Great Cakes Soap Works Challenges #9 and #10

AND A  SERIES OF FAILURES......

Amy set the last two challenges as "Peaked tops"and "Landscape"I was so excited about both challenges. As I was pondering what colours and scents to use for the peaked tops challenge I was driving my daughter the 25 minute drive into town for work early one morning and the fog was swirling around all the hills, every thing was a blue grey colour, and Ithought that is what I am going to make. As I am low on castile soaps I thought I would make a castile soap, mistake number 1. Castile is so slow to trace and then firm up to peak the top, but I persisted

I scented the soap with lavender and lemongrass EO's, it was coloured with pale blue spa minerals and Blue Ultra Marine. I was very happy with the end resuld, even if the top did end up flat.

Take two, The tops worked well, but the soap didn't want to set. Even after three or four days it was still too soft to unmold, I did end up getting it cut but it was still too soft, so I put it back in my combustion oven that was very slow, I left it there for about an hour, and it turned out OK. Scented with Lavender and peppermint EO's, coloured with parsley infused oil and olive leaf powder.

Now to the landscape soap......I was really happy with how this one came together, my idea came from our little valley, our farm is in its own valley, we can't see our neighbours, what better landscape could I ask for, so I went back to my silverbeet/chard soap for the base, or valley floor, then I made another batch of plain soap and divided it up to make olive green for the eucalypt bushline on the top of the hills, pink, yellow, blue and white for the sky which was inspired by some amazing sun rises and sets recently. I scented it with Lemon Myrtle, Eucalyptus, Tea Tree and Peppermint EO's.  As you can see in the above photo it doesn't look too bad, the yellow went a bit dark but if that was the worst it would have been fine.

 This gelled nicely, but seemed to stay in the gel stage. After a few days I thought I would do the oven trick again, the oven was really slow, so I popped it in, then went to work and totally forgot about it. I didn't think to take a photo of it in the oven, pity because it was a sight. but here it is after I un globbed it from the mold because I needed to use the mold. This is the first time I am seriously thinking about chucking a batch of soap in the bin......

Maybe I should call it a muddy moon scape or something like that.

But for all my flops lately I have really enjoyed checking out everybody elses successes. Next week is the last week of these great challenges. I am going to miss them, but am so grateful to Amy for getting me out of my rut and inspiring some creativity, as well as meeting new soap addicts.

On a different note here are our new babies, we had just got them home, the two white ones will be having piglets sometime in mid september and the other two are boys, one will grow up to be a daddy one day and the other one will be in our freezer in a couple of months.