SMF February 2022 Challenge - Ocean-Inspired

[Mobjack Bay]

Our winners this month are:

First place: @Zing
Second place: @peachymoon and @dibbles
Third place: @The_Emerald_Chicken

Congratulations to the winners and to everyone who participated!

If you haven’t already, head over to the entry thread to see the gorgeous ocean-inspired soaps submitted by this month‘s challenge participants.

 

[Peachy Clean Soap]

CONGRATULATIONS

@Zing
@Peachymoon & @dibbles
@The_Emerald_Chicken

🎖🎖ALL SOAPS ENTRIES ARE WINNERS 🎖🎖

I’m ready for our next challenge Bring it!!!!

 

[Zing]

Oh, soap peeps! Unbelievable! I'm still riding my 3rd place from two years ago, lord only knows what this will do to my head!

No, seriously, I've long admired all the talented artists here. When I was a noob I didn't think I could enter these challenges especially after my epic fail attempting my first challenge Aug 2018 SMF Challenge - Dancing Funnel Entry Thread ! LOL.

Thanks, @Mobjack Bay for leading this challenge. A beach soap was looong on my bucket list and I enjoyed the flood of memories of Hawai'ian beaches. It was great fun to see the variety of entries and read the inspiration stories. My hat's off to all who entered and congrats to @dibbles , @peachymoon , and @The_Emerald_Chicken !

 

[peachymoon]

Ahh, how exciting!!! Thank you and congratulations everyone! All the soaps were so beautiful, I'm honored to have placed in such a tough competition. I'm excited for next month!

 

[AliOop]

Congrats to all - well-deserved in such a competitive field!!

 

[MellonFriend]

I was on pins and needles to see who would win. I must say, the one I was rooting for was @Zing, but everyone made absolutely stunning soaps!

 

[dibbles]

Thank you! Congratulations @Zing, @peachymoon and @The_Emerald_Chicken! I am so impressed with everyone's entries and the inspirpiration behind them.

Thank you to @Mobjack Bay for hosting!

 

[melonpan]

Congratulations to the winners! Beautiful soaps everyone, it was tough to vote!

 

[The_Emerald_Chicken]

Thanks to everyone for your votes and congratulations!....and hats off to all who entered! I'm honored to have placed amongst so many great entries. One of my favorite things about this forum is the creativity and inspiration I find from everyone's soaps, and this challenge was a great showcase of that creativity.

 

[Vicki C]

The soaps were all beautiful, I’m inspired by you all! Congrats to @Zing, @The_Emerald_Chicken, @dibbles, and @peachymoon on your extraordinary soaps!

 

[~Dragonfly~]

They were all so pretty! Congrats to the winners!

 

[MellonFriend]

Now that the challenge is over, look how many maritime emojis were yet to be used up!

🛥🛳⛴⛱

 

[ResolvableOwl]

What a huge, widely varied and crowded challenge! So many incredibly beautiful creations! Reason enough for me to submerge for two weeks, so that I don't have to pick my favourites out of THIS selection . Joke aside, I really missed the participation in the final sprint. The winners have their trophys well deserved, and I imagine it again was a tight race.
What baffles me is, particularly for the OPWs, that they might look a bit uneven or muddled on the first glance, but once you twinkle a bit, and give your brain the opportunity to see the things not like they are, but like they are supposed to be, it suddenly makes much sense, in an almost impressionistic fashion.

Many thanks also to @Mobjack Bay for hosting! What could we wish more for, than such a literally professional supervision?

but it has all these white-ish splotches everywhere which my first two attempts also had. I’m guessing these aren’t going through gel phase ‘cos the leftover batter I put in a 1 lb. mold definitely gelled.

I have caught some of these spots too in recent times. Just a bad season for OPW? Let's hope not. My first reflex is stearic spots, but I'm not entirely sure, though. It seems that, for whatever reason, OPW seems more prone to these than other techniques.

Did anyone else notice that the owl's coconuts float right by the imaginary land of Magellanica/Magallanica? Apparently it's a good vaykay spot for those of us with Fernweh for fictional faraway places. I'm always learning something new on SMF.

This was a semi-accident. First off, this is a copy of the 1606 Blaeu world map that is hanging in my room since ages (because, let's be honest, everyone has a world map or a globe somewhere, to get lost in the vastness of our beautiful planet – be it to plan world domination, the next backpack journey, pick the destinations for your rock band's world tour, or just good ol' Fernweh!).
I intended to “set the story” somewhere inside the most likely original distribution area, that is, southeast Asia/Indian ocean. The Blaeu map (Mercator projection) happened to place the polar maps in the bottom corners, hence the legendary south continent (“terra australis incognita” or “Magellanica”) is placed where modern maps would put Australia. The northern shore of Australia are already there, they just didn't know yet that there was also sea (and quite a lot of it) between Australia and Antarctica proper.

Now that the challenge is over, look how many maritime emojis were yet to be used up!

That one would make a fabulous challenge for a column pour!

 

[MellonFriend]

That one would make a fabulous challenge for a column pour!

Did we just get insight into what the owl is planning for the next challenge?

 

[ResolvableOwl]

No. You just were inattentive:

(but in revenge, I have already completed my March submission).

I just don't want to let such crazy ideas get lost in my head (rather, get lost in deprecated SMF threads…). My reasonable me (and my curing rack) is very glad that one can subscribe only once to each challenge. But who knows which “retry” un-challenges the future will bring?

 

[MellonFriend]

I guess I should have said. "Did we just get insight into what the owl has already completed for the next challenge?"

Oh you know what we need. We need an Un-challenge that mashes up two past challenges. You could save this for your "ocean themed-column pour" entry.

 

[ResolvableOwl]

We need an Un-challenge that mashes up two past challenges.

Take notes, challenge hosts!