Soap Challenge – Week 1 Link-Up

March 24, 2012 by | 18 Comments

The Soap Challenge has already exceeded my expectations! Every day this week, there have been new people asking to join in! Officially, there are now 76 people from around the world who have told me they are participating, and there could be others who are unofficially participating as well – which is totally fine! If others want to join us along the way, that will be just fine too. Each challenge is a stand-alone technique, so there’s no reason to keep someone from jumping into whichever challenge we happen to be doing that week.

And now it’s time to reveal the fruit of our labor this week! I can’t wait to see what everyone has been up to! I challenged each of the participants in this week’s Soap Challenge to create a beautiful soap using an in-the-pot swirl method. Each person could choose their recipe and how many colors they wanted to attempt.

For my first soap, I swirled just one color: white! I used the Vanilla Hazelnut fragrance that I’ve been using in my Whipped Shea Butters for several years now. It’s a very popular fragrance, so I thought I would try it in a soap. The scent isn’t quite as strong as it is in the shea butter, but still quite yummy!! The fragrance oil is already starting to discolor to a nice taupe brown to create contrast with the white swirl:

View of the tops of the Vanilla Hazelnut soap
Better view of the sides - Vanilla Hazelnut soap

In case you are wondering why the photos seem smaller than usual, I’ve actually used larger 800x600px photos this time, but wordpress will only let me choose medium or full size to insert in the post, and the full size is too large. So…if you click on a photo, it will open the larger size in a new window.

And now, the one you’ve been waiting to see since Sunday…Mango Melon!!

Here are some photos of it before I cut into it:

Mango Melon Soap - just out of the mold
Close-up

And here are some photos of the cut soaps:

Tops of the Mango Melon soap
Side view of the Mango Melon soap
My favorite angled shot!

The Mango Melon soaps are going to take a bit longer to cure because I added more water. However, I think they will be ready just in time for the farmer’s market to start on Saturday, April 21st! Of course I will add them to the Great Cakes Soapworks website as well.

Now I’ve shown you mine – it’s time to show me yours!! Remember, you can either link to a blog post of your soap or just upload a photo from your computer if you don’t have a blog. If you are blogging about your soap, please include a link back to my blog in your post (either the home page, or this post should work nicely!).

For those who don’t have blogs, you can use your Facebook business page. Upload your photo into a photo album, click on it, and copy and paste the URL into the blog post URL blank at the top. The rest is easy! If you don’t have a facebook business page, just put n/a in the URL blank and go to the next step where you can upload a photo from your computer (click the tab across the top that says “upload from computer”).

If you have questions or problems, please leave a comment. I’m looking forward to seeing your soaps!!


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  1. I love the Vanilla Hazelnut swirl one. It’s so simple but so elegant. I have found I like the simple 2 color swirls quite a bit these days 🙂

  3. Amy,

    Your white swirl one turned out so pretty and I bet the Hazelnut Vanilla scent is sublime. I also like the muted colours of the Mango Melon. Those swirls turned out wonderful.

    Michelle

  4. @Carol – I don’t think you can… Do you have a FB business page that you can link to (see Tricia’s) or a photobucket account (see Tracy’s)? I think a flickr account would work as well. Otherwise, you can just upload a photo from your computer. It will make you add a URL – just put n/a, and I can delete it later.

  5. Ok. My hubby just did something, we’ll see if it works. No I don’t have any business website or anything yet. If what he did, doesn’t work, I will try to upload a picture from the camera. Thanks!

  6. Hey! It worked! There’s a frog there but when you click on it, the video is there. Good enough?

  8. Amy, having problems posting here, but have posted two photos on my business Facebook page, http:/www.facebook.com/SamangaSpringsHandmadeSoaps.
    I am quite pleased with the way it turned out, it actually looks better than the photos because I was in a hurry taking those last night. I did CPRT – the first time I have soaped at Room Temperature, so that was interesting. I used three coloures of mica, dark blue, purple and jade green and the only one that stayed was the jade green, which was also an interesting lesson to learn! The fragrance was a blend of Rose and Geranium FO with Lavender EO.

    Will try to crack the photo posting before the next challenge.

    Thanks for thinking this up, I am really enjoying seeing what everyone is doing.

  9. Hi Amy and everyone, Just want to say a big thank you to Amy for putting on this challenge. It has been a great success by all accounts. All the soaps look fabulous to me, and they all have their own distinctive style. It’s amazing just how different they all can be when given the same challenge – we all have different ideas of how things should look and be! Wouldn’t it be great if we could smell all the fragrances as well? x Linda

  10. Sweetie you’re a GENIUS for putting this all together -my hat’s off to you!! Not only are you helping everyone with links and inspiration, you are pushing us all to learn and grow! Thank you my friend, for taking the time and effort to run with your idea -you’re the bomb m’dear. 😀 ~Becky

  11. Santa Barbara Soaps: You nailed Amy’s demonstration! The colors are beautiful and vibrant, and I love the photos too, especially the last one. Now I want to sing a song about a red cup. Let’s have a party! Let’s have a party!

  13. What a fun idea! I loved seeing the results of this challenge – fabulous looking soaps! Wish I could “scratch and sniff” lol

  16. Amy this was so much fun. I feel like the soaping world has changed(for the better) and we have all come together to share our love of soaping. YT & Facebook are my favorite sites and I’m meeting new people everday because of this. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this it warms my heart when we come together as friends sharing and inspiring each other…awesome soaps I just want to lick the screen it looks rainbow sherbert….lol… Louise

  17. @Katy, I’m going to make a coffee latte soap and I want it to look like yours. Great job!

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