Great Cakes Soapworks Soap Challenge - Ebru Technique

For this month's soap challenge, I chose to go 'floral'. This is probably because most of the Ebru designs I liked most had flowers in them. Deciding on what to 'mimic' was very difficult since there is a lot out there to look at! Eventually, I after what seemed like ages of searching on the internet, I settled for this Ebru inspiration found here -
:

And this is my entry, my attempt at making a similar Ebru design with more flowers scattered around:

The wet soap - picture taken just after I finished decorating the top:

and this after 24 hours, uncut:

close-up view

I used a slow moving recipe and scented it with May Chang essential oil. Colours: used TD, activated charcoal and yellow pop mica for the flowers. I'd expected to have more time to do them, but halfway through the process, the batter had started to get pretty thick. Still, I somehow managed to finish without making a mess of things. All in all, I'm quite happy with how this one's turned out - which is why I entered this particular soap.


Which isn't to say I stopped there ... no!! I was hooked! I chanced upon some poppy flowers blooming in a field close to where I live and I took some photos of them, hoping to use the scenery as my inspiration.



Then I found an Ebru picture of tulips and yellow flowers in a field

and thought it would be slightly easier to 'draw' tulips than poppy flowers, so I chose it and made an attempt at creating something that was meant to be 'somewhat similar'. Hhmm ... can't say I was too happy with this one ;).

My third attempt was soap with a dark, black background and two colourful roses on it ...

This one is scented with Frangipani FO (from Gracefruit UK) which behaved unexpectedly well! It has a colourful swirl inside - I wonder how that will turn out?! I'm very happy with how this one looks - black seems to really bring out other colours well! Was tempted to enter this but didn't, simply because it was done yesterday, without any 'inspirational' picture, and I didn't have time to browse the internet for any picture to attach next to it before the link-up deadline.

Amy, thanks again for another very interesting challenge. Thanks to it, this technique has really caught my attention and I'm already toying around with the idea of getting myself a marbling kit and learning how to imprint designs on items of clothing using Ebru ... like a silk scarf, perhaps?
Thanks to all visitors for stopping by :).

Amy Warden's Soap Challenge - Mini Desserts

MINI DESSERTS SOAP CHALLENGE

May’s soap challenge hosted by Amy Warden at Great Cakes Soapworks was all about making mini desserts. It was fun to do but I had a problem setting my mind to just four desserts. In the end I made about 8, perhaps more. Choosing which four to present was not easy! Here's what I finally chose to enter:

From left to right: chocolate and nut cake with a dollop of chocolate cream, crustless blackberry cheesecake, cherry-pistachio nougat and coconut cake with chocolate cream.

The blackberry cheesecake and nougat desserts were all made with whipped CP soap to give them a light, fluffy texture. They're going to float in the bath tub when used, which will make them fun to use :). The other two and all 'chocolate cream' are CP soap made using the regular method. Coconut milk was used in all the desserts.

1. choconut cake:

Food item used: coconut milk, cocoa powder. Scented with hazelnut toffee FO by Bramble Berry.

CP soap batter + cocoa powder. 

In go the 'nuts', i.e. chopped up vanilla soap pieces.

and ... viola!

2. crustless blackberry cheesecake:

 The fruit and sauce are all M&P plus liquid non-bleed soap colourant. the soap is made from whipped cp soap. Scented with non-discolouring vanilla.

whipped hard oils (palm oil, shea butter, coconut oil)

liquid oils added, whipping goes on ... lye added, more whipping.

finally, coconut milk and the last of the whipping.

colourant added to cake base

cake mix piped in

M&P fruit added

  The blackberry fruit is made up of transparent M&P soap. Some straight from the mould, others rolled and shaped into small cones while still warm and pressed into tiny sugar sprinkles. Once set, I poured on the M&P blackberry sauce scented with blackberry ice-cream fragrance (Sensory Perfection).

sauce

 

3. cherry & pistachio nougat.

The same batter as that used above. Non-discolouring vanilla used to scent batter.

my 'pistachio' was made from white M&P soap + non-bleed soap dye.

The cherries are red CP soap chopped into small pieces, the choc is vanilla scented soap .

choc pieces go into batter

and the pistachio

in go the cherries

nougat mix in the mould

unmoulded and cut to expose the inside

cut into bite-size pieces

4. coconut cake:

 This soap was scented with vanilla coconut FO blend and has finely ground dessicated coconut in and on it. Decorated with a vanilla chocolate cream dollop.

                                    

I made more 'goodies' but those above are the four I entered.

The others:

Marshmallows: decorated with M&P 'chocolate' soap and sprinkles

Whipped soap marshmallows:

  Mini CP cupcakes with vanilla cream and chocolate topping. Sprinkled with cocoa powder.

   These cupcakes are tiny!

 CP toffee soap.

I dipped these into chocolate CP soap
and this is what I got:

 

Then decorated it with a M&P berry.  

A mini vanilla-almond coconut cake. It took ages to set up (stayed very very soft for almost two full days and kind of lost shape because I handled it too early ...

 Thank you Amy for organising this. It was a fun challenge to do. Good luck to all fellow soapers who took on this challenge :).