Not Enough Sky!

[TashaBird]

So bummed! Today I made 3 2lb loafs. I used a scraper tool I made and poured some brown and black in the bottom and then used my scraper tool and the moutain horizon came out nice. Then I mixed up my purple and blue sky, poured some, laid my embedded crescent moon columns, then poured the rest of the sky. I must have miscalculated my amounts. I think I took out too much for the column embeds from the regular recipe amount. So, the moons are JUST BARELY covered! I’m SO bummed!!! I worked really hard on it, and it’s a LOT of material! The soaps are about 3/8-1/2in from the top of the mold.
So, they’re resting on the heating pad under a box and blanket. If I tried to make more batter for the sky it wouldn’t match exactly.
1) I can leave them, and they’ll not have much (enough) sky all around the moon, and call it a day. 3 loaves!
2) Or I can try and do some piping on top, which I have not yet done. But, I’ve been reading up, and I’ve got an old frosting bag w tips.
What would you do?!
Thanks so much!

Here is my goofy looking scraper. It worked super good! I used an old plastic container lid.
So, currently, I won’t have that much sky above my moon. Did I mention I made THREE loaves?!

So, if I decide to try and put some puffy pipping “cloud” kind of high top thing tomorrow, can that be done after the soap has been curing over night?

 

[GemstonePony]

That looks beautiful! You could call it a day, and nobody would dislike the soap.
If you want to add a top you might take it off the heating pad or at least cover the tops with plastic wrap to conserve water.
My only concern with waiting a day is if the bottom part will be too hard to cut while the top is barely hard enough.
If you want to add a top, here are my thoughts
I would texture the top if possible, just a gentle curves or two next to the moon so the next layer makes sense.
Warning: I have not tried this with soap, just with frosting.
I would do a piping hybrid where I use the bag to pile soap lengthwise on top of the loaves. I would mix the batter into 2 colors, a main and an accent, and use some of the accent to do some chunky, irregular, stripey coating inside the bag and swirl the rest with the main color. As you pipe lengthwise down the loaves, the accent color forms circlish shapes in the fuzzy main color. Imperfect is perfect, it's a cloud after all. Additional texturing could be done to give it a roundish, gently indented shape, or it could be left as it's perfectly imperfect little self. Clouds at night are generally lighter than the sky, so I think a lighter blue and lighter purple would be perfect.
Either way, the soap sounds amazing, and I'd love to see the cut!

 

[Megan]

I think a layer of clouds would be nice too! Maybe not the original design but if you want to make them as tall as you originally planned, it's a good option.

And yes, you can pipe the day after. You may have issues with the piping sticking (And you may not). I've heard that people score the top of the set soap, people spray with RA again, and some people spray with a little water. I've found that I had no issue when I just piped on top, without doing anything, but I can't guarantee your results will be the same. Since you have three loaves, maybe you can try a variety of techniques!

 

[dibbles]

I'm too late to help with advice about the top, but for future reference - did you increase your batch size to allow for the loss of the amount of soap scraped away? If not, that might have been enough to leave you with less than you planned for the sky. I've seen lots of soaps with an embed sticking out of the top too, which looks nice.

 

[TashaBird]

@GemstonePony thank you so much! That’s kind of what I was thinking about doing, but your detailed advice is really helpful!
@dibbles That is exactly what happened! I even subtracted the amount of the embed, which now I realize I should have left alone, and/or even added a bit to the recipe. Oye vey!

After sleeping on it I’ve decided to chalk it up to learning and hope for the best with the cut. I’m going on a trip in the morning and I have a lot to do before I leave. Soft top and hard body might be a whole other disaster!
What I’m mostly out is time and EO.
What I’m super happy about, even before the cut, is how well the whole process went! This is a fancy-ish soap that with some practice, I can scale up with out too much crazy prep and clean up. So, I’m pretty excited about that, and I look forward to the next go round. And, who knows, maybe they’ll look ok when I cut them.
Thanks so much for all y’all support!


Turned out not terrible.

And thanks so much for all y’all support when I was freaking out last night.

 

[goat soap rulz!]

not terrible at all! its beautiful!

 

[AliOop]

Very pretty! So glad you didn't pipe anything on top.

 

[TashaBird]

Very pretty! So glad you didn't pipe anything on top.

Me too. I was just tired. Really thought about it and if they were a disaster, I was out mostly time, and EO those things are pricy!!

 

[Catscankim]

I love these!!

 

[Megan]

Those turned out amazing!

 

[Todd Ziegler]

They are great!

 

[dibbles]

See there - you just never know what you have until you cut. I would never know they weren't exactly as you planned. Nice job! Good call on the decision to not add piping - I really think that would have taken something away from the look.