Sunflowers

Let's talk about how challenging it is to pipe soap and HOW MUCH I admiration I have for soapers that make soaps with flower piping, soap balls, cup cakes, etc.  It takes quite a lot of patience and much pre-planning. 

My recent soap I think I came pretty close to breaking.  I have been envisioning a sunflower embed soap.  I wanted the nice bright yellow and a beautiful deep blue background.  I wanted to call it Sunflower Sky...I had it all planned out. 

I watched You Tube videos.  I ordered my sunflower fragrance.  It was going to use goats milk and also some Aloe Vera liquid that I have on hand.  It was going to be great.

He he...fast forward to my flower piping. 

Lesson #1 - don't use fragrance.  I was thinking that I wanted to use the fragrance so that I did not have to wait a long time for the soap to start thicken.  The first flowers turned out OK, the rest where not as good.  My soap started thickening up so fast that I had to find a small container to rest the piping nail so I could use both hands to squeeze out the soap.  It was really bad.  I kept kneading the bag, hoping to soften the batter and it was not working.  I was getting pretty frustrated and started to ask myself why in the world would I think I was ready to do this!  ha!

Lesson #2 - Do this in a cool place, with the air conditioner running or in the middle of Winter.  There is nothing like doing it in a hot day, getting frustrated because it's not going the way you want to.  I think it was getting hotter and hotter by the minute :0/

Lesson #3 - Make sure your space is clear of items you will not need.  I was starting to run out of room as I was quickly piping there flowers.  I accidentally dropped two on the floor as I push some aside to make room.  Grrr....

But, I must say that the following day when I made the actual soap batch, I was so in love with my blue.  I just recently purchased a new slab mold and I don't have my measurements correct in my soaping software.  My bars a pretty thick!  I need do adjust the height :)

 

I really like how the gold mica play with the ultramarine blue :)  Very pretty!

 

Below you can see the difference in flowers.  The one in the middle was one of the first I made.  The one on the left is as my soap was getting pretty hard.  The petals look pretty rough and almost rustic.

 

 

 

Here is a pic of the soap in the mold.  I realized as I was taking the picture that I should have taken it before I made marks on the soap :(

 

 

Here are the final bars...a little thick.  Much thicker than what I was going for.  I just need to adjust the volume in my software for this slab mold.

 

As you can see, some of my flowers look a little rough. 

Overall I am pretty happy with how this batch came out :)

I am curious to see how the aloe will feel as soon as it is ready to use.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for checking out my blog!

 

HAPPY SOAPING!!!

ROXANA