I finally had a chance to use the soap dough canes I made while on vacation. The soap is scented with a new to me FO - NS Blackberry Bliss, which behaved well in the friendly, 60% lard recipe I used.
Soap dough canes as embeds
- Thread starter Mobjack Bay
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Thank you for the inspiration!
Cat&Oak
Well-Known Member
Wow I love this! ❤
Gorgeous!
ResolvableOwl
Notorious Lyear
@Mobjack Bay
I have to ask again (or had I forgotten when you posted this in the Soapy Thing thread): What exactly is that soap dough object on the far right? It is so perfectly symmetric, but without a pattern that appears to be achievable by earthlings' soap dough skills.
Fantastic design by the way! In its own way simple, homespun, it somehow reminds me of 1910s enamel dishes. But nonetheless nifty, self-confidently asymmetric sparing, mostly plain white.
And do I see a hint of a halo around the embeds?
I have to ask again (or had I forgotten when you posted this in the Soapy Thing thread): What exactly is that soap dough object on the far right? It is so perfectly symmetric, but without a pattern that appears to be achievable by earthlings' soap dough skills.
Fantastic design by the way! In its own way simple, homespun, it somehow reminds me of 1910s enamel dishes. But nonetheless nifty, self-confidently asymmetric sparing, mostly plain white.
And do I see a hint of a halo around the embeds?
Oh how fun!! This is on my list to play with, both with soap dough and clay. Fantastic effort!
To make the soap dough thingy on the right, I smooshed cane scraps and a few bits of unused dough together, twisted the dough around a bit, coaxed it into a compact shape and then cut the piece in half to reveal the wild patterns. I coaxed the mirrored pieces together to form a single piece. I learned how to do it by watching a Natasha Bead polymer clay tutorial by Jessama (with thanks to @TashaBird who posted the link some time ago in another thread). I’m thinking about trying to scale the smoosh and twist approach up to test loaf size. If there are halos, they’re not very apparent IRL. More likely it has something to do with taking soap pics with an ipad. I will try to remember to look more closely and report back.
@The_Phoenix After playing around a bit, I think soap dough has endless possibilities. I look forward to seeing where you go with it.
I really have no words. Just. A. Stounding. I love love love those stars -- ingenious and beautiful. It is a deceivingly "simple" elegant design -- but I can imagine the complicated labor that went into it. It's really something!
Wow! Reminds me of the clay jewelry I used to play around with making. So inspiring! Love your idea of making a large cylinder and just slicing soap rounds.
LOVE!!!!!!! So beautiful!!!!
Thanks everyone! Let’s all get busy seeing what else we can do with soap dough!
In case anyone wants to try this, the two most important things I learned while making the canes are as follows:
1) Soap dough canes are difficult/impossible to reduce, so I started small and built them up until I had the sizes I wanted. I haven’t worked with polymer clay, but based on watching a lot of videos and some reading, polymer clay seems more elastic compared with soap dough. My dough, which was made with 10% castor oil, was very pliable, but when I tried to reduce/stretch a cane by rolling it, I ended up with a very distorted cane. The soap on the right in this photo is covered with slices of the distorted cane.
2) Don’t tell @Zing, but it was easy to make centers and add additional layers of solid color by using long strands of extruded dough. I lined strands up for the center cores, worked them together with gentle pressure and then added the outer layers by wrapping the cores tightly (around and around) with long or pieced strands of extruded dough. I preferred that approach to rolling out sheets that can get sticky and tear, but rolling may be best if you want very thin layers of color. If you look at the canes above, specifically the ones that are red on the outside, you may be able to tell that the seams go around the cane rather than down the length.
In case anyone wants to try this, the two most important things I learned while making the canes are as follows:
1) Soap dough canes are difficult/impossible to reduce, so I started small and built them up until I had the sizes I wanted. I haven’t worked with polymer clay, but based on watching a lot of videos and some reading, polymer clay seems more elastic compared with soap dough. My dough, which was made with 10% castor oil, was very pliable, but when I tried to reduce/stretch a cane by rolling it, I ended up with a very distorted cane. The soap on the right in this photo is covered with slices of the distorted cane.
2) Don’t tell @Zing, but it was easy to make centers and add additional layers of solid color by using long strands of extruded dough. I lined strands up for the center cores, worked them together with gentle pressure and then added the outer layers by wrapping the cores tightly (around and around) with long or pieced strands of extruded dough. I preferred that approach to rolling out sheets that can get sticky and tear, but rolling may be best if you want very thin layers of color. If you look at the canes above, specifically the ones that are red on the outside, you may be able to tell that the seams go around the cane rather than down the length.
