Week 10 of the Great Cakes Soap Works Challenge involves making a landscape soap.  Thank you Amy for giving me credit for this idea I think!   I hope I'm not too embarrassed to have been the one to suggest this exercise/challenge.  I hope we are all still soap buddies after all this! KWIM.  GreatCakesSoapWorks located HERE  drop by and say a word!  Thank you Amy for your faithful hardworking efforts on behalf of us, presenting this Challenge and keeping the herd of cats wrangled.   You're the best!

Having done a landscape soap in the past ah well I was not anxious to begin anew.  The one I made previously was tough and as I was concentrating on the design process to such an extent,  I forgot the Shea Butter!  Well I kept one slice that sits in my studio window. Here is the photo.

Do you know the feeling when you complete a batch of soap to find out you left out the Shea Butter?  Yep I did.  That poor soap was re-batched not once but twice!

Amy did such a nice job of setting up this challenge and sharing different youtube videos and photos of landscape soaps.  I fell in love with the Starry Night done by Newt and Figg to the music of a love song about Vincent Van Gough, fantastic execution, music and the soap beautiful.  T

If you have a desire for a good summer read check out "Dear Theo" the story of Vincent Van Gough's life is so insightful, fulfilling and heart breaking all at once, the life of a true artist.  Here is my tribute to another true artist, Claude Monet.

 

Monet is my favorite  French painter/gardening architect was Claude Monet who designed  painted and lived in his Giverny gardens outside of Paris for more than 30 years.  The last 30 years of his life he is said to have had a love affair with the Nypheas. Water Lilies.  He produced over 250 painting of his lilies and pond and loved painting the sky's reflections as it fell upon the water, reflecting over and around his lilies.  So this was my attempt to do a water/sea lily pond soap inspired by Claude Monet. 

 
This soap was fragranced with a new to me fragrance of citrus and lilies that accelerated even though I took all precautions and colored and added fragrance with a wire whip!  It's scent is of a lovely garden, not too sweet but with green accords in the wings.  This soap smells wonderful!  Yes I like this soap very much!  It smells delightful, has my favorite colors, and a lovely fragrance.  My tribute to Claude Monet's world famous Lilies, to the  artist extraordinaire whose inspiration lives on in much of the art work done today from textiles to high art,  to soap, paintings to color palettes used by retailers today!  His genre is well named  an Impressionistic Art Form as it still inspires over 100 years later!