Sunday, February 14, 2016

Valentine's Day Soap - Hearts

Do you see the hearts? :) These soaps were made using a combination of two techniques:  the Tiger Stripes & the Hanger Swirl.

The first soap is scented with Black Raspberry Vanilla:
hearts - handmade soap Black Raspberry Vanilla

hearts - cold-process soap by Soap Techniques


hearts - Valentine's day soap by Soap Techniques



The "rainbow heart" is scented with a blend of essential oils of lavender, rosemary, orange and lemon:
"rainbow heart" - cold-process soap by Soap Techniques





Saturday, February 13, 2016

"Winter Frosting", in-the-pot swirl

Sometimes an ITP swirl comes out looking like this:
Winter Frosting - handmade soap, ITP swirl


It resembles a butterfly, doesn't it?
Butterly - cold-process soap, in-the-pot swirl


Two more pictures of these trembling swirls, they look like the frost on windows. :)

Winter Frosting - cold-process soap, in-the-pot swirl

"frost on windows" - cold-process soap, in-the-pot swirl

Traveling Faux Funnel soap technique

As soon as I came back from California, I made another batch of soap with the Travelling Faux Funnel soap technique. I showed my first attempt at this technique in my previous post. This time the soap batter was a bit more fluid, so the design looks slightly different. I call this soap "carnival", it is scented with Daystar's Paradise.

Carnival, travelling faux funnel soap technique

Carnival - Traveling Faux Funnel soap technique 2

Thursday, February 11, 2016

my meeting with Tatsiana Serko (steso)

I haven't updated my blog for a while, although I have a lot of things to share! I have been experimenting with some new soap techniques, but today I'd like to tell about my meeting with Tatsiana Serko, known as steso. In September I visited her in California and we spent a wonderful week together!

We walked on the beach near the Cliff House & Sutro Baths:


me and Tatsiana Serko (steso) on the beach
me and Tatsiana on the beach

We took a ride on the famous San Francisco cable cars:
with Tatsiana Serko (steso) on the cable car
on the cable car in San Francisco

we walked all the way to Pier 39:

me and steso at pier 39
me and Tatsiana at pier 39, San Francisco
and visited a lot of other places! You can see some other pictures on my Instagram.

Tatsiana is a wonderful person, very nice, relaxing, creative, generous, thoughtful, and she is a fun to be with! I really enjoyed spending time with her... And course we had been making soap!


Here are 2 cold-process rimmed soap we made together. The first is scented with BrambleBerry's Cucumber Oak:
Cucumber and oak - cold-process rimmed soap
 
The second is scented with an Amber fragrance:
Amber and oakmoss - cold-process rimmed soap
 

Not long before my trip to California I saw on pinterest this amazing yellow and black soap by La Perle. I fell in love with it! Naturally, me and Tatiana tried to recreate this soap technique, :) I call it a traveling faux funnel swirl.  The soap scented with brambleberry's Kumquat was our first attempt at this technique - it's not perfect, but not too bad either!
Kumquat - cold-process soap


I also got a lot of gifts from Tatsiana! I will show them a bit later, they deserve a separate post! :)