Cold-Process Soap Canes - soap flower canes

I've always been fascinated by polymer clay techniques. More than 2 years ago I created a soap using a technique called Mokume Gane .

Today's soap was inspired by polymer clay flower canes and made out of soap dough. I am not the first one who made a cold-process soap cane. Here are the blogs of 2 talented soapers who made CP soap canes before me:
http://imsoapnatural.blogspot.com/2017/05/blog-post_3.html
https://byledev.blogspot.com/2017/05/soap-challenge-club-may-2017.html

My "purple flowers" soap is scented with Violet fragrance oil. I hope you like it! :)

Here are a couple of pictures of the process. 

My CP moldable soap:

Some steps of the process:

Some "leftovers" of my flowers soap canes. The average diameter of each cane is about 2 cm (less than 1 inch):

This is how the soap lathers:

I love how it turned out and I'm looking forward to make more! :)

"Cosmic Wave" or "Feathered Circles" soap technique

Last week we had another "duel" with my friend Tatsiana Serko. We were inspired by this gorgeous soap made by soap.baby: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/460070918166133618/
I've also seen a beautiful soap called Stormy Sea made by Fräulein Winter which has a similar swirl pattern.

The goal of the duel was to create soap with a "feathered circles" look. I haven't seen any tutorial on how to achieve it, so I had to improvise. Tatsiana came up with her own modification of this technique and we decided to call it Cosmic Wave. You can see her amazing soaps in this blog by steso.

I made several attempts with this technique until I was satisfied with the result. :) Here is one of them. The soap is scented with brambleberry's Neroli & Shea Blossom - it smells fantastic and it gives you all the time you need for swirling!


Neroli & Shea Blossom - "Cosmic Waves" soap technique

The soap was colored with 5 different micas: gold, yellow, 2 shades of khaki, and brownish eggplant (a blend of micas). This is how the soap batter looked like in the pot:


just before pouring into the mold

This is another batch of the same soap, taken out of mold. It makes 6 bars:


"Cosmic Wave" or "Feathered Circles" soap technique

My starting point for this technique was based on these soaps created last fall. While they were made in log molds and the feathered swirl was expected to be revealed inside each bar, I couldn't help but notice the swirls I got on the top of the soaps. So this time I used a similar approach, only instead of pouring all the soap batter in one spot of the mold, I poured it by small quantities into multiple spots.

So here are 2 more soaps created with this technique. One of them is called Orange whirlwind:


Orange Whirlwind soap - "cosmic wave" swirls

And finally my Blue Moon soap. It is colored with Nurture Soap micas: Teal green, Turquoise, Wisteria purple and Black mica:

Blue Moon - "cosmic wave" soap swirls

Hanger swirl

Below are two of my soaps, both made with the hanger swirl technique. The first one is colored with activated charcoal and 2 golden micas. I'm pretty pleased how it turned out:

 

 

The 2nd soap is scented with yuzu fragrance oil. I made an attempt to draw a branch with leaves, but I also see a bird sitting on bamboo in the left soap. :)) Do you see it?

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:

The "rainbow heart" is scented with a blend of essential oils of lavender, rosemary, orange and lemon:

"Winter Frosting", in-the-pot swirl

Sometimes an ITP swirl comes out looking like this:

It resembles a butterfly, doesn't it?

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

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.

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 on the beach

We took a ride on the famous San Francisco cable cars:

on the cable car in San Francisco

we walked all the way to 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:

 

The second is scented with an Amber fragrance:

 

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!

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

Feathered ITP Swirl 2

The feathered in-the-pot swirl technique is fun, so I made another soap using it. :) The soap is scented with McIntosh Apple fragrance oil, and is colored with Nurture Soap's yellow mica and Really Red! mica (it really is an amazing red, isn't it?).

 

and one more photo:

 

 

Feathered in-the-pot swirl

I've been experimenting lately with making the Feathered ITP Swirl soap. It's a traditional soaping technique with a little twist, which allows to achieve a feathered look in the final soap. Here are some photos of the process and the results.

The first soap is called Satsuma, I love the smell!
In the pot, after a quick stir:

in the mold:

after being cut:



 

The 2nd soap is called Black Cherry, it's colored with red, black and gold mica.

In the pot:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, the trace is a bit thicker here - I did that intentionally to see if it makes any difference in the feathered look. Just one stir this time before pouring into mold:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cut bars, all of them. Yes, it was a very small batch. :)

 

And finally the 3rd attempt at this soap technique, it's scented with sandalwood fragrance oil.

The soap has reached medium trace:

 

Just poured into the mold:

 

I should have left it this way, but I decided to make a textured top, as there was still quite a lot of soap batter left in the pot.

 

The cut bars:

 

I am pretty happy to see that there are feathered swirls in each batch, although they look differently.



Soap technique - Wall Pour

I will present some of my soaps which were made some time ago. These two batches of soap were created in November 2014 and were inspired by this beautiful soap by Jabones de Casa. Also, their design would not be possible without the help of Tatsiana steso who provided me with some valuable insights on how to make them. I call this soap technique the wall pour swirl.

The first one is scented with Brambleberry's Cranberry Fig:



 

The second soap is Black Vanilla:

 

Butterfly swirl soap

I've created butterfly swirl soaps previously, for the January Soap Challenge Club. You can see my entry here:
http://soaptechniques.blogspot.com/2015/01/january-soap-challenge-club-butterfly.html

This time I decided to move the hanger in a different motion, based on the pattern suggested by steso. She has created 3 beautiful butterfly swirl soap using this pattern, which she shows in her blog.
A couple of days ago it was her birthday, so I decided to dedicate my new soap to Tatsiana-steso. :) The swirl is colored with a silver mica, so I think I'll call this soap "Silver Butterfly".
Here it is:

Tiger Stripe Soaps

Some time ago I made 2 batches of cold-process soap using a tiger stripe technique. I believe sometimes it's called zebras stripes.

The first one is my Ocean soap, with blue and white stripes. I'm pretty happy how it turned out:

The next soap is multi-colored and it's scented with Pomegranate and black currant from Brambleberry. It looks a bit different but it was made using the same technique.