newbie]

Earlene, I think you may be able to enter your last design above if you want instead of your top layer. The entry rules are for soap in the mold with the tool, not for cut bars. Just because this is an inside layer doesn't mean it can't be entered, as I read the rules, although we will see if LP agrees.

 

[dibbles]

I am still not well enough to trust myself to make any soap, especially for the amount of time this technique should take if all goes well. So I will have to content myself with ogling all the creations everyone else does, and putting Ebru back on the to try list. Good luck everyone. And thank you LionPrincess, wish I could have played along.

 

[lionprincess00]

Earlene, I think you may be able to enter your last design above if you want instead of your top layer. The entry rules are for soap in the mold with the tool, not for cut bars. Just because this is an inside layer doesn't mean it can't be entered, as I read the rules, although we will see if LP agrees.

I agree. You may enter it if you so choose.

 

[lionprincess00]

I am still not well enough to trust myself to make any soap, especially for the amount of time this technique should take if all goes well. So I will have to content myself with ogling all the creations everyone else does, and putting Ebru back on the to try list. Good luck everyone. And thank you LionPrincess, wish I could have played along.

I hope you feel better! Thx for the effort. I totally understand!!!

 

[earlene]

And the ugly one I wouldn't show you. It's now the back side of two of the cut bars, as I sliced off a bit to see what kind of design it might end up being. Rather a drastic difference from front side to back side, wouldn't you say?

 

[artemis]

And the ugly one I wouldn't show you....

I love it. It's like an impressionist oil painting.

 

[HowieRoll]

earlene, I love your "ugly" soap and totally agree with artemis that it looks like an impressionist painting. It's just so different, vibrant, and interesting! I also think your colors for the official Challenge entry are soothing and so complimentary. There's something aquatic about it that I find very peaceful.

newbie, again, I can't stop staring at the detail of your entry soap (and we both had hearts on the mind!), as it's so exquisite.

mx6inpenn, your swirls are super cool and I think that would make for such an interesting design on an individual bar when cut. The little wisps of black in the close-up photo add to the incredible definition.

toxikon, that is your first swirl attempt ever?! Wow, I wish my first swirl had been so photo-worthy! I can completely relate (as I'm sure we all can) to the fast-tracing soap, but you handled it well and beat it into beautiful swirl submission.

 

[newbie]

THanks, Howie. Believe it or not, I did not need to squint to see exactly what you did. Very very cool and well-done!

This was one of my other soaps and you are right, hearts on the brain! The others are some of the other patterns I tried.

 

[toxikon]

toxikon, that is your first swirl attempt ever?! Wow, I wish my first swirl had been so photo-worthy! I can completely relate (as I'm sure we all can) to the fast-tracing soap, but you handled it well and beat it into beautiful swirl submission.

Thank you so much, that's so kind of you! Your pixel hearts are amazing, you must have some serious patience to pull that off!

Newbie, all your attempts are blowing me away! The colours are gorgeous!

 

[earlene]

Thank you, HowieRoll and artemis. It actually turns out I have 4 bars with a similar design, because of the cut. I forgot to check the rest before I posted that photo.

I love the design of that last one, newbie. Wow, you made a lot of soap! I tried to keep it down, but even though I put the old soap in with the new soap, thus layering it, I still ended up with 18 bars of soap weighing roughly 7.5 to 9 ounces each! Plus enough end slices for a few more travel size bars. So basically around 10 pounds of soap.

These challenges are really fun, but when I am so challenged to get a technique down, I end up with a lot of soap. Good thing I'm going out West soon. Lots of gifts for the family!

I tried a number of patterns but I found this pattern and the colors the most cheerful.

It is cheerful and absolutely gorgeous.

The whole soap including the tools used. The Taiwan swirl was done with the wooden spoon, the French curls with the toothpick.

I had not thought of using a toothpick. What a great idea. I tried the nit comb, but the teeth are so close together, it didn't work very well.

My first attempt at swirling ANYTHING! I should've stopped SBing a few minutes earlier because it went from light to heavy trace super fast..

That's a fabulous very first swirl ever! I am super impressed.

The idea behind this soap is pixelation. There are small individual hearts as "pixels," then two adjacent small heart tails come together to (loosely) form another heart, and then several of the small individual hearts come together to form a larger dark pink heart pattern.

I love your hearts. So much patience and precision was involved to create that design. Great job!

Lionprincess00, thank you for the challenge. This technique reminds me so much of the fancy designs baristas and wait staff and chefs put into fancy coffee drinks and onto fancy desert dishes. I know there is a lot more to it than that, but that was my first thought when I first started watching ebru design videos. Even though I owned a restaurant for a while, I never spent much time creating those fancy designs on the desert plates. But we had some staff who really excelled at it.

 

[newbie]

I do layered soaps for this kind of thing so I don't end up drowning in bars. Each layer is made with about 9 ounces of oils, so I get 4 tries resulting in 9 bars that are 4-5 ounces each. If one layer is a bust, then it doesn't feel like a tragedy. The last one was one of a two layer soap, so it was made with about 18 ounces of oils. I was so happy how it turned out! Once it's cut, the bars have nice swirls but you can't really get a feel for the pattern, which is a shame. I tried it again with a smaller scale and it didn't turn out as well.

It is really fun seeing what people are entering! I loved this challenge because the possibilities are endless. I was having a field day trying some different swirl combos.

 

[penelopejane]

And the ugly one I wouldn't show you. It's now the back side of two of the cut bars, as I sliced off a bit to see what kind of design it might end up being. Rather a drastic difference from front side to back side, wouldn't you say?

I really like the colours in these and I also like the greeny blue ones in the background that these are propped up on! Great colours.

One way that might save you a bit of batter is to use 1/3 your normal mix and put it in the bottom of a normal log mold instead of a slab mold. This gives you one layer (thickness) of soap in the bottom - about 4 bars.

 

[HowieRoll]

Ok, newbie, so that is all kinds of genius to do layers for challenges like this! And honestly, how do you get such fine, colorful swirls?!

Below is the other attempt I'd made, where the batter got too thick and everything was too close together. In this iteration, there were 9 "hearts" vertically and 7 across, but that was scaled back to 7x7 due to spacial concerns (and 84 less dots to put down). The entry soap is also layers like this, although I also scaled that back to 3 instead of 4. I just didn't have time for soaping shenanigans and waiting for things to set. haha...

 

[dibbles]

Oh such great entries everyone. I love them all. Newbie, all your tries are gorgeous, but I can't even begin to tell you how much I love that last one in the post above. Absolutely gobsmacked by that one.