July 2019 SMF Challenge - Landscape/NOT Seascape Design

[szaza]

Just an off-topic question.. Is there any way to make the pictures in the entry thread a normal size? Full image is really in your face, while thumbnail is super tiny. Is there a way to make them an inbetween size? Also, can anyone explain to me how to have a word link to a url, so it turns blue when you click on it you go to a different page? I thought I could figure it out, but turns out I'm really not very tech-savvy for my age

 

[earlene]

I cannot say enough about how wonderful the work you all did was to get your landscape soaps done. I really wish I had found the time to do one myself, but as you all know I am traveling off continent.

Just an off-topic question.. Is there any way to make the pictures in the entry thread a normal size? Full image is really in your face, while thumbnail is super tiny. Is there a way to make them an inbetween size? Also, can anyone explain to me how to have a word link to a url, so it turns blue when you click on it you go to a different page? I thought I could figure it out, but turns out I'm really not very tech-savvy for my age

To make the link word blue, you first have to type the word, change it's color to blue and not until you have done that, add the url to the word. If you try to change the color after linking the url it won't change. I don't know of any way to change the picture size to other than the two you described, though.

 

[szaza]

Thanks for the explanation @earlene ! I'll try that next time
And thanks for the kind words @Mobjack Bay and @dibbles I was really happy with the soap until I started taking pictures, all of a sudden I started seeing all the flaws and it took me almost an entire day to take a picture I was ok with using as an entry pic I know it's just because I made it that I see all the flaws, but I hate it when that happens!
Also, @Mobjack Bay , I showed the entry thread to my mom and she really liked your soap, so you get her compliments

 

[Mobjack Bay]

Thanks for the explanation @earlene ! I'll try that next time
And thanks for the kind words @Mobjack Bay and @dibbles I was really happy with the soap until I started taking pictures, all of a sudden I started seeing all the flaws and it took me almost an entire day to take a picture I was ok with using as an entry pic I know it's just because I made it that I see all the flaws, but I hate it when that happens!
Also, @Mobjack Bay , I showed the entry thread to my mom and she really liked your soap, so you get her compliments

We can be so critical of our own work. I can honestly say that I did not see a single flaw in your soap. All I saw was beautiful creativity! And, please tell your mom I said thanks!

 

[szaza]

We can be so critical of our own work. I can honestly say that I did not see a single flaw in your soap. All I saw was beautiful creativity! And, please tell your mom I said thanks!

I will[emoji6] but she'll be asleep by now[emoji14]

 

[Mobjack Bay]

@Rahmi Your abstract landscape entry soap is pretty. The thin trace problem plagues me too! Did you get that awesome magenta color using madder? It’s beautiful.

 

[dibbles]

@Rahmi Congratulations on entering your first challenge! Your soap looks great and that color you got from the madder is gorgeous.

 

[scard]

Thanks for all the lovely compliments, I'm blushing. I see a lot more landscapes, and maybe a few seascapes in my future.
Wow, all of the entries are just gorgeous!

Szaza these are the type of clay tool I used: https://www.amazon.com/Kemper-Tools-MRS-Sculptng-Multicolor/dp/B007R41TG6 You can get pretty good detail and you can reshape them for finer lines.

Dibbles, I'm probably too late per usual, but any pic is fine.

 

[dibbles]

Thanks for all the lovely compliments, I'm blushing. I see a lot more landscapes, and maybe a few seascapes in my future.
Wow, all of the entries are just gorgeous!

Szaza these are the type of clay tool I used: https://www.amazon.com/Kemper-Tools-MRS-Sculptng-Multicolor/dp/B007R41TG6 You can get pretty good detail and you can reshape them for finer lines.

Dibbles, I'm probably too late per usual, but any pic is fine.

I've been working on the survey, so I just used the first picture you submitted thinking that was maybe your favorite. There wasn't an obvious best - they were all good!

 

[dibbles]

The entry thread for the Landscape Challenge is now closed. Survey link and password have been sent to everyone who signed up. Please let me know if I accidentally skipped you

Good luck everybody - you all did an awesome job!

 

[msunnerstood]

Absolutely Stunning entries this month.

