I decided at the last minute to make my own soap for the challenge this week, which was to create a soap with a peaked top. Ever since I saw Louise’s post about infusing chard leaves in the lye solution for a natural green soap colorant, I had been trying to figure out what sort of soap I could make with that method. I purchased some swiss chard at the farmer’s market last Saturday, but it wasn’t until Thursday that I had time to make soap.

After infusing the lye solution and mixing it with the oils, I divided the soap into 4 pots and added various amounts of titanium dioxide to lighten up the yellowish-green color into a gradient color scheme, then poured them into the mold using the faux funnel method. I added a layer of the darkest color on top, then used the lightest color for the peaks. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to work the soap! When the texture was nice and thick, I started using a spoon to push the soap up from the sides, toward the center of the mold. It behaved pretty well, except that when I had to keep working it, the soap would relax some and seemed to slide back down toward the sides.

I ran out of time to take some still photos, but here is my cutting video:

Even though the color isn’t quite green, it is very nice. I seem to have an abundance of green soaps on the curing rack right now anyway! I am going to give the Herb Garden soap a tentative ready date of June 14th.

Now it’s time to share your beautiful soaps! Here are the instructions to add your link:

Bloggers: Create a post about your peaked top soap – with photos of course! Don’t forget to include the scent you used. Please include a link back to my blog in your post (either the home page, or this post should work nicely!).

Facebook business page photos: Upload your photo(s) into a photo album, and write a descriptive caption on the photo you are linking up to this post, including the scent you used. To link the photo, click on it, then copy and paste the URL into the “blog post URL” blank at the top. In the next step, it will show your photo, and you will need to select it. (If you press the “crop” button instead, you can adjust what the thumbnail of your photo will look like.)

YouTubers: You can create a link to a YouTube video of your soap! There will be a little frog icon instead of a thumbnail photo of the soap, but anyone who clicks on your link will be able to see your video. Starting on your video page, click the “share” button and copy the URL. You can use this URL for the “blog post URL” blank. Then in the next step, ignore all the tiny blue boxes and click the “direct image URL” tab across the top and paste the URL of your youtube video in the blank again and hit the “submit query” button.

Uploading a photo from your computer: If you don’t have a blog or business page on facebook or a youtube video, you can still upload a photo from your computer. Just put n/a in the “blog post URL” blank and go to the next step. It will give you an error message, but it will still work! Just click the tab across the top that says “upload from computer” and you will be able to browse your files and upload a photo. I will remove the dead link ASAP.

This week’s link-up will remain open until next Saturday!