Soap Challenge Survey Results and New Schedule!
My apologies to those who aren’t involved in the Soap Challenge – I promise to post about new soaps tomorrow!!
I had 54 people take the survey – thank you very much for your input!! The overwhelming majority are ready to keep going, and the newer soapers especially are ready to tackle anything and everything! LOL! Looking at my calendar, things are about to get busy with my local farmer’s market starting up this Saturday, and then my girls get out of school May 24th!! So…let’s give it six more weeks, and then summer will hit and everyone will be doing their own thing anyway – at least in the northern hemisphere!
Now, what shall we do for the next six weeks? The survey results are very interesting:
I also had several people request doing infusions or making soap with fruit or veggie puree or natural colorants which I thought would be an excellent challenge as well.
Based on your feedback, here are the final six weeks of challenges:
Week 6 (starting April 22): Faux Funnel pour soap
Week 7 (starting April 29): Gradient colored soap
Week 8 (starting May 6): Salt Bars (regular sea salt – Dead Sea salt will NOT work)
Week 9 (starting May 13): Peaked Tops
Week 10 (starting May 20): Landscape soap
Week 11 (starting May 27): Making soap with natural ingredients (This one will be pretty open-ended. Some of you have communicated that you have some ideas on what you’d like to do already, so just make sure you have the ingredients you would like to work with!)
It wasn’t easy to choose, but I had to include the ones that most people wanted, and also make sure we had some easier techniques mixed in with the more advanced ones. As before, you are of course welcome to sit out the ones you aren’t interested in. Or if something comes up and you aren’t able to participate that week, that’s no problem either! The goal is to learn and have fun making soap!!
Swap News: Looks like we will be doing a 1 to 1 swap for anyone who is interested – 47 people responded positively to a swap on the survey. I will post more about that next week and give anyone else who might want to join in a chance to sign up!
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Yay! I’m super excited to start my planning!
Wonderful! I can’t wait to get started!
Woo~ look at that schedule! Fun fun fun! Though I already tried most of them except I have no idea what you mean by Landscape Soap.
I think i will be jumping in!
It’s gonna be fun, ladies!!
@Emily – The way I understand it, it’s a bit of an advanced technique, usually done in a log mold, to create the look of a landscape. I suppose it could be a seascape just as easily! I’ve only ever done a beach scene once – it was pretty cool!
@Candece – Glad to have you join us!!
I am one of the new soapers that wants to tackle all and everything! haha! yes I do! I am so excited for the line up! Amy, thank you a trillion times!
Ooops – looks like I jumped the gun!! Playing with my fragrancing blend last night, I decided to put it into my first Salt Bar. Oh well, I will just have to recreate it in a couple of weeks time and maybe pour prettier bars, now that I know how it works!
I’m very interested in trying the faux funnel swirl 🙂
Let the games begin!
yeah! I am so excited; I am so loving these “mini classes” I can’t seem to find any soap classes in my area so I am loving these “online classes”.
thanks so much Amy for all the work you are putting into these!!
Lovely! I am glad I can learn some more from your challenges, Amy!
Thank you.
Yay! I’m so excited that you’ve decided to do 6 more weeks! 🙂 Is there any chance that you’d consider doing a few more challenges in the future (especially hot process embeds [hint, hint, hide:])? Like maybe even one a month or one a quarter so it wouldn’t be so time intensive for you each week? Just a thought! And if not, THANK YOU so much anyway!!! You’ve done an awesome job organizing all of this, and we’re all obviously so grateful and having so much fun!
@Katy – If you’d like to try out the microwave method, I’ve already done a photo tutorial here: http://www.greatcakessoapworks.com/handmade-soap-blog/index.php/how-to-make-hot-process-soap-in-the-microwave/
Amy, The schedule looks great. I was hoping the Peacock swirl would make the list, but I’ll have to do that one on my own. Don’t forget that the Handcrafted Soapmakers Guild conference is the week of May 6 so you may have fewer entries that week. I’ve already made salt soap so probably was not going to do that challenge anyway. I made my soap for this week’s challenge and am looking forward to the next. Thank you for your efforts!!!
@Susan – Oh yes, that’s right! Some day I hope to make it to a conference! Looking forward to seeing your soap this week!
One more thing, I think the 1 to 1 soap swap sounds good and not too difficult to arrange.
I am looking forward to continuing..I love these challenges!
These are all very interesting & challenging…even for seasoned soapers! Thank you for making this exciting! Could you tell us how the one to one sway works, I really don’t want to ship out 92 bars of soap!!! LOL! I am assuming it is as it reads 1 to1 Swap…how do we pair up? Thanks in advance!
Amy,
Just wanted to thank you again for all the hard work you have put into the challenges. Thanks and blessings to you and your family.
Will Himalayan work for the salt bar? And what degree of courseness is best? Look forward to these challenges again! Thank you for sharing your talent with us, Amy!
@Tina – I would think so. It’s just the Dead Sea salt that doesn’t for sure! Coarseness is a matter of preference… and I prefer fine!