Welcome to the July 2023 SMF Soap Challenge: More Fun with Color: Pick a Side!
This month’s challenge is to make a soap using warm or cool colors. You will use a minimum of three colors and may include black and/or white as options. The soap design is up to you, with the exception of a few specifics described below.
SMF Challenge General Rules
1. The SMF eligibility rules for entrants are as follows: To enter, you must have been an active SMF member for at least one month and have a minimum of 50 posts at the time the Challenge is posted. 'Fluff' posts written with the sole intention of boosting post numbers do not apply. Sorry, there are no exceptions to these rules, except that the time and post requirements are removed for (do not apply to) Supporting Members. All eligible members may sign up and submit an entry at any time before the entry thread closes.
2. Your soap must be made after the monthly challenge has been announced. Your entry must consist of bars made from a single batch of soap poured into one mold. In other words, your entry cannot include bars from different batches.
3. The sign-up list will be posted in this thread. Please add your name to the sign-up list if you’d like to participate. You don’t have to enter a soap at the end if you don’t feel happy with what you have made. Still, we hope you will post about your experiences here in the main Challenge thread, along with non-entry photos (be prepared to be encouraged to keep trying).
4. In the spirit of advancing our soap making skills, all members who sign-up for the SMF Challenge do so with the expectation that they will make every attempt to submit an entry. We do understand that life happens, and that you may end up without an entry. However, signing up with no intent to participate and only to vote goes against the spirit of the challenge and is not allowed.
5. Throughout the month, we encourage you to use this general Challenge thread (not the Entry thread) to ask for advice, discuss techniques with other members, upload pictures of your non-entry challenge attempts, and provide helpful hints you learned along the way. Constructive criticism is welcomed, but please keep your comments polite.
6. A separate Entry thread will be created towards the end of the month. Please do not post photos of your entry until the Entry thread is opened. Breaking this rule will disqualify that soap from this Challenge. The Entry thread is for challenge entries only; please don't post any comments there.
7. We encourage (but do not require) you to include in your entry post a description and additional photos demonstrating how you made your soap: the process, the technique, the fragrance, any special meaning behind your selected colors or design, etc. This gives voters a better understanding of, and appreciation for, what went into creating your soap.
8. Entries must be posted to the Entry thread (not to this general Challenge thread) before the closing date. Late entries will not be accepted. If you miss the Challenge deadline, please upload pictures of your soap to the general Challenge thread instead. While it won’t be part of the voting, we always love to see anything you have created!
9. There is no prize attached to this Challenge. However, this is still a competition. If your entry is deemed non-compliant, you will be given the opportunity to amend your entry if there is time to do so before the Entry thread closes. Otherwise, your entry will be excluded from voting. The challenge mods have the final say as to whether any given soap or registrant is eligible for entry and voting.
10. All eligible registrants who have signed up before the Entry thread closes will be eligible to vote, even if they do not submit an entry. Voting instructions will be sent to eligible registrants only, by private message via SMF conversations. Please check your SMF messages/conversations when the voting begins.
11. Note: all times listed below are Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). It is your responsibility to convert times to your own time zone. You can use World Time Buddy or a similar converter to assist you with that.
* The entry thread will open on July 20th by 11:59 PM GMT.
* The entry thread will close on July 26th at 11:59 PM GMT.
* Voting information will be emailed to all eligible participants shortly thereafter.
* The voting survey will remain open until July 29th at 11:59 PM GMT, or until all votes are in, whichever is sooner.
* The winner will be announced by July 31st by 11:59 PM GMT.
*****************************************************
Specific Rules for this Challenge
Specific Rules for this Challenge
- You may use any design technique(s), any loaf or slab mold and any variation of CP or HP to create your soap.
- The soap must be made after the challenge begins.
- The final soap may contain CP or HP embeds, confetti or other soap scraps/trimmings made before this thread opened as long as the final soap meets the color requirements specified below.
- Color Requirements: For this challenge, you will pick a side of the color wheel - warm or cool, as shown on the color wheel below - and use at least three distinct colors (hues) that fall on that side of the wheel to make your soap. You may not use cool colors in the warm palette or warm colors in the cool palette (see one exception below).
- The options for cool colors (hues) range from yellow-green to violet (purple family). The options for warm colors (hues) range from yellow to red-violet (red family).
- You are not required to exactly match the colors of the color wheel. For example, you may use a pre-blended mica from the blue family, one from the green family and one that is purple or blue-green. Or, blend your own!
- The warm or cool colors you select must be added to soap batter that ultimately appears in every finished bar of soap presented.
- Any or all of the colors may be further modified by creating tints (by adding white), shades (by adding black), or tones (by adding grey or black + white) as shown above. If you participated in the January 2023 SMF Challenge you know that a little black goes a long way when it’s used to create a shade. You may want to start with just a little at first because you can always add more.
- You may use as many tints, tones and/or shades of the colors as you like as long as there are at least three distinct colors (hues) in the final soap. For example, you could use a combination of yellow, pale orange (a tint of orange), pink (a tint of red) and dark red (a shade of red). ETA: As a very dark shade of orange, brown fits nicely into the warm side of the palette and warm golds are also allowed if you pick the warm side.
- Black and white or uncolored batter may be used in the color scheme in addition to the warm or cool colors.
- You may use any colorants you have, such as micas, oxides, clays or botanicals. If you don’t have any colorants, consider creating a warm color palette (red-orange to yellow) using paprika, turmeric, annatto, fresh carrot, red palm oil, etc. from the grocery store. If you have rose clay and add that to the palette you will have pink (a tint of red). If you use clays, the final colors may be muted (toned down) compared with the color wheel colors and that’s just fine.
- Colorants may be used to make pencil lines within the soap, drizzles (in oil or glycerin) on the top of the soap, or dusted on top of the soap as long as the colors are from the side of the color wheel you selected, black and/or white, or, if you love a little sparkle, feel free to use gold or silver mica dusted on top of or between layers in the body of the soap. This is the only way you may use gold if you are making a cool palette soap.
- The first photo in your Entry thread post will be used as the entry photo, and it must show the full face of at least two of your cut bars. Per General Rule 7, above, we also encourage you to add more photos and descriptions – but that isn’t required.
- Include a description of the three or more colors you used in the soap. For example, “Colors used: purple Brazilian clay, green oxide with French green clay and blue oxide with Kaolin clay.” Or “Colors used: NS Klein Blue (blue), Proud Peacock (blue-green) and Jam Session (purple)”
Special note: We love to see your soap photos, but please keep photo dimensions in mind when posting. Photos that appear full screen size on a laptop or desktop screen may exceed the dimensions of an iPad or tablet screen by 2x or more, which makes it harder for some of us to enjoy your entry soap photo the way you intended.
****
While scanning Pinterest, IG and the wider soaping world, I found what seemed like an infinite number of one or two-color palettes or palettes that include colors from around the color wheel, but fewer three-color warm or cool palettes. There’s a lot of room to get creative and I’m excited to see what entrants can come up this month.
Now, on to the inspirational soap photos!
At least two of the above soaps serve as excellent examples of how to expand or modify a cool or warm color palette. KiwiMoose’s fun soap from the June 2023 SMF Challenge (cool collage, lower left) includes three distinct green color hues, plus a blue-green and purple (did she have a premonition?). The “Sahara Sunset” soap (warm collage, lower right) from the SoapQueen website is a good example of using a tint and shade of a warm red to achieve a pink to dark red gradient, which along with the pale orange, bright yellow sun and black accent layer make this a super warm soap.
Last edited:
so many possibilities!!!
now just have to execute!