 

[szaza]

Oh @Rahmi, that magenta color is stunning! I also want to know how you got that!! And I like how your soap looks like an abstract painting[emoji3526]

 

[Primrose]

A slightly off topic question, those who carved details into the soap and then filled.them with soap batter. Do you carve the design all the way through the bar, or just on the surface? What consistency/firmness do you find you need the bar to be, for best effect? This is something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been sure how to do it. Any tips would be very much appreciated

 

[dibbles]

A slightly off topic question, those who carved details into the soap and then filled.them with soap batter. Do you carve the design all the way through the bar, or just on the surface? What consistency/firmness do you find you need the bar to be, for best effect? This is something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been sure how to do it. Any tips would be very much appreciated

I'm no expert, but when I tried this I carved into the bar a minimum of 1/4". You can then fill the carved out spaces with fresh batter or soap dough. This was a technique in the Soap Challenge Club awhile back and the challenge was named Inlaid Designs if you want to try a search.
Here's a video of one:
Helene Glemet of ChezHelene has a facebook post as well - this was the March challenge if you need to scroll through her FB page: https://www.facebook.com/ChezHelene...TOjCmzjq1KLPnNtmdvlkZ2vPEzwuqiuCYUmoEPbCMnnLY

 

[Mobjack Bay]

A slightly off topic question, those who carved details into the soap and then filled.them with soap batter. Do you carve the design all the way through the bar, or just on the surface? What consistency/firmness do you find you need the bar to be, for best effect? This is something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been sure how to do it. Any tips would be very much appreciated

Same for me in terms of wanting to try this technique.

 

[szaza]

A slightly off topic question, those who carved details into the soap and then filled.them with soap batter. Do you carve the design all the way through the bar, or just on the surface? What consistency/firmness do you find you need the bar to be, for best effect? This is something I've wanted to do for a while but haven't been sure how to do it. Any tips would be very much appreciated

I only made very shallow carvings as my designs were quite small and intricate (maybe 1-2mm, which I think is about 1/16th of an inch) I did feel making deeper carvings made filling them easier.
I think soap sculpting tools will be easier to work with than a carving knife, though I've only used the latter.
I started carving right after cutting the soaps. My recipe had a lot of soft oils and didn't set up fast so I had quite a few days to work on them. During the intaglio challenge in September I noticed at some point carving got a lot harder because the soap was curing (soap got brittle and extra bits that I wanted to keep on the soap started to come off while carving) but that was a soleseife with 45% CO and quite a bit of salt and I still got 2-3 days of workable soap. If the margin for soleseife is 2-3 days a regular recipe will probably allow quite a bit more time. I'm pretty sure a week after cutting my entry soap is still carveable.
When filling with CP soap I made sure the batter was somewhere between emulsion and very light trace. Filling was actually easier than I thought! Just dump the soap (a few drops in my case) on the carved bits and wipe the rest off. That seemed to work a lot better than my initial idea of very precisely filling the carvings with some soap batter on a skewer. Oh and another great thing: because of the surface tension the soap batter didn't leak off the edges as I thought it would but stayed very nicely on the top of the soap without making a mess by dripping over the edges (which was especially great for my first attempt, the African sunset which had a lot of carvings going all the way to the edges)

 

[Primrose]

Thanks heaps dibbles and szaza, that's awesome. I will do some reading and will definitely be trying it. Have some designs in mind already

Szaza I love your African sunset carved soaps, I was actually looking at those same images for the intaglio challenge but never got around to it and didn't think I was up to the task anyway. Yours came out just amazing

 

[Rahmi]

Thanks all The magenta color was madder root dispersed in oil, nothing special. It sat for about half an hour before I used it in the soap batter.

 

[szaza]

Good luck @Primrose, show us your results when you give it a try! [emoji3526]
Wow @Rahmi, I never thought just madder dispersed in oil would give such a vibrant color! Something new to put on my to-try list[emoji16] please keep us updated on how the color holds up!

 

[Jamielynn]

I'm new to the forum, so I couldn't enter, but I have been wanting to try a landscape soap for some time. I used a combination of soap sculpting, ITP swirl and an embed. I am so impressed by the entries!