March 2020 Challenge: inlaid soap design

[Serene]

1. Primrose - something I have been meaning to try!
2. Mobjack Bay - excited to give this a try!
3. dibbles - time to embrace the mess I know I'll make!
4. bookreader451 - I just purchased clay carving tools. I am better at art than hanger swirls.
5. Arimara - I need to bum some tools if I can. It's a good excuse for doodling.
6. Jersey Girl- this looks like fun! Excited to experiment with this!
7. amd - hope I can "carve" out some time for this
8. Callie - I was intimidated at first, but after some thinking in the shower with my kid's bath toys, I have ideas. Wow!
9. Atiz - my first soap challenge, it will be a mess, but excited to try it!
10. PenelopeJane - Haven't made artistic soap in ages, this might be the time to start.
11. Amy78130- I haven't tried this before, sounds like fun!!
12. StormyK - Count me in!
13. Serene - Lucky 13. Dibbles made me do it.

 

[Callie]

Ok. I have started experimenting on some bars I had lying around.
Melt and pour bars are easily carved ( with a metal kebab skewer) and filled with REALLY liquid melt and pour. You just have to be careful the bar doesn't soften from over-working it.
I have also had success carving 100% coconut bars that were a few weeks old. I like the hardness of the bar for getting an intricate design. I filled one with really liquid melt and pour and it worked quite well.

 

[amd]

I have my base bar in the mold. I have a simple image selected for carving. I will be picking up some tracing paper tonight to see if I can figure out how to make a template (and size the image correctly for the bar shape). I will be cutting the soaps into bars tonight and wrapping with saran wrap to keep them a bit soft while I work on them the next few days. I figure it's easier to dry them out if needed as I go, than to discover I needed to keep them pliable a few days from now.

 

[Serene]

Two failures for me so far. I get what I think is a great idea,only to realize that it's crazy to try to get that amount of detail into a small area. Back to the drawing board. Plenty of base to give it a couple of tries.. or 20.

 

[moodymama]

Just watched this on YT

 

[amd]

I have started carving. I'm not sure how deep I should go. I really want to only carve one soap and fill it in (rather than all 9 in the batch) but I also don't want to make a teeny tiny batch of CP soap for filling. Right now my plan is to make a 16oz batch to use for filling the carving, it shouldn't take much to fill and I'll have a short batch of bars to use up some of my tester FO's. It seemed like a stable plan anyways until I started carving. Now I'm questioning how deep.... I think tonight I will finish carving the two end cuts and maybe fill those two with mp soap just to see if I have the carvings deep enough to properly hold fluid soap. Otherwise I may need to revamp my idea and make a batch of soap dough.

So far keeping my bars individually wrapped in saran wrap is keeping the bars at a nice consistency for carving. It's about the firmness of a good batch of clay.

 

[dibbles]

@amd you need to have at least two soaps in your entry photo. Just wanted to give you a heads up so you don't carve only one. I'm completely stymied on choosing a design. I better figure it out soon.

 

[szaza]

The 2 bars in the entry thread are one front and one back, so carving one and leaving the other plain is also fine. I'm sorry I don't seem to have made this clear. I just thought it would be good to have the front and back (or in other words carved and uncarved side) of a soap so you can see the difference the carving has made.

 

[szaza]

@amd carving deeper (several millimeter) will make it easier to fill, but small details can be difficult to carve deep. In my experience even 1/4-1/2 millimeter is deep enough to fill with fluid enough batter (but then you can't plane the soap afterwards)
It's almost impossible to make just enough batter to fill the carvings so it's a great idea to use the leftover batter for fragrance tests! I used mine for confetti soap.

 

[bookreader451]

Can you carve a slab and then cut it into bars?

 

[szaza]

Can you carve a slab and then cut it into bars?

Interesting idea! I don't see why not

 

[Arimara]

I forgot about tracing paper. I tested the tools and I have an idea how to us them but I'm now less confident in making soap if I can spend 10+ minutes working on a recipe and completely miss an ingredient that was clearly printed on there.

 

[szaza]

@Arimara I think that has happened to all of us before and doesn't reflect your soapmaking skills
There are ways to work around using tracing paper. If you have a light source (computer screen) regular printing paper could work for tracing the template. It will be a bit harder but not impossible. Or you could print the template at the right dimensions and use that to transfer the design onto the soap (I didn't think about that earlier, because I don't have a printer, but I guess that could work) Or you could print a design (and glue it) onto cardboard, cut it out and carve around the cardboard cutout, like the video of the elephant shows.

 

[dibbles]

The 2 bars in the entry thread are one front and one back, so carving one and leaving the other plain is also fine. I'm sorry I don't seem to have made this clear. I just thought it would be good to have the front and back (or in other words carved and uncarved side) of a soap so you can see the difference the carving has made.

I misunderstood - sorry! And yay!

 

[szaza]

@dibbles you weren't the only one who misunderstood, so I think I didn't write it down clearly

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@Arimara do you have uncoated parchment paper? I have used it in the past for tracing clothing patterns. It’s not as transparent as real tracing paper, but it’s more transparent than printer paper. If all you have is the coated kind, you may be able to trace the pattern with a pencil. I haven’t had any luck with ink sticking to that kind.

 

[Arimara]

@Mobjack Bay @szaza I have parchment paper. I didn't think about it. I am worried about making anymore mistakes. I can't afford any.

 

[glendam]

1. Primrose - something I have been meaning to try!
2. Mobjack Bay - excited to give this a try!
3. dibbles - time to embrace the mess I know I'll make!
4. bookreader451 - I just purchased clay carving tools. I am better at art than hanger swirls.
5. Arimara - I need to bum some tools if I can. It's a good excuse for doodling.
6. Jersey Girl- this looks like fun! Excited to experiment with this!
7. amd - hope I can "carve" out some time for this
8. Callie - I was intimidated at first, but after some thinking in the shower with my kid's bath toys, I have ideas. Wow!
9. Atiz - my first soap challenge, it will be a mess, but excited to try it!
10. PenelopeJane - Haven't made artistic soap in ages, this might be the time to start.
11. Amy78130- I haven't tried this before, sounds like fun!!
12. StormyK - Count me in!
13. Serene - Lucky 13. Dibbles made me do it.
14. Glenda - Is it too late to sign up?

 

[atiz]

I think I'm done with my one and only attempt... won't have time for the rest of the month plus have too much soap.
I ended up just using a skewer + a screw driver for carving. It turned out a bit messy but not a complete disaster -- I'm sure there will be much prettier ones as everyone is so artistic around here

 

[Arimara]

I just used my resources to make a small batch of liquid soap paste in light of the coronavirus thing. I'm really debating getting some M&P from Michael's. It's trash but it's a tool... too much of a tool...