bytheSEAsoap.com

Artisan soaps made from luxurious oils and exotic butters with milks, creams and silk fibers; to the whimsy of glycerine soap creations. Full of fluffy bubbles and velvet lathers, once your skin it treated to handmade soap you will never go back. bytheSEAsoap was born out of the love of TSPink soap rocks some fifteen years ago. I found those soaps at a Nevada City Art Gallery and my obsession for beauty in a bar of soap began. I still have a small piece of that first soap! ~~Pam Mella~~


Sunday, November 11, 2012

Oh she is at it again!  Amy Warden  of Great Cakes Soap Works  fame.   Great Cakes Soap Works  has reared up the soap pot and challenged soapmakers to get in the game for another challenge!

Amy's imagination and enthusiasm for trying new things had her testing out  the Magma Soap kit offered by BrambleberrySoapMakingSupplies and doing a video of her process!  In the video she debuted a 5 pound wooden mold with a silicone liner the prize for the challenge!   Seriously drooling over that silicone liner and mold here!  Committing to 5 pounds of an experimental soap is very brave!

The challenge was to combine a cold processed soap with a melt and pour glycerine soap.   I must thank Amy for this challenge! The combination of cold process with melt and pour has been done many times by many soapmakers.   Here is one I did for The NOVA Studio Swap of 2011.  Such fun to do and THEN I promptly forgot about the combo technique!

2011    Day At The Beach Nova SWAP
2012  Tide Pool 
A year later and revisiting the process of mixing the cold process with the melt and pour I have two new ideas to try!  Amy thank you so much for stirring my imagination.  You have helped me decide what to do with a  touchy fragrance that I have 5 pounds of!  Heh heh!  Yes  my favorite the apothecary coriander!  It riced and  seized in cold process soap so I've been using it in room sprays and solid perfumes!  Now I can use it in combo soaps!  Thank you so much! 
 
My plan was to do a white soap of one fragrance, boring I know, and combine it with two different colors of melt and pour glycerin soap of another scent!   To add a hanger swirl I put the hanger in the empty loaf and after the pour I tried the swirl.  Well some success but as I did the linear pour there were a few solid spots that I pulled out of the mold!  

I used my favorite persnickety fragrance in the glycerin part of the process and made two colors of glycerin.   My color contrast is pretty in the final soap but next time I will make the two colors a bit more contrasting.  The white batter was fragranced with another scent that was very complimentary.  OH is it yummy and fit for a luxury out door shower in Hawaii or Tahiti!  A few  photos for you of   Sea Foam,   Mermaid Elixir or Tide Pool hum!   The first photo shows bubbles, left middle, that happened when I poured the glycerin from high.  Cool effect!  The fragrance is magnifique and I wish this were a 5 pound batch!



Sea Foam

A Periwinkle Swirl in Sea Foam


Now I know what to do with the troubled fragrances!  Happy combo discoveries to everyone!  Aloha!





12 comments:

  1. This is perfect!! I love how you made lemonade with your lemons!! The bubbly soap on top is pure genius. Great job, Pam!

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  2. I love your soap - so very pretty, x Linda

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    1. Linda thank you so much. I loved your video!

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  3. Your soap is beautiful! I love it!

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    1. Mountain Scentaments thank you so much I hope you got to play with this challenge too. I'll be looking!

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  4. So cool, Pam. I hope to try this too when I have some time. When I do get to it I'll be sure to pull out those troublesome FOs. Thanks for the tip!

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  5. They are so incredibly beautiful! You have me thinking that maybe I should play around with combining the two soaps sometime myself! Thanks for sharing your experiments!

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  6. Amy it was fun and pretty simple. The timing is just the bit that is worrisome. Keep the m and p pretty warm with saran and when the cp is medium trace go for it!

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  7. That is so cool looking when you pick one up against the light!

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